“In 2011, the world is ten times more instrumented than it was in 2006. The number of Internet-connected devices has leapt from 500 million to 1 trillion. We create 15 petabytes of new data every day. Continue reading
Thirty years ago today, IBM announced the IBM Personal Computer, model 5150. The PC featured a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 CPU containing 29,000 transistors, 16KB RAM (64KB standard, expandable to 256KB), 40KB ROM, one or two Tandon brand 5.25-inch floppy drives (160KB capacity), a mono display, and an optional cassette drive. The base price was US$1,565 but a fully loaded version with color graphics retailed for US$6,000. Over 65,000 units were sold in the first four months. Continue reading
Today in 1876, Thomas Edison received a patent for a “method of preparing autographic stencils for printing.” The term “mimeograph” to describe this duplicating machine was first used by Albert Blake Dick when he licensed Edison’s patents in 1887.
Hillel Schwartz in The Culture of the Copy: “The revolution in copying, taken broadly, had begun in the 1920s, when copying was already in the air. In the airwaves–as the Radio Corporation of America in 1926 began transatlantic radio facsimile service for transmitting news photos. In the rarefied air of national libraries and archives–as the Library of Congress, British Library, and Bibliotheque Nationale used photostat cameras to acquire rare materials or create catalogs, and as scholars and curators microfilmed manuscripts for research or preservation. In the most rarefied air, out past Saturn, around that new planet, Pluto, located in 1930 near the star o-Geminorum, close upon the stars named Castor and Pollux–where the A. B. Dick Company of Chicago saw ‘NEW WORLDS TO CONQUER’ for their Mimeograph machine: ‘Anything that can be written, typewritten or drawn in line, it reproduces at the rate of thousands every hour.'” Continue reading
Sixty-five years ago today, the Subcommittee on Large-Scale Computing Devices (LCD) of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) was formed, evolving in 1963 into the IEEE.
Also today, in 1944, the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC)–also known as the Harvard Mark I–the largest electromechanical calculator ever built was officially presented to, and dedicated at, Harvard University. Continue reading
Photographer: Webb Chappell
Twenty years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee posted files to alt.hypertext, making the WorldWideWeb available to the Internet community. Berners-Lee message said, in part: “The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere… The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!” Continue reading
One way to look at the history of computer graphics is to look at eras, giving each era a name. For example, the middle 50’s to the early 60’s was the “beginnings” era. The early 60’s to the late 60’s was the “gee whiz, look what aerospace and automotive is doing” era. The late 60’s to the early 70’s was the “let’s form a new graphics company” era. And now, the middle to end of the 70’s is the “everybody into the pool” era.–Carl Machover, “A Brief, Personal History of Computer Graphics,” Computer, November 1978. Continue reading
Twenty years ago today, the first email message was sent from space to earth. The Houston Chronicle reported: Continue reading
The earliest known picture postcard was posted in London to the writer Theodore Hook in 1840. The hand-coloured card was addressed to “Theodore Hook Esq, Fulham”, a playwright and novelist noted at the time for his “wit and drollery”. It caricatures the postal service by showing post office “scribes” sitting around an enormous inkwell. Hook probably sent it to himself as a practical joke.
Today in 1790, the first enumeration of the 1790 U.S. Census began. Congress assigned responsibility for the 1790 census to the marshals of the U.S. judicial districts under an act that, with minor modifications and extensions, governed census-taking through 1840. Continue reading
“None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”–Thomas Edison, 1929 Continue reading
The Story of Information 