CS 185C: The History of Computing August 24 Class Meeting Department of Computer Science San Jose State University Fall 2011 Instructor: Ron Mak

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 2 Goals of the Course  Work on projects relating to computing history. 1- or 2-student project teams. Work with computing pioneers and industry luminaries. Learn from the past in order to improve on the present and the future.  Attend talks by famous computer scientists. Be inspired by their experiences.  Publish on the IEEE Global History Network website. Expose your research to worldwide experts for advice and guidance. Link to your IEEE project report from your resumes.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 3 Course Notes  Class website Green sheet Lecture notes and handouts  Required textbook: A History of Modern Computing, 2nd edition Provides good historical context. Guest lectures will not be in chronological order.  Recommended textbook: Writing History: A Guide for Students, 3rd edition

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 4 Procedures  Most of the guest lectures in the Engineering Auditorium ENGR 189 will be on Wednesdays. Turn in a short essay (3-4 paragraphs, at most 1 page) discussing your personal opinions of the talk  What did you think of the speaker?  What insights did you get from the talk?  How can you apply what you learned in your work today?  etc.  Mondays in class Discuss the speakers and their topics. Oral status reports of your projects.  Participating in class and attending the talks are critical!

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 5 Projects  Each team works throughout the semester on a project related to computing history. Project depends on students’ interest (with instructor consent).  Select and connect with suitable advisors.  Research primary (original) sources. Interview the original designers and developers. Read books, articles, and websites written by the original designers and developers. Research historic artifacts in the archives of the Computer History Museum. etc.  Reference secondary sources. Books, articles, websites, etc.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 6 Some Project Ideas  Restore a historic hardware or software artifact.  Create a software simulation of a legendary computer architecture.  Study the evolution of a specific hardware or software technology, including key decision points, controversies, politics, etc.  Chronicle the early history and legacy of a pioneering computing company or organization such as Control Data Corporation, Burroughs Corporation, Wang Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, Zilog, Xerox PARC, and others.  Investigate past programming languages and demonstrate their influences on today's languages and programming paradigms.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 7 More Project Ideas  Trace the advancement of business or scientific data processing applications over the decades as application requirements and computing technologies evolved.  Study the impact of computing on society from the punched-card culture to the Web and social networking.  Collect, analyze, categorize, and index original software, documentation, and other artifacts related to a particular technology.  Interview industry pioneers and videotape and record their oral histories. ... etc.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 8 Publish on the IEEE Website  Each project team posts to the IEEE Global History Network website. Each student will get an account  Edit only your project’s wiki  Read everybody else’s wiki Post drafts, blogs, final reports, etc. Get early exposure to experts worldwide  Receive comments, criticisms, advice, research guidance  You will be able to link to your project report. Add to your list of published works. The IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is a well-known and highly respected professional organization with over 400,000 members worldwide in over 160 countries.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 9 Writing Center  San Jose State University Writing Center One-on-one tutoring sessions to improve your writing.  Highly recommended if you’re unsure about the quality of your writing. Whatever you post to the IEEE website will be seen worldwide! _

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 10 Individual Student’s Overall Class Grade  33% attend talks, write weekly essays [individual]  33% quality of your research [team]  34% quality of your final deliverable [team]  Quality of your research What were your primary and secondary resources? Whom did you interview? What questions did you ask? How well did you solicit and respond to criticism and advice? etc. ``  Final individual class letter grade will be based on the class curve.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 11 TAKE ROLL!

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 12 Unofficial Field Trip  Computer History Museum in Mt. View  Saturday, August 27 at 10:30  Experience a fully restored IBM 1401 mainframe computer system from the early 1960s in operation. General info: Restoration: thelen.org/1401Project/1401RestorationPage.htmlhttp://ed- thelen.org/1401Project/1401RestorationPage.html  See a life-size working model of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine in operation, a hand-cranked mechanical computer designed in the early 1800s.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 13 Unofficial Field Trip, cont’d  IBM 1401 computer system, fully restored and operational A small transistor-based mainframe computer. Extremely popular with small businesses in the late 1950s through the mid 1960s  Maximum of 16K bytes of memory.  800 card/minute card reader (wire brushes).  600 line/minute line printer (impact).  6 magnetic tape drives, no disk drives.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 14 Unofficial Field Trip, cont’d  Babbage Difference Engine, fully operational Hand-cranked mechanical computer. Computed polynomial functions. Designed by Charles Babbage in the early to mid 1800s.  Arguably the world’s first computer scientist, lived He wasn’t able to build it because he lost his funding.  His plans survived and this working model was built. Includes a working printer!

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 15 Unofficial Field Trip, cont’d  The new Revolution exhibit is now open! Walk through a timeline of the First 2000 Years of Computing History. Historic computer systems, data processing equipment, and other artifacts. Small theatre presentations. Atanasoff-Berry Computer Hollerith Census Machine

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 16 Unofficial Field Trip, cont’d Study the exhibits. Think of project ideas.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 17 What was the IBM 1401? A “small scale” computer system developed by IBM in the late 1950s CPU1402 Card Read Punch1403 Line Printer729 Tape Drive1407 Console

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 18 What was Computing Like Before the 1401?  Business data processing involved applications that manipulated data records: Inventory Billing and receivables Payroll

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 19 What was Computing Like Before the 1401?  Data was stored in punched cards called “IBM cards” or “Hollerith cards” Named after Herman Hollerith.  80 columns per card, one character per column.  Up to 12 punched holes per column.  Alphanumeric data, often grouped into fields.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 20 Punched Cards  Punched cards used the Hollerith code. Rows 0-9 were numeric punches The topmost row was row 12 and the second row was 11. Rows 12, 11, and 0 were zone punches.  Examples: CharPunch 3 3 A 12-1 M 11-4 S 0-2 $

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 21 What was Computing Like Before the 1401?  A data processing application involved passing decks of punched cards through electromechanical “unit record” machines.  Repetitive sort, calculate, collate, and tabulate operations were programmed with hand-wired plugboard control panels.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 22 Plugboard Control Panel IBM 407 Accounting Machine (1949)

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 23 Plugboard Control Panel

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 24 Programming a Plugboard “Hmm, should I pass this parameter by value or by reference?”  “Programming” was hand-wiring plugboards.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 25 Programming a Plugboard  Plugboard wiring diagram It doesn’t look too complicated, does it?

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 26 Data Processing  Data processing was all about punched cards.  My school compiler project: 3½ boxes of punched cards Each box = 2000 cards, 10 lbs.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 27 Data Processing

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 28 Data Processing  Cards were punched manually at a keypunch machine. Or they were punched automatically by unit-record equipment under program control.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 29 Data Processing  Cards were re-keyed on a verifier to ensure accuracy. Good cards were notched at the top right edge. Bad cards were notched at the top edge above each erroneous column.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 30 Data Processing  A sorter sorted cards one column at a time. You had to run decks of cards multiple times through a sorter.  Accounting machines performed arithmetic on card fields and printed reports.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 31 Data Processing  Reproducers made copies of card decks.  Tabulators were accounting machines: simple arithmetic plus printing.  Interpreters read cards and printed information on the cards.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 32 Data Processing  Gang punching: Automatically punch multiple cards from the contents of a single card.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 33 Data Processing  A collator compared and merged decks of punched cards.

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 34 Running a Data Processing Application... ... meant passing decks of cards through a sequence of unit-record machines. Each machine was programmed via its plugboard to perform its task for the application. Each machine had little or no memory. The punched cards stored the data records The data records moved as the cards moved. An entire work culture evolved around punched cards!

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 35 How did the IBM 1401 change all that?

SJSU Dept. of Computer Science Fall 2011: August 24 CS 185C: This History of Computing © R. Mak 36 IBM 1401 Innovations  One of IBM’s first all-transistor computers. Earlier machines used vacuum tubes.  Used magnetic core memory instead of a plugboard.  A new instruction set.  An inexpensive stored-program computer.