PART 4: TRANSISTORS - THE NEXT GENERATION

 

The vacuum tube, invented by Lee DeForest in 1906, was used in nearly every early electronic computer. but tubes were inefficient, took up a lot of room, and generated a lot of heat. Several thousand of them generated a lot of heat that required large, expensive cooling systems. Bell Labs had begun research into transistors, also referred to as semiconductors, in 1945. Three of Bell's physicists, William Shocklely, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain, created the first transistor <<PIC>> on December 23rd, 1947. By the way, this date is an important bit of trivia, because most reference books give the date of the invention of the transistor as 1948. The discrepancy is because Shockley, Brattain and Bardeen took their Christmas holidays before they published the results of their discovery. They continued to work on the transistor and improve it, and by the early fifties it was being used instead of vacuum tubes.

The new transistors were simple, efficient and cool. The only drawback was that they were tiny, and soldering hundreds or thousands of them onto a circuit board was tricky work that left a lot of room for error. This problem was solved in 1958 by Jack St.Clair Kilby at Texas Instruments when he invented the first integrated circuit (IC) <<PIC>> , now commonly called a microchip or just plain chip. A chip is basically a bunch of transistors that are connected together when the chip is manufactured. They're also called microprocessors, particularly when referring to modern, complex chips. This may seem a bit confusing to non-geeks, but don't worry about it - call them all chips and you're safe. The following year, two Swiss physicists, Jean Hoerni and Robert Noyce improved on Kilby's idea, and in 1961, Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments announced the first commercially available integrated circuits.

Before we move on to the next phase of computer history, there are a few more items of geek trivia that you should know about. In 1955, the ENIAC was decommissioned at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and they pulled the plug. In 1957, one of the first transistor computers, the Atlas Guidance Computer, was used to control the launch of the Atlas missile. '57 was also the year that IBM introduced the RAMAC, the first rotating disk memory storage. This device held a whopping 5 megabytes of data and cost over $500,000. By comparison, a 500 megabyte disk drive costs less than $100 today.

The first commercially produced transistor computers, the Philco S-2000 and the UNIVAC Solid State 80, were introduced in 1958, and in the last year of the decade, the Harvard Mark I was shut down.

The new decade got off to a bang when the Digital Equipment Corporation introduced the PDP-1, the first computer that came equipped with a keyboard and a monitor, priced at a mere $120,000. Until then, instructions and information were entered by punched cards, paper tape, or switches. But the big geek event of 1960 was DEC's introduction of the PDP-8 <<PIC>> , the first mass-produced mini-computer. While the PDP-8 was referred to as a "mini" computer, it was almost as big as a refrigerator, but at a price of only $20,000, it marked the first time that a computer was within reach of a private individual - at least a seriously geeky individual with a lot of spare cash. Ken Olson, founder of DEC wasn't thinking about the concept of a personal computer when he came up with the PDP-8. It was aimed at scientists, research institutions and small businesses.

1960 is also notable in the annals of geekdom for being the year that IBM introduced its System 360 <<PIC>> , a computer that was to become one of the world's most popular computers for businesses and educational institutions. But, aside from the military, big businesses and universities were the only places that computers were used. They crunched numbers, they processed data, and their prices started with six figures.

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made the observation that each new integrated circuit design contained roughly twice as much capacity as its predecessor, and each chip was released within 18-24 months of the previous chip. He concluded that, if the trend continued, computing

power would rise exponentially with time. His theory became known as Moore's Law, and it has proven consistently true over the past twenty years. For the next 10 years or so, computer development followed Moore's Law in a steady progression of faster, smaller, cheaper, but computers were still huge machines, with price tags that put them well beyond the means of an individual. A few hard core geeks attempted to build their own simple computers, but the average person had never even seen a computer, and the whole ominous business was a thing of mystery. For most of us, the first time we actually saw a computer in action was in 1970, when the first Automatic Teller Machines were installed. Not many of us saw them, though, for it would be several years until they were found outside major metropolitan areas. These first ATM machines were wired only to the mainframe computer of the specific bank at which they were installed. It wasn't until 1973 that they were networked to other ATMs.

Until the late sixties, programs or software was something that was specific to each computer. It was either written for the particular application of the computer, or supplied with the computer by the manufacturer, but in 1968, IBM began to "unbundle" it's software - that is, to sell its software separately from its computers. This was the beginning of the commercial software industry and geeks began to independently write software either for a specific need or to cash in on this growing industry.

The last event of major geek significance for the sixties was the development of the Unix operating system by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories in 1969. You don't really want a long explanation of what it is and how it works, but you should know that it's still the system of choice for hard-core geeks and it's the only operating system that will work on anything from a laptop PC to a supercomputer. Bell Labs had been working for several years on developing an operating system for their computers. They collaborated with General Electric and MIT to develop a general purpose multi-user operating system they called MULTICS - MULTIplexed operating and Computing System. Problem was, nobody could agree on what it was supposed to do, and early in '69 Bell Labs got disgusted with the GE and MIT bozos and threw in the towel. Ken and Dennis still needed an operating system for their work, so they talked Bell into letting them play with a PDP-7 and see if they could come up with something. Before the year was over, they had a working operating system they called UNICS or UNIplexed operating and Computing System. The name was a pun on MULTICS, but you've got to be a serious geek to find it as amusing as they did. Bell Labs was tickled pink and began to throw some serious effort behind its further development. By 1976 they had it down and released it for use outside their own facilities, now calling it UNIX. Universities and research facilities jumped on it with big dog enthusiasm and the rest is history - which is what we're discussing here, so let's get on with it.

1971 is fondly remembered by geeks for being the year that Nolan Bushnell invented the computer game "Pong". It became wildly popular, going beyond geek gamers and introducing thousands of kids to their first computer gaming experience. Bushnell wasn't the first to create videogames, but he made them affordable and brought them to the non-geek masses.

While most geeks still couldn't have their own computer, they could now get their sweaty hands on the next best thing, because Hewlett-Packard introduced the first pocket calculator, the HP-35, in July, 1972. It sold for $395 and wasn't as powerful as the $10 calculators you can get now in any drugstore, but it was the hit of the pocket protector set. Texas Instruments soon brought out their own pocket calculator, the TI-2500, for only $170, and suddenly the slide rule was passe and the shirt-pocket caclulator was the new badge of geek identity. Dozens of manufacturers jumped into this new market and the slide rule was history in only two years. Keuffel & Esser manufactured their last one in 1975.

1972 was also the year that a technology writer named Don Hoeffler coined the term "Silicon Valley" for the 25 mile long Santa Clara Valley south of San Francisco that was home to many of the early computer and microprocessor companies. You'll find out how it all came about in the first part of the chapter on high-tech companies.