Lecture 3
programming was hard, programs were hard to change once written
Computing sounds
- used for work purposes:
- old computers like ARRA were built with relays, so you could listen to its sounds to debug
- sounds were used to announce termination, auditive monitoring, specific program navigation
- ARRA II had transistors and was silent…so they added a speaker to still get those sounds
- but unorthodox purposes too:
- Strachey wrote code that could make EDSAC hum God Save The Queen
- soon, computers were used to create music, like Jean Michel Jarre did
Further appropriation was through simple games, like tic-tac-toe and nim
The language and metaphors
- around 1955, computers started appearing in movies/TV
- the language changed over time
- new verbs like “program/programming”, “plugging”, “assembling”, “memory“
- computers were appropriated, people started using old words for concepts related to technology
IBM “Big Blue” vs everyone else
their tactic was FUD — you need to get this new thing rn
IBM & the Seven Dwarves (US):
- Burroughs
- Sperry Rand (formerly Remington Rand)
- Control Data Corporation
- Honeywell
- General Electric
- RCA
- NCR
IBM & the European dwarves
- Odhner, St Petersburg (1873), which was cloned everywhere after 1917
- Atvidaberg Industrie, Sweden, produced Facit. Went bankrupt in 1970 and sold to Electrolux
- Zuse, Germany. Z4 in 1949, Siemens AG in 1967
- Mailufterl, Vienna, Austria, 1955.
- Bull, France, office machinery in 1930, then Gamma 3 (1952), multipurpose Gamma 60 (1958), GE (1962), Honeywell (1968). Had support from the French government.
- Electrologica, NL. Electrologica in 1956, X1 in 1959, X8 in 1964, bankruptcy in 1966.
- Regnecentralen, Denmark, 1955. ICL (Intl Computers Limited) in 1989, as merger of 3 companies.
Why didn’t they succeed? Compared to IBM, they couldn’t sustain the resources. Also, each government wanted to make their own computer, because nationalism is a thing that exists. The money was there because of the Marshall Plan in the US.