LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, USA -- August 12, 2006 marked the 25th anniversary
of the IBM 5150 PC (Personal Computer). See
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/1767.
At 21 pounds (without drives), the IBM 5150 PC wasn't much
fatter than the PCs of today. Under the hood, things looked a bit
different: 40KB of read-only memory and 16KB of RAM (upgradable to
256KB). You could configure the machine with one or two 160KB floppy
drives, but a jack for a cassette player was included. Users certainly
loved the "power-on automatic self-test of system
components" and "built-in speaker for musical
programming." And the keyboard (included) weighed six pounds. The
11.5-inch monochrome green or amber phosphor monitor, capable
of displaying 25 lines of text, weighed in at 17 lbs. While it
supported both upper- and lowercase characters, it could not display
any images.
Don't miss the article's "
personal
computer history" link. You will be amazed at when the
very first personal computer was built. Hint: it didn't do much
of anything.
PC World's article "
The
25 Greatest PCs of All Time" contains the magazine editors'
short stories of their nominations of the 25 greatest PCs of all
time. It also has their nominations of the 25 near-greatest PCs.
Last month I was off-line for a week after my hard drive failed.
After checking into buying one of various used computers for
$100 to $150, I took advantage of a CompUSA sale and bought an
eMachines T3506 for $200. It has a 3.2 gigahertz processor,
512 Mb of RAM, a 120-gigabyte hard drive, and a DVD read only/CD R-W
drive. It also comes with two speakers, mouse, and keyboard.
I am very much in awe at buying so much computer for only $200.
My Personal Journey Through Silicon Valley
From 1968 to 1974, I worked for Control Data as a technical writer in
its Special Systems Division which built special-purpose hardware and
software. Some of the systems we built were very elaborate such as a
$13.5 million hybrid analog/digital system for the Naval Air
Development Center in Philadelphia.
I got to thinking about comparing the eMachines T3506 with
the CDC 6600 supercomputer which entered the market in 1964 or
so. Its largest configuration of 131K of 60-bit memory was
the shape of the plus sign. Each of its four wings was about
the size of two or three refrigerators. With peripherals it
cost well over $5 million. In today's money, that's
about $30 million? Its speed was a stunning (for the time) three
megahertz. Ultimately Control Data sold over 100 of the 6600
model supercomputers at about $7-10 million each, depending on
options. For more on this remarkable machine see
http://www.ddj.com/184404102.
The CDC 6600's disk drive was a really noisy contraption about
the size of a line of four refrigerators with two stacks
each of a dozen yard-wide disks. I had to call Ed Thelen, a
former CDC programmer, to find out that the disk drive's
capacity was 500 megabytes - somewhat less than the 120 gigabytes
that is common today. I think the old movie, Colossus - the Forbin
Project, shows the disk drive and a CDC 3600 mainframe encased in blue
glass.
The museum also has a CDC 160A (the first computer of that company's
line, a 15-megahertz room-sized CDC 7600 costing
$9,000,000), a Cray 1, Cray 2, and a Cray 3. The contents of
what used to be Boston's Computer Museum was brought into their
museum.
I remember hearing that after designing the CDC 7600, Seymour Cray,
Control Data's chief computer architect, wasn't going to build
any more small computers. The rule of thumb was each new computer
designed by Cray would offer four times as much performance for twice
the cost of the previous computer. The 7600 offered five times as much
as the 6600 for twice the cost. However, what was to have
been the 8600 ran into a "technical" problem.
When Cray decided on another design, Control Data's management put
their collective foot down and blocked Cray from spending any
more money. That's why Cray left Control Data to form Cray
Research. That rejected design became the Cray 1 computer. It was
followed by the Cray 2 and Cray 3. I suspect Cray was designing a Cray
4 when he died in an SUV rollover. Seymour Cray was a true
genius.
Control Data's other chief computer architect Jim Thornton designed
the STAR-100 (STring ARray) supercomputer. The US Government
seriously investigated using the STAR 100 for shooting down
ICBMs. Although introduced commercially in 1974, its performance was
somewhat below expectations and it was superseded by the Cray 1. (
Ref.)
Before moving to Las Vegas in 1986 to work for EG&G Special
Projects, I worked in Silicon Valley for a total of 17
computer companies. Twice I was with Ampex -- once in its
computer division, and once in its television division where I spent a
year and a half writing the three-inch-thick book on what was
then the world's most complicated TV camera (used by ABC during the
1980 Winter Olympics).
Part of my resume touches on computer history
Feb 1968 - Oct 1974.
Control Data Corporation, Sunnyvale, CA. As Engineer
Writer, I wrote manuals for hybrid analog/digital computer linkages,
peripheral controllers, dual extended core storage controllers, I/O
channel interfaces and switches, mainframe modifications, etc.
"Cost-estimated and scheduled manuals. Trained new hardware
writers. Developed format changes and new special hardware manual
standard. Demonstrated ability to detect logic design errors. Found
numerous errors in three projects and detected an error in three
others which had escaped complete checkout."
One such error required replacing 12 printed-circuit cards. (This
happened during my first job after graduating from the University of
Wisconsin's electrical engineering school in Madison, Wisconsin.
I had been interviewed and had
received an offer to work for Univac somewhere in the
Twin Cities. That job with Univac would have been to check out Univac
1108s for United Airlines' ticket reservation system. The Univac 1108
was a very noisy air-cooled computer. This was during
the winter, and that computer room was very cold, with people
walking around in jackets. Therefore, I picked Control
Data's technical writing job because its office was literally the
warmer of the two work sites! I
worked with Control Data for over a year in Arden Hills
north of St. Paul, Minnesota, and later moved with Control
Data's Special Systems Division to Sunnyvale in summer 1969. With
experience gained, I figured out that I would have found
technical writing more interesting and more suited to my
talents anyway.)
Oct 1975 - Nov 1975. Ford Aerospace Corporation, Palo Alto,
CA
. As Senior Publications Engineer, wrote computer channel interface
theory to military specifications. (Ford Aerospace designed
and built the very large US Government-owned network
of radars, communication links, and computers which tracks the
satellites whizzing around the globe.
One of the network's tasks was and still is to check
whether each satellite coming in over the
horizon is just another known satellite, or is it a brand new
unknown ICBM warhead secretly launched from Russia as the
beginning of World War III? What if the network just
had a computer error and mistakenly indicates an attack is
underway?!!! (I have read over the years about some scary close
calls, the ones we publicly hear about anyway! Mutually Assured
Destruction truly deserves its acronym MAD.)
Coincidentally, the device I was writing about was
just downstream from a very familiar Control Data
1604 computer channel. Ford Aerospace was my first and
intentionally last exposure to aerospace military work. However the
office was so crowded and cheap and noisy and the redtape I had to
put up with was so bothersome that after six weeks I
jumped to another company, Moore Systems, at my first
opportunity.)
Nov 1975 - June 1976.
Moore
Systems,
Sunnyvale
,
CA
. As Associate Engineer, documented supervisory control and data
acquisition systems. Wrote manual for pulse output unit. (Moore was
later bought by Landis and Gyr, a European company in the electric
power business. I believe Moore Systems was a pioneer in using
computers for monitoring and controlling over telephone
lines unmanned remote devices such as radio and TV
transmitters.)
Sept 1976 - May 1977. Amcomp,
Sunnyvale
,
CA
. As Senior Technical Writer, wrote field service notes for tape and
disk drives and manual for disk drive test unit. (I believe Amcomp
was an early manufacturer of tape and disk drives for
mini-computers such as Digital Equipment Corporation's mini-computers.
While I was there, Amcomp was bought by another company whose name I
can't remember.)
Oct 1977 - Jan 1978. Ampex
Corporation,
Redwood City
,
CA
. As Senior Technical Writer, revised tape transport manual to
military specifications. (I worked for Bob Driscoll who was an
engineer with Control Data Corporation's Special Systems Division.
Coincidentally when both of us were working for Control Data,
I wrote at least one manual for Bob's machines. The computer
industry in the 1970's was still kind of small with relatively few
companies. The tape transport was a very complicated magnetic tape
drive specially built for Boeing's AWACS plane.)
During Silicon Valley's early
years, Bank of America played a crucial role with
its unusually liberal lending policies for startup
companies. One of my friends worked as an engineer for Versatec
which was initially financed by Bank of America. Versatec
made digital plotters.
In fact my
friend scanned a few of the thousands of slides I
had taken on my hiking trips to 125 national parks and wilderness
areas plus dozens of state parks. I have a 3 x
4-footer mounted on the wall by my computer. It shows some people
frolikcing in the ocean behind some rocks at the bottom end of Maui's
Seven Pools. What is so striking about photo plots versus ordinary
photograph blowups is their three-dimensional depth.
I can't remember which year it
was except it was during the late 1970's. I worked for a few days for
a PC startup called Processor Technologies. I can't remember if I was
fired or quit. But I do remember that Bank of America had funded
the startup of a few companies like Apple that wanted to make and sell
small computers. Then the bank took a second look at them,
and pulled the plug on Processor Technologies and maybe a
few other startups.
Sept 1979 - Jan 1979. Verbatim
Corporation,
Sunnyvale
,
CA
. As Senior Technical Writer, wrote flexible diskette certifier manual
with magnetic recording and operational amplifiers. (This machine was
an in-house device for ensuring that manufactured disks were OK.
What I believe is historical about this time was that
Verbatim was one of the very first companies ever to
advertise on television a computer-related product. I remember being
startled to see their TV commercials. Gosh! Computers are
becoming a consumer product!)
Jan 1979 - March 1979. Ramtek Corporation,
Sunnyvale
,
CA
. As Senior Technical Writer, wrote Interdata CPU/graphic display
interface manual. (I believe Ramtek was one of the earlier
manufacturers of graphics-oriented computer monitors. My
supervisor was Mike Masters. He and I had previously worked
together at Control Data and Amcomp. When I had finished at Verbatim,
it was too early to go camping and hiking for the summer. So I
called Mike to see if he had a small project for me. He gave me this
machine on which to write a manual.)
Oct 1979 - May 1981. Ampex Corporation,
Redwood City
,
CA
. As Senior Technical Writer, was principal author of theory of
operation for commercial broadcast color television camera. Wrote
video signal generating, video signal processing, auto centering,
power supply, controls, etc. Revised operator's manual and maintenance
procedures. (Most of the circuits I wrote about were analog circuits.
There was an occasion where I had a cluster of logic
circuits for which I couldn't quickly deduce which combination of
possible outputs it generated. I simply got a technician to look at
them with an oscilloscope and tell me what they did for various input
combinations. Nowadays, television circuitry is highly digital
and compact.)
Sept 1982 - Nov 1982. Mohawk
Data Sciences,
Los Gatos
,
CA
. As Senior Technical Writer, wrote circuit descriptions of
microprocessor-based telecommunications products. (When I first
started writing hardware manuals for Control Data Corporation, I
had to explain parity error checker circuits logic gate by logic
gate. Later the company simply bought parity error checkers on a
single integrated circuit. Mohawk was the first company where I wrote
about
machines incorporating
entire microprocessors on a single integrated circuit.)
Jan 1983 - March 1983. Timex Corporation,
Cupertino
,
CA
. As Senior Technical Writer, wrote part of internal hardware manual
on Timex 2000 computer. (The Timex 2000 was intended to be a $199
successor to the book-sized $99 Timex 1000 computer. The
Timex 1000 used a regular TV as its monitor. I played with the Timex
1000 once to see what it is like. Rather useless, I recall.
Partly due to a difficult, less than organized move from
Cupertino to Waterbury, Connecticut, Timex's headquarters, the Timex
2000 never made it to market. Part of Timex's Cupertino facility was
used for designing watches. I remember seeing quite a few watch
face designs on large sheets of paper.
While I was working for Timex, Apple Computer's headquarters was
located literally on the other side of the Timex facility's back
wall. I remember seeing Apple having a big fancy party in
its parking lot celebrating its fifth anniversary. Apple Computer
was the first company in history to grow from startup to $1 billion
in sales in five years.
I later heard while interviewing at another company the secret to
Apple's exceptionally fast growth without falling apart
and killing itself. Many of their people were
intentionally vastly over-qualified for their initial jobs. Thus
they were able to competently handle their responsibilities
as their departments under them grew so fast.)
Sept 1983 - April 1984. Amdahl
Corporation,
Sunnyvale
,
CA
. As Senior Technical Writer, wrote part of Amdahl 580 mainframe
power distribution system manual. (The 580 was superfast
plug-compatible with a top-of-the-line IBM mainframe. Amdahl
was later bought by Toshiba, I believe. From the very smallest
commercial computer, the $199 Timex 2000, on my very next
job, I had switched over to the very largest computer, the
multi-million-dollar Amdahl 580 mainframe computer.
The 580 was such a
monster that starting it required first booting up a small
computer. That small computer was then used to start up
the console's own computer. Then the console was used to start up
the mainframe computer itself. Yet both the Timex and Amdahl
computers are made with the same basic simple logic
circuits - AND, OR, and NOT.)
Oct 1984 - July 1985; Dec 1985 - March 1986. Hewlett-Packard
Company,
Cupertino
,
CA
. As Technical Writing Consultant, wrote hardware manuals for
Operator Interface Units and Vehicle Interface Units which test
electrical and electronic assemblies on GM luxury car assembly line.
Hired back December 1985 to write software user's manuals and other
miscellaneous documents. (Up to about this time H-P made and
sold laboratory instruments, calculators, and commercial computers.
H-P also made some test equipments for manufacturers.
GM had built a brand new plant in Hamtramck, a run-down suburb of
Detroit, for assembling GM's four 1986 models of luxury
cars - the Oldsmobile Tornado, Buick Rivera (with a TV monitor
in the dashboard to display information such as engine temperature),
and two Cadillac models. These were the first
computerized GM cars with five or six microprocessors
each.
GM contracted with H-P to design and build for the Hamtramck plant a
$30 million system for testing electrical and electronic components
along a car assembly line. Up to that year, mechanics only had to
tune engines with relatively simple procedures and equipment.
I remember talking with the H-P engineers about how can we
realistically expect hundreds of thousands of auto mechanics to
suddenly become knowledgeable computer technicians? I suspect GM
secretly incorporated computers partly in order to
bring into its dealerships a higher percentage of
profitable car and truck repair business. The movie Who
Killed the Electric Car? claims that parts and repair sales provide
40% of the total profit on each vehicle GM sells.)
I quit H-P in spring 1986 to
move to Las Vegas and settle down and work full-time with EG&G
Special Projects where I worked until 1991 on custom radar
systems and a couple of other classified projects. I had a Top
Secret with Special Background Investigation security
clearance.
Because of computer
industry and technical changes, one reason I moved to Las Vegas was
that it was becoming more difficult for me to quickly get
a new technical writing job in the fall after camping and hiking all
summer. The good old days of Silicon Valley were beginning to fade
away. Today many Silicon Valley engineers and programmers are
either retired, unemployed, or working in non-engineering fields
such as retail stores.
Torsion
Field Future
A unique
personal perception of computer evolution was that from my
college days to around 1990, I had a hobby designing a
revolutionary educational system. When I was still in
electrical engineering school, one of my electrical engineering
professors, John Asmuth, chided me. He couldn't see each school
having its own computer! Today each student can have his
or her own computer, which still amazes me. In fact Thailand's
government just announced it plans to give each of its millions of
elementary school students, rather than books, a free $100
laptop computer that uses a flash memory instead of
a disk drive. The electricity will be provided by an
outboard electricity generator that is pumped by hand. (Ref.)
For a description of what I
have dreamed up, see below from www.iiic.de.
Interestingly, I couldn't see
computers being mature enough to handle the extreme demands of my
school network design until at least the late 1990's.
In my current school
network design, I propose replacing the fiber optic cables
connecting the schools with torsion field communications links. The
theoretical maximum capacity of torsion field communications
is 40 billion channels of three-dimensional holographic
television through the entire earth without attenuation at a speed
of one billion times faster than the speed of light. I happen
to be the inventor of a major advance in torsion field
communications which is part of the first ever torsion field
communications patent application. So now I call my
brainchild a "torsion field school network".
Fiber optic Network of Computerized Segmented
Courses
A school network's three-layer computer system would comprise of a
network coordinating and scheduling computer as the top layer, an
administrative computer in each school as the middle layer, and
personal computers as the bottom layer.
The network's customized software would include network
management and coordinating functions for the system manager, two
layers of software for the teachers to support 100 different
functions, and 25 different functions for the students, only one of
which is computer-assisted instruction. Each personal computer would
have a monitor capable of also displaying telecast or recorded classes
hopefully in three-dimensional holographic television.
All
the schools in each larger city would be linked into a single network
via fiber optic cable. The typically huge scale of a school network
would economically justify the simultaneous teaching in parallel of
all week-long segments of each course year round with no seasonal
constraints. The school networks average cost may exceed
$100,000,000. Development costs may exceed $10,000,000.
Segmented
courses would still include the standard features of conventional
courses such as classes, graded examinations, and academic load
standards. Short quizzes on each segment with pass/fail grading would
provide quality control. Other nonstandard features of segmented
courses include modified versions of the project management tools PERT
and CPM, unique statistical techniques for selecting series of two or
three local/televised classes for weekly scheduling, nearly unlimited
self-pacing, student interest groups, and optimum utilization of the
superlearning technique. Copies of a somewhat obsolete 180-page
detailed description are available.
Gary Vesperman with his cat in the
fall of 2005. |
Today I am no longer in technical writing. I work part-time in Las
Vegas setting up or tearing down conventions as a Teamsters Union
Local 631 Convention Journeyman. It has its pluses such as needed
exercise away from my computer and complete scheduling flexibility.
Las Vegas conventions can be as large as well over 100,000 attendees.
I have worked on conventions of numerous kinds of industries..
The rest of the time I research and write about non-mainstream science
and revolutionary inventions. Having written about two dozen IPOs for
startup companies, I also occasionally help startup companies with
their business plans, etc.
I hope you enjoyed taking my little computer history tour.
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