History of Computing:
From The Greeks To
Autonomous Robots
Class 6
Getting Out There
Wednesdays 1:15 – 2:30 PM
September 10, 17, 24, October 8, 15, 22, & 29
(no class October 1)
John F. [email protected]
AIM, Google Talk, Skype – johnmac13;
Facebook – John F. McMullen (or search on my e-mail)
Visionaries
• Alan Turning – defined what a computer
should do before there were computers
• Vannevar Bush – “As We May Think”
• Alan Kay
• Paul Allen & Bill Gates – “A computer in every
home and office running Micro-Soft software”
(before microcomputers could really do
anything)
• Steve Jobs
Alan Kay
• Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) is an American
computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on
object-oriented programming and windowing graphical
user interface design, and for coining the phrase, "The best
way to predict the future is to invent it."
• He is the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute,
and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the
University of California, Los Angeles. He is also on the
advisory board of TTI/Vanguard. Until mid 2005, he was a
Senior Fellow at HP Labs, a Visiting Professor at Kyoto
University, and an Adjunct Professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT)
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay)
Dynabook I
• The Dynabook concept, created by Alan Kay in
1968, described what is now known as a laptop
computer or (in some of its other incarnations) a
tablet PC or slate computer with nearly eternal
battery life and software aimed at giving children
access to digital media. Adults could also use a
Dynabook, but the target audience was children - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook
• In 1968, there were no laptops, no Internet, no
wireless connections!
Dynabook II
• “A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages”
www.scribd.com/doc/1036359/A-PersonalComputer-for-Children-of-All-Ages
• Alan Kay: “With the Tablet, Apple Will Rule
the World” –
gigaom.com/2010/01/26/alan-kay-with-thetablet-apple-will-rule-the-world/
Dynabook III
• “Tracing the Dynabook: A Study of
Technocultural Transformations” (A 2006 PhD
Dissertation by John W. Maxwell) -thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook/dissertatio
n (download the .pdf)
• We’ve been chasing this rainbow since 1968
Mobile Telephones I
• Radiophones have a long and varied history going back to
Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship
demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second
World War with military use of radio telephony links and
civil services in the 1950s.
• The first mobile telephone call made from a car occurred in
St. Louis, Missouri, USA on June 17, 1946, using the Bell
System's Mobile Telephone Service, but the system was
impractical from what is considered a portable handset
today. The equipment weighed 80 pounds (36 kg), and the
AT&T service, basically a massive party line, cost $30 USD
per month (equal to $337.33 today) plus $.30 to $.40 per
local call, equal to $3.37 to $4.5 today.
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone)
Mobile Telephones II
• In 1956, the world’s first partly automatic car phone
system, Mobile System A (MTA), was launched in
Sweden. MTA phones were composed of vacuum tubes
and relays, and had a weight of 40 kg. In 1962, a more
modern version called Mobile System B (MTB) was
launched, which was a push-button telephone, and
which used transistors in order to enhance the
telephone’s calling capacity and improve its
operational reliability, thereby reducing the weight of
the apparatus to 10 kg. In 1971, the MTD version was
launched, opening for several different brands of
equipment and gaining commercial success.
Mobile Telephones III
• Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and
executive is considered to be the inventor of
the first practical mobile phone for handheld
use in a non-vehicle setting, after a long race
against Bell Labs for the first portable mobile
phone. Using a modern, if somewhat heavy
portable handset, Cooper made the first call
on a handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973
to his rival, Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.
Cellular Phones
• 1979 -- The first commercially automated cellular network
(the 1G) was launched in Japan by NTT, initially in the
metropolitan area of Tokyo. Within five years, the NTT
network had been expanded to cover the whole population
of Japan and became the first nationwide 1G network.
• 1981 -- simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile
Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway and
Sweden. NMT was the first mobile phone network featuring
international roaming.
• 1983 The first 1G network launched in the USA was
Chicago-based Ameritech using the Motorola DynaTAC
mobile phone. Several countries then followed in the earlyto-mid 1980s including the UK, Mexico and Canada.
Smartphones I
• A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced
computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary
feature phone.] Smartphones and feature phones may be
thought of as handheld computers integrated with a mobile
telephone, but while most feature phones are able to run
applications based on platforms such as Java ME, a
smartphone allows the user to run and multitask
applications that are native to the underlying hardware.
Smartphones run complete operating system software
providing a platform for application developers.[ Thus, they
combine the functions of a camera phone and a personal
digital assistant (PDA) -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone
Smartphones II
• The first smartphone was the IBM Simon; it was
designed in 1992 and shown as a concept
product that year at COMDEX, the computer
industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It
was released to the public in 1993 and sold by
BellSouth. Besides being a mobile phone, it also
contained a calendar, address book, world clock,
calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax,
and games. It had no physical buttons to dial
with. Instead customers used a touchscreen to
select telephone numbers with a finger or create
facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus.
Hewlett-Packard
• HP 95LX -- introduced by Hewlett-Packard in 1991, it was
the first MS-DOS pocket computer or personal digital
assistant. It ran Microsoft's MS-DOS version 3.22 and had
Lotus 1-2-3 built in. Other software in read-only memory
(ROM) included a calculator, an appointment calendar, a
telecommunications program, and a simple text editor -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX
• HP 200LX -- a personal digital assistant introduced by
Hewlett-Packard in 1994 and often called a palmtop
computer because it was, with some minor exceptions, a
MS-DOS-compatible computer in a palmtop format,
complete with a monochrome graphic display, qwerty
keyboard, serial port, and PCMCIA expansion slot -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_200Lx
Apple Newton
• Announced in 1992, the Apple Newton
MessagePad was one of the first-ever Personal
Digital Assistants (PDA) - a term coined by
Apple's then-CEO John Sculley. A Newton is
best described as a handheld communications
assistant with a touch-screen and pen-stylus
that allows the user to gather, manage, and
share information -- oldcomputers.net/applenewton.html
Palm Pilot
• The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed
Colligan, who founded Palm Computing. The original purpose of this
company was to create handwriting recognition software for other
devices, named Graffiti, but their research convinced them they could
create better hardware as well. Before starting development of the Pilot,
Hawkins said he carried a block of wood, the size of the potential Pilot, in
his pocket for a week. Palm was widely perceived to have benefited from
the notable if ill-fated earlier attempts to create a popular handheld
computing platform by Go Corporation and Apple Computer.
• Pilot was the name of the first generation of personal digital assistants
manufactured by Palm Computing in 1996 (then a division of U.S.
Robotics).-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_%28PDA%29
• The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second
generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (. These devices
were launched on March 10, 1997 -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot
Jeff Hawkins
• Jeffrey Hawkins (born June 1, 1957, in Huntington, New
York) is the founder of Palm Computing (where he invented
the Palm Pilot)[1] and Handspring (where he invented the
Treo).] He has since turned to work on neuroscience fulltime, founded the Redwood Center for Theoretical
Neuroscience (formerly the Redwood Neuroscience
Institute) in 2002, and published On Intelligence describing
his memory-prediction framework theory of the brain. In
2003 he was elected as a member of the National Academy
of Engineering "for the creation of the hand-held
computing paradigm and the creation of the first
commercially successful example of a hand-held computing
device.” -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hawkins
Palm Computer
• After various upgrades to the Palm Pilot, Palm
renamed the line to a number progression and
had models known as the Palm III and Palm V
among others, always enhancing the value of
PDAs.
• The Palm VII was the first to have
communications capability, providing wireless
communications to a Palm e-mail service.
Windows CE, Pocket PC,
Windows Mobile
• Faced with Palm’s success, Microsoft forged
an alliance with a number of companies under
which they would produce and market PDAs
running Windows CE. These PDAs would
contain pocket versions of Word and Excel and
be able to transfer files to and from WinTel
desktops and laptops.
mp3
• MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more
commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented
digital audio encoding format using a form of
lossy data compression.
• MPEG-1 Audio (MPEG-1 Part 3), which included
MPEG-1 Audio Layer I, II and III was approved as a
committee draft of ISO/IEC standard in 1991,
finalized in 1992 and published in 1993 (ISO/IEC
11172-3:1993
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3)
mp3 Players I
• The world's first company to announce a portable MP3 player and
the attendant system for uploading MP3 audio content to a
personal computer and then downloading it onto a personal MP3
player was Audio Highway. Under the direction of founder and CEO,
Nathan Schulhof, Audio Highway announced its Listen Up player on
September 23, 1996,[8] won an Innovations Award for its Listen Up
player and its Listen Up Personal Audio System at the Consumer
Electronics Show in January 1997,[9] and began shipping the Listen
Up player in the United States in September 1997.[10] The Listen Up
player also won a People's Choice Award[11] at the 2nd annual
Internet Showcase conference, held Jan. 30, 1998. The device was
not mass-produced; only about 25 units were made.
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_player)
mp3 Players II
• Diamond Rio -- The Rio PMP300 from Diamond
Multimedia was introduced in September 1998, a
few months after the MPMan, and also featured
a 32 MB storage capacity. It was a success during
the holiday season, with sales exceeding
expectations. Interest and investment in digital
music were subsequently spurred from it.[
Because of the player's notoriety as the target of
a major lawsuit, the Rio is erroneously assumed
to be the first DAP
RIAA Lawsuit
• Unanimously ruling that MP3 is a “revolutionary
new method of music distribution made possible
by digital recording and the Internet,” the U.S.
Court of Appeals threw out a 1999 law suit filed
by the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA) against the makers of the portable RIO
MP3 music player and held that the digital music
player is a legal device enabling “a brave new
world of Internet music distribution. -- classicweb.archive.org/web/20071031072846/http://w
ww.virtualrecordings.com/rio.htm
Napster
• Napster was founded by Shawn Fanning and his uncle John
Fanning while the former was attending Northeastern
University in Boston. At its founding, it was envisioned as
an independent peer-to-peer file sharing service that was
known for the free online music it offered. The service,
named after Fanning's hairstyle-based nickname, operated
between June 1999 and July 2001. Its technology allowed
people to easily share their MP3 files with other
participants, bypassing the established market for such
songs and thus leading to massive copyright violations of
music and film media as well as other intellectual property
-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster
Steve Jobs
• 1984 – Resigned from Apple and founded
NeXT.
• 1986 -- acquired the computer graphics
division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as
Pixar Animation Studios
• 1996 – Apple acquires NeXT (and Jobs)
• 1997 – Once again, becomes CEO
• 1998 – Terminates the Newton line
iPod
• Jobs finds existing mp3 players to be "big and
clunky or small and useless" with user interfaces
that were "unbelievably awful” and directs Apple
engineers to develop its own.
• The product was developed in less than one year
and unveiled on 23 October 2001. Jobs
announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a
5 GB hard drive that put "1,000 songs in your
pocket”
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod)
iTunes
• Introduced by Apple Inc. on January 9, 2001 as
Macintosh (and later Windows) software for the
storing, playing, and downloading of digital music to
mp3 players, it was linked on April 28, 2003 to the
iTunes Music store with over 200,000 available songs.
• In April 2008, it became the number-one music vendor
in the United States
• On February 24, 2010, the store served its 10 billionth
song download; this milestone was reached in just
under seven years of being online.
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store)
iPhone
• The first iPhone was unveiled by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 9,
2007, and released on June 29, 2007.
• An iPhone can function as a video camera (video recording was not
a standard feature until the iPhone 3GS was released), a camera
phone, can send texts and receive visual voicemail, a portable
media player, and an Internet client with e-mail and web browsing
capabilities, and both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. The user interface
is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual
keyboard rather than a physical one. Third-party as well as Apple
application software is available from the App Store, which
launched in mid-2008 and now has over 350,000[apps" approved by
Apple. These apps have diverse functionalities, including games,
reference, GPS navigation, social networking, security and
advertising for television shows, films, and celebrities.
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone)
Android
• October 2003 – Android Inc. founded to “smarter mobile devices that are
more aware of its owner's location and preferences” (quote from founder
Adam Rubin)
• August 2005 – Android Inc. acquired by Google.
• On the November 5, 2007 the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of
several companies which include Broadcom Corporation, Google, HTC,
Intel, LG, Marvell Technology Group, Motorola, Nvidia, Qualcomm,
Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Texas Instruments
unveiled itself. The goal of the Open Handset Alliance is to develop open
standards for mobile devices.[10] On the same day, the Open Handset
Alliance also unveiled their first product, Android, a mobile device
platform built on the Linux kernel version 2.6.[10]
• On December 9, 2008, 14 new members joined, including ARM Holdings,
Atheros Communications, Asustek Computer Inc, Garmin Ltd, PacketVideo,
Softbank, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba Corp, and Vodafone Group Plc.[35][36]
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29)
Android II
• There are many more Smartphones in the
world running the Android Operating System
than Apple’s iOS (only on the iPhone)
although there are considerably more Apps
under iOS.
• Samsung, which runs the Android Operating
System is, by far, the leader in Smartphone
sales.
Smartphone Sales -- 1Q 2014
• With the Galaxy S5 just beginning to ship, Samsung’s
total shipment volume for the first quarter of the
year came to 85 million smartphone units, more than
the next four competitors — Apple, Huawei, Lenovo
and LG — combined.
• Apple maintained a healthy but distant second place
showing to Samsung in the first quarter of 2014,
shipping 43.7 million phones. Huawei, Lenovo and LG
all shipped between 12 and 14 million units each.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2014/04/30/samsung-isundisputed-king-of-smartphones-apple-still-distant-second/
Tablet Computers I
• A tablet personal computer (Tablet PC) is tablet computer having
the main characteristics of a personal computer in the tradition of
the Microsoft Tablet PC, as a machine operated by an end-user with
no intervening computer operator. A portable tablet PC is equipped
with a touchscreen as a primary input device[1] and designed to be
operated and owned by an individual. The term was made popular
as a concept presented by Microsoft in 2001,] but tablet PCs now
refer to any tablet-sized personal computer, even if it's not using
Windows but another PC operating system. Tablets may use virtual
keyboards and handwriting recognition for text input through the
touchscreen.
Tablet Computers II
• All tablet personal computers have a wireless
adapter for Internet and local network
connection. Software applications for tablet PCs
include office suites,[5] web browsers,[6] games
and a variety of applications. However, since
portable computer hardware components usually
have lower performance, demanding PC
applications may not provide an ideal experience
to the user.
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_personal_computer)
Book Readers
• Sony series – first announced in September 2006; no
direct cell connection for content; download to PC and
transfer -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Reader
• Amazon Kindle – first released on November 19, 2007,
and sold out in five and a half hours and remained outof-stock for five months -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle
• Barnes & Noble Nook -- announced in the United
States on 20 October 2009, and was released 30
November 2009 -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_%26_Noble_Nook
Netbooks
• Netbooks are a category of small, lightweight, legacy-free, and
inexpensive laptop computers, generally running Windows OSs (but
occasionally Linux)
• At their inception in late 2007 [ as smaller notebooks optimized for
low weight and low cost[2] — netbooks omitted certain features
(e.g., the optical drive), featured smaller screens and keyboards,
and offered reduced computing power when compared to a fullsized laptop. Over the course of their evolution, netbooks have
ranged in size from below 5" screen diagonal[ to 12”. A typical
weight is 1 kg (2–3 pounds). Often significantly less expensive than
other laptops, by mid-2009, some wireless data carriers began to
offer netbooks to users "free of charge", with an extended service
contract purchase
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook)
iPad I
• First iPad released in April 2010
• 3 million of the devices sold in 80 days.
• Apple sold 14.8 million iPads worldwide during 2010,
representing 75 percent of tablet PC sales at the end of
2010.
• By the release of the iPad 2 in March 2011, more than
15 million iPads had been sold — more than all other
tablet PCs combined.
• In 2011, it is expected to take 83 percent of the tablet
computing market share in the United States
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipad)
iPad II – III, Mini & Air
• As of October, 2013, there were 475,000 iPad specific
apps on the App Store
• There are 700,000 total (iPhone + specific iPad) apps
in the Apple store; mostrun on the iPad
• There are Kindle and Nook apps for the iPad,
allowing users to download books directly from
Amazon and Barnes & Noble
• iPad Mini – first of Apple’s smaller devices.
• iPad Air – lighter iPad; a play on the MacBook Air
Android Tablets
• Many of the same apps as those on the iPad -www.androidapps.com/
• Android smaller models pushed Apple to the
iPad Mini
• Many vendors – Samsung, RIM, etc., -www.androidtablets.net/
• Android tablets dominate in numbers
although the iPad has many more available
Apps
Smaller Tablets (and 1 Larger one)
• Google (its mini tablet is made by Asus) and Samsung
successfully introduced smaller tablets
• iPad Mini -- Introduced after smaller Google and
Samsung tablets had been successful and has been
itself extremely successfully.
• Amazon Kindle, with its Fire HD, integrated e-mail
and web access into its highend book readers.
• Barnes and Noble partnered with Samsung to
introduce the Samsung S4 Nook (2014)
• Google also went the other way with its Nexus
– 10 ten inch tablet (made by Samsung)
Phablets
• Phablet = A large size smartphone that may
perform many of the functions associated
with tablets.
• Once again, Samsung led the way with the
Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S lines
• iPhone 6 – the first Apple phablet had a very
successful introduction