Computer History
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Do you know that the first computers were people? You may get a shock when you read this, as much as I did. "Computer" was originally a job title, used to describe those people (predominantly women) whose job it was to perform repetitive calculations. These jobs were eventually taken over by machines and that's how those machines got their name. Ironically, if you were to call someone "a computer" today, he will be insulted, although he should feel elated instead.
The rate of change in the field of computer technology is indeed mind-boggling. In 2002, I bought a Fuji FinePix camera and guess what? The xD Picture Card that came with it was only 16 Mb! What can you do with 16 Mb these days? Shoot 10 photos?
The rate of technological development in the field of computer technology is indeed dizzying. But how many of us know that the innovation of the integrated circuit was originally spurred by the Space Race which began on 4 October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite into orbit. This had led John F. Kennedy to institute a national goal to reach the Moon before the end of the 1960s to reaffirm America's position as the dominant world power. The search for the essential piece of technology to enable the Apollo rocket to be as lightweight as possible to attain the speed necessary to depart from the Earth atmosphere and orbit was what led to the development of the integrated circuit. And combining the integrated circuit with electronic components into a more efficient and compact technological device eventually led to its ubiquitous applications in consumer communications technology, as well as to the globalization of modern society, in the second half of the 20th century.
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Yet, the integrated circuit did not immediately catch on in the consumer industry because people then did not see a need for personal electronic devices until Texas Instruments came up with the brilliant idea of putting digital electronics into a product that people would go down to the store and buy, such as the electronic calculator, and showed people that they would benefit from this technology.
The successful application of the microprocessor in household electronic devices subsequently induced a vast expansion in the consumer industry and in a new-found social desire to improve life through technology. This need for personal electronics, in turn, led to the rapid development of the microcomputer throughout the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in an extraordinary reduction in the price of computer technology that was predicted by Moore's Law. Since Gordon Moore's forecast in 1965, which states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every 18 months, integrated circuit technology has grown from chips of 2,300 transistors to over 1 billion.
Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades. This exponential improvement has dramatically enhanced the impact of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy. What is newly launched today will be relegated and consigned to computer history 2-3 years' down the road. The survival of companies that fail to adapt will inevitably be threatened, just as we have seen Kodak, one of the most well-known US companies of the 20th century, grappling with Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
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