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people to take computing to the next level: ED VAC, which was essentially a
blueprint for the machines that followed. Von Neumann divided a computer’s
hardware into 5 primary groups:
CPU (central processing unit), input, output,
working storage, permanent storage.
His scheme was sufficiently versatile to launch
computers into the commercial realm and the
amazing thing is his model is still completely
applicable today. But even then,
underestimation was as thick as in Babbage's
day. Thomas Watson Sr., the head of the
company that was perhaps most prescient of
all in embracing the idea - IBM - thought it
unimaginable that there would ever be a
worldwide need for the machine. "I think there
is a world market," said Watson, "for maybe
five computers."
As we know, IBM sold a lot more than five computers. During the '50s and
'60s big institutions and businesses used these expensive devices to perform
complicated tasks, churning out responses to programs fed into the machine on
manila cards.
The development of the personal computer was made possible by the
invention of the microprocessor - a computer on a chip - by Intel Corp.'s Ted
Hoffin 1971. Essentially, what once filled a room and cost as much as a mansion
had been shrunk down to the size of a postage stamp and the cost of a dinner. By
1975, the PC was just waiting to be born, and the obstetrician was Ed Roberts, a
Florida-born engineer His Altair microcomputer was announced in January of that
year, and though it had limited practical value (the only way to put a program in
was to painstakingly flick little switches), it caused a sensation among a small cult
of tweak-heads and engineers.
Like who? A Harvard student named Gates, for one, who instantly began
writing Altair software. Another acolyte was Stephen Wozniak, who quickly
designed his own machine, the Apple II.
Even then, people still kept underestimating. Consider what Ken Olsen,
head of the then powerful Digital Equipment Corp., had to say when asked about
the idea of the computer's becoming a common device: "There is no reason for
any individual to have a computer in his home." What proved him wrong was the
grass-roots development of software for these small devices: word processing,
games and, perhaps the most crucial of all, a program called VisiCalc that not
only automated the previously tedious task of calculating financial spreadsheets,
but made modeling of business plans as easy as sneezing. Electronic
spreadsheets were the tool that persuaded big business (which had previously
turned its nose up at personal computers) to adopt the machines wholesale. And
a new industry was suddenly thriving. The next big step was the move to
computer communications in the '90s, when students at the University of Illinois
wrote a program called Mosaic.
The prospect of millions of computers connected worldwide was suddenly a
reality. People are still processing the effects of that explosion. And a lot of
John von Neumann
1903-1957
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