Sunday, February 28, 2010

Some Interesting Facts from the Computer History Museum









In 1939 David Packard and Bill Hewlett founded Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California. Today we know the company as HP and most of us own at least one piece of equipment manufactured by Hewlett-Packard. Walt Disney Pictures used eight of Hewlett-Packard’s computers for the sound effects in the 1940 movie ‘Fantasia’.


In 1941 a computer called ‘Bombe’ was completed by the British and used during World War II to decode Nazi encrypted messages, which was a great advantage to the Allied war efforts.


In 1944 a computer named ‘Colossus’ was put into operation to decipher Nazi coded transmissions. The Colossus reduced the time it took to decipher the code from weeks to hours and this computer was kept secret until the 1970’s.


In 1945 on September 9th, the very first computer bug was documented – and it was an actual bug, a moth flew into the Harvard Mark II and temporarily interrupted operation of the massive computer.

In 1947 the first transistor was tested and after improvements by AT&T Bell Labs, the transistor went on to revolutionize computing.

http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline

1 comment:

  1. I think the history of computers is interesting. I already started reading Bill Gates book the road ahead. The time and energy these computer techs have spend on improving and distributing and selling them, seems almost effortless and timeless. Even though, I am not computer savvy, it is just amazing to learn about it and at least try to understand the computer language.
    Art of Computers Past: By the mid-1960s, most individuals involved in the creation of computer art were in fact engineers and scientists because they had access to the only computing resources available at university scientific research labs. Many artists tentatively began to explore the emerging computing technology for use as a creative tool. In the summer of 1962, Dr. A. Michael Noll programmed a digital computer at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey to generate visual patterns solely for artistic purposes .
    Society and Computers: Computers are used almost in every aspect of humans’ lives. Almost anything you know is run or made by computers. Cars and jets were designed on computers, traffic signals are run by computers, most medical equipment use computers and space exploration was started with computers. Most of the jobs today require the use of computers. These 'mechanical brains' made a huge impact on our society. It would be hard if we didn't have the computer around.
    Scientists are constantly trying to figure out how to improve all areas computers or chips can be used. Scientists need the help of computers to find cures for diseases that need cures like cancer and STDs. Without the computers help, cures for a lot of diseases woudn't have been found. Computer helped the medical area a lot and we are greatful for that since they keep track of our health. Other areas the computer impacted on is space exploration and designs of transportation.
    ~Stacey ~ The court of Hearts

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