18/01/2019

HISTORIA DE LAS
COMPUTADORAS
(1945-1985)

METODOS COMPUTACIONALES
EN INGENIERIA

HISTORIA DE LAS COMPUTADORAS

(1945-1985)
Moore school, University of Pennsylvania ENIAC (1945
US).-
The first practical electronic digital, ENIAC-the electronic
numerical integrator and computer-was built to compute
gunnery tables in world war ii. Decimal architecture and a
need for tedious rewiring when programming imposed
severe limits, but this computer remains widely respected as
a pioneer. If nothing else, it proved that calculating systems
with miles of wiring and 18,000 vacuum tubes could be
reliable.

Manchester University Mark I (1948 June UK).-

The next step was to build a computer whose programs, as well as data, could be stored in
memory while they were executed. The honor of building the first "stored program"
Computer fell to Manchester University in England, where a small prototype was
successfully tested in the summer of 1948.

1
 18/01/2019

Cambridge University EDSAC (1949 May UK).-

EDSAC-the electronic delay storage automatic calculator-was the first practical full-scale
stored-program computer. It owed much to the design work done at the Moore School but
went beyond ENIAC in important ways. The EDSAC used sound waves in tubes of
mercury-mercury delay lines-as storage for bits of data that were waiting to be processed.

National Physical Laboratory Pilot ACE (1950 May

UK).-
The earliest computer to run at 1MHz-One million
cycles per second-the pilot ACE held the world speed
record for computing in its day. It followed the
general pattern of other contemporary computers like
EDSAC, but clever design kept its tube count low,
increasing speed. In 1954 this computer was
equipped with one of the world's first drum
memories.

Moore school, University of Pennsylvania EDVAC (1951 US).-

Eniac's more efficient successor was the first stored-program computer built in the united
states. Superior design cut the tube count to just more than 3,500 (from ENIAC's 18,000) and
resulted in a computer that could easily solve a wide range of complex problems

Remington Rand UNIVAC I (1951 March US).-

Two senior engineers from the Moore School broke with the
University of Pennsylvania and formed a company for
commercial production of computers. The result, UNIVAC I,
fired the public imagination by guessing the outcome of the
1952 presidential election more accurately than the pollsters.
Overnight and for years afterward, "UNIVAC" became a popular
synonym for "computer."

2
 18/01/2019

J. Lyons & Company LEO (1951 August UK).-

England's famous J. Lyons & Company had such problems maintaining inventory for its
chain of 150 tea shops that it automated its business by building its own computers. The
result, LEO-the Lyons Electronic Office-became the first computer built outside the united
states for commercial use.

University of Illinois ILLIAC I (1952 September

US).-
Profiting from and improving on the design of the
EDVAC, the University of Illinois did more than just
build its own computer. In one stroke it pushed itself
to the forefront of American academic and military
computing development, a position it worked hard to
maintain for decades. All four ILLIAC computers
were brilliantly conceived and beautifully built.

IBM 701 (Defense Calculator) (1952 December US).-

Thomas j. Watson Sr., who thought he would be in the
punch card business forever, didn't want to build this box;
Watson Jr., with help from an eager Air Force, convinced
him to do it anyway. The result wasn't the fastest
computer in town, but superb IBM setup and service
carried the day; 19 copies were snapped up by
universities, aircraft factories, and the military, even at the
staggering rental of $15,000 a month.

MIT Whirlwind (1953 June US).-

Starting out as an analog pilot trainer in 1945, this
computer took an amazing number of instructive and
expensive detours before it reached fruition as a fast,
competent, general-purpose digital computer eight years
later. It’s final design was the first to use ferrite-core
memory-which became the world standard until It was
supplanted by transistors.

3
 18/01/2019

IBM 650 (1954 US).-

This computer was neither small (it was the size
of a medium-size room) nor inexpensive ($3,250
a month), but it filled such a crying need for
American business that Watson jr. Ended up
calling it "the model T" of computers-rugged,
simple, and serviceable by the standards of the
day. More than 2,000 were finally rented.

IBM 704 (1954 october US).-

To the manifest virtues of the 701, the comprehensively upgraded 704 added the missing
piece-speed. It was anywhere from 2 to 20 times faster than its older sibling. A powerful
machine, the 704 was also the first widely marketed computer with magnetic core
memory, and it was the very first to employ floating-point arithmetic and software that
approached the concept of an operating system. The 704 made IBM the proud provider of
a world-class scientific computer, and more important, made it clear who was the leader in
the rapidly expanding industry.

Ferranti Pegasus (1956 UK).-

Easily 20 years ahead of its time, Pegasus-also known as the Ferranti Packaged Computer-
decreased mainframe construction costs by using off-the-shelf components assembled into
small, easily built, and easily replaced modules. This modular construction became
fundamental to the entire mainframe industry and carried forward into the ubiquitous micros
of today.

IBM 305 RAMAC (1956 US).-

Built as a fast-access business computer and
optimized for high-volume record handling, the
RAMAC made its name from its most outrageous
component-the random access method of accounting
and control. Otherwise known as a hard disk, it was
invented at IBM San Jose between 1953 and 1956. A
five-megabyte disk the size of a large refrigerator
may have seemed a tentative start, but today, almost
50 years later, your computer still has a hard disk.
(IBM San Jose invented the floppy disk in 1971.)

4
 18/01/2019

Sperry-Rand LARC (1956 US).-

Arguably the earliest attempt at a supercomputer,
LARC-the Livermore Atomic Energy Research
Computer-was also the last and largest number grinder
to use decimal architecture. Built by Sperry-Rand,
LARC pushed the envelope with sheer size rather than
with technical innovation; it was considered an
investment in learning by its constructors.

IBM SAGE (1958 July US).-

One of the phenomenal artifacts of the cold war, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment
was nothing less than a network of linked mainframes to track hostile aircraft in real time
and direct the retaliation against them. A pentagon-sized budget paid for 54 computers-27
hot systems and 27 backups-in 27 huge but unobtrusive command centers scattered
throughout North America. The knowledge that IBM gained about core memory, real-time
control, networking, redundancy, uptime, and exotic interfaces (like light pens) was nearly
priceless. SAGE itself, was rendered obsolete by ballistic missiles before it was fully
deployed in 1963.

MIT TX-2 (1958 US).-

This roomful of transistors at Lincoln Labs, notable
for its power, was less remarkable for what it was
than for what it did: run Sketchpad, Ivan Sutherland's
pioneering interactive computer graphics program.
"You can't buy a system today that does all the things
that sketchpad could," Alan Kay said of it. "for a
small number of people... [it] was like seeing a
glimpse of heaven."

GE/Stanford Research Institute ERMA (1959 US).-

Manual preparation of bank statements used to be one of the
most labor-intensive desk jobs in American commerce. In
the mid-'50s Bank of America considered their options: they
could automate, or by 1960 they could try to hire about a
third of california's high school graduates. Choosing the
former got them the electronic recording method of
accounting-ERMA-an innovative system designed by SRI
around mainframes by General Electric. And ever since,
those odd, blocky numbers have adorned the bottom edge of
your cancelled checks.

5
 18/01/2019

IBM 7090 (709TX) (1959 November US).-

One of IBM's biggest and most calculated risks, the 709 transistor eXperimental represented a
clean break with vacuum tubes in favor of solid-state logic. As commercial scientific
mainframes, the 7090 and later the 7094 became artifacts of American culture, thanks to their
indelible association with the space program at Cape Canaveral.

IBM 7030 (STRETCH) (1961 April US).-

This computer was supercomputer with too
many "super" concepts. Slower than promised,
hugely more expensive than estimated, and
embarrassingly past deadline, the 7030 sold a
total of eight copies and cost the company
almost $40 million in excess of receipts. Only
later, monitoring the slow trickle-back of
advanced technology, did IBM realize that
STRETCH might have been a break-even if not
a blessing.

Ferranti Atlas (1962 UK).-

British computer innovation proceeded apace with Atlas, celebrated long afterward for its
invention of paged memory, and for the breathtakingly advanced operating system stored in a
cluster of ferrite rods modestly called "the hairbrush." Though some of this computer's
improvements were inordinately technical, it still influenced the design of dozens of systems
to come.

Burroughs B5000 (1963 US).-

So much was pioneered in the design of this computer:
multiprocessing, the ability to devote several processors
to a single task; multiprogramming, the ability to run
several programs at the same time; virtual memory; and
an operating system that was probably unsurpassed for a
decade. For all this, customers paid the price of
programming in ALGOL (a language IBM sneered at)
and a stiff penalty in raw speed, but the sheer elegance
of these machines made burroughs users unswervingly
loyal.

6
 18/01/2019

IBM SABRE (1964 US).-

As commercial aviation became a consumer phenomenon, airlines began drowning in the
manual paperwork needed to manage reservations. They cried out for a real-time mainframe
network, and only IBM-having built SAGE-had the expertise to supply one. American
airlines paid the price of half a dozen Boeing 707s but had little cause to regret its exposure
as a pioneer

IBM System/360 (1964 April US).-

IBM was nonetheless in deep trouble. The company had
grown so large that its strategic internal communications
were beginning to fail. Multiple incompatible lines of
computers cost a fortune to support and became less
attractive to prospective customers. It was time for IBM to
put muscle behind its existing strategy or put itself on a
comprehensively new course. Between 1961 and 1964, the
company manifested its new course by committing $5
billion dollars to the production and promotion of
System/360-the first line of mainframes, from smallest to
largest, with near-complete internal compatibility. IBM's
riskiest move ever, sometimes called the "greatest single
product introduction in American history," tripled the
number of IBM computers in use-and more than doubled
the company's revenues-in the next five years.

Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600 (1964

august US).-
CDC produced supercomputer designed by the
formidable Seymour Cray. With 350,000
transistors, its troubles were the stuff of legend,
and it was never easy to program; but in its time
it was the world's fastest computer.

IBM System/360 Model 67 (1965 august US).-

By 1965 the wave of the future was time-sharing, a computer's ability to respond, immediately
and interactively, to several users at once by doling out packets of processor cycles. We take
this for granted today, but when it was invented a generation ago, it was a major deal requiring
unprecedented engineering. Bell labs and several other Universities, including MIT, took up
time-sharing initiatives, writing their own operating systems for computers built by General
Electric and Honeywell. IBM, which recognized in the System/360 a platform easily powerful
enough for time-sharing, if the needed adaptation could be done. IBM produced a time-sharing
machine, the 360/67, and a matching operating system, TSS/360. As was usual with IBM, the
hardware and software were not quite the swiftest available, but the whole concept of time-
sharing was validated by IBM's attention.

7
 18/01/2019

Scientific Data Systems (SDS) 940 (1967 US).-

SDS in El Segundo, California, built mainframes, rugged and fiercely quick. Its top of the
line, the 940, included some of the most adept first-generation time-sharing hardware.
Designed, modified, and applied by great computing mavericks such as Butler Lampson, the
940 earned a place in computing history out of all proportion to the number produced.

CDC 7600 (1969 January US).-

Cray did it again with one of the most
uncompromising computers ever built-the
columnar, v-shaped, and completely modular
CDC 7600. This daunting device was so tricky
internally that although its clock rate was only
about four times that of the 6600 (Mhz) the 7600
was up to 30 times faster in computation.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory took
delivery of 7600 serial number 1 in 1969; it was
the fastest computer in the world for seven years.

IBM System/360 Model 85 (1969 December US).-

IBM took the fast cache memory concept a measured step further by installing separate caches
for instructions and data in the Model 85. If your desktop Computer today is anything newer
than a 386, it has both these caches, which make a giant difference in performance.

University of Illinois ILLIAC IV (1975 November

US).-
The era of massive parallelism was ushered in by the
last and greatest of the ILLIAC series. With 64
processors and a control system that could carry
intermediate results of a calculation from one
processor to the next, ILLIAC IV could perform 300
million operations a second-and was equipped with
main memory and disk space that comfortably
accommodated the most gargantuan real-world
problems. Like many other computers in this timeline,
ILLIAC IV influenced an entire generation of
hardware.

8
 18/01/2019

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) KL-10

(1975 US).-
The KL-10 was versatile almost to a fault. You could
ask it to work on something as exciting as artificial
intelligence, as colorful as movie graphics, or as dull
and exacting as network time service; it remained a
great computer that taught generations of
programmers.

Cray Research Cray 1 (1976 US).-

It consumed power like no other; certainly it was arduous to program. Still, down to the
migraine-inducing wiring mat and the tons of solid-copper circuit modules, this was the
world's fastest computer...for years. Speed was its only priority. Today, on the collector's
market, even a small piece of one changes hands for $100 or more, such is the reverence
accorded this strange and awe-inspiring machine.

Meiko Computing Surface (1985 June UK).-

The first computing surface was based on the transputer, a microprocessor specifically
designed to be linked to other microprocessors. Using a mesh of transputers, each with its
own on-chip memory, it's possible to have a computer-really a tightly coupled network of
computers-execute multiple instructions on several data items at the same time. Peak
speeds would seem to be confined by the need for dauntingly complex programmingg..

Thinking Machines Connection Machine (1985 June US).-

Vaguely off to one side of all other computer development,
the connection machine was a logical outcome of the need to
make the path from processor to memory as short as
possible. Desighed by Danny Hillis, these vast, cubes
covered with blinking lights each had as many as 64,000
processors, and in later versions, as few as 4,096. Each
processor was tightly coupled to its own memory. The
"hypercube" array architecture determined how many
processors and which ones would be put into play to suit the
data being manipulated.At times these boxes worked better
in principle than in practice; but their peak speeds under
ideal conditions were frightening. Even today, a connection
machine stands as a radical proof for parallelism.