Solid state physics & Devices _the harbinger of third wave of  (Page 3/12)

1945AD- First Transoceanic Telephone Links established using voice quality coaxial

cables. Telegraphic Cables are not suitable for Telephone Conservation. Voice

quality cables were developed during World War II and introduced right after

the War .Before the World War II , no TransAtlantic or TransPacific Telephonic

Links were there. Across the oceans only Radio-Telephone call could be made.

1947AD- At Bell Laboratories, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain&William Shockley

invented BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor). They were awarded Nobel Prize in

1956 in Physics for this invention.

1948AD- Magnetic Drum Memory invented at Georgia Institute of Technology for

Computers.

1952AD- UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer)- First computer designed for

business use. The inventors were John Mauchy&John Eckart.

7.26 Metric Tonnes, 5000 Vacuum tubes&1000 calculations per second. These are termed FIRST GENERATION COMPUTERS .

1955AD- Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) installed. This takes in data

received by the RADAR network and computes interception trajectories and

steers the defenders within 1000yards of the attacker.

1956AD- UNIVAC II using transistors come in the market. Manufactures are Sperry

Rand, USA. These are termed as SECOND GENRATION COMPUTERS .

1956AD- TAT-1, the first transatlantic voice grade telephony coaxial cable laid across the Atlantic Ocean. Until then transatlantic telephone calls were made by Radio-Telephony.(Coaxial Cable, polythene insulation, vacuum tube repeaters).

1956AD- September 13, 1956, IBM 305 Ramac Computer with DISK DRIVE was introduced. Till then the OS and data were stored on Magnetic Drums or Magnetic Tapes as a result the booting process of the computer or access of data was very slow. This newly introduced computer had 350 Disk File. This consisted of a rack of 24” magnetically coated platters 50 in number mounted on a single vertical spindle and could store 4.4MB of data as compared to today’s hard disc which store 70GB of data.[Please see the foot note].

1959AD-Integrated Circuit (IC) chip invented by Jack Kilby (Texas Instrument) and

Robert Noyce (FairChild). Discrete active and passive devices are integrated

together on one wafer thin silicon chip in the area of 1cm by 1cm square,

mounted on a header and then properly encapsulated and sealed. At the time it

started, it had only 30 components in the 1 square cm area. This heralded

the Information Age and THIRD Information Revolution . It also produced an

Explosion in electronic consumer and communication applications such as Personal Computers to cell Phones. Jack Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in the year 2000. Jack Kilby passed away on 1 ^st August 2005. Robert Noyce went on to establish “ INTEL” (Integrated Electronics) along with Gordon Moore and Andy Grove . He passed away earlier than Jack Kilby so he could not be awarded. Noble Prizes are not awarded posthumously.

5th October,1959-IBM1401 mainframe computer makes its debut. This becomes the best selling computer in the world in mid-1960s.This was in the category of stored program computers. These stored program computers were vastly superior to IBM 604 Electronic Calculating Punch Machine which was vacuum tube, plugboard-controlled, serial-decimal machine with 50 digits of storage.Stored Program Computers were more flexible and adaptable than plugboard-based accounting machines. But these large-scale stored program computers were too expensive for common use.By the use of alloyed junction discrete transistor logic and Automatic Logic Design software, the volume and power consumption was reduced by 50% and 95% respectively.Standard Modular System(SMS) called Cube/Rolygon for electronic packaging was used. Saturating Complementary Transistor Diode Logic(CTDL)Family was used. This could clock at a maximum rate of 250kHz.CTDL was robust and handled large fan-ins and fan-outs.Memory to Memory architecture was used.This reduced the number of instructions needed for accounting and business programming.These changes achieved a entry-level rental price target of US$2500 per month.Previously it was as high as US$40,000 per month. It had outstanding print quality, powerful magnetic tape subsystem and a stored program computer for the mass market place.By 1965, half of the approximately 26000 computers in the World were 1400-family machines.Tape-oriented 1401 system became the computer of choice. Time-life transferred 40 million punched card subscriber records to just several hundred magnetic tapes.Full size system had 500,000 discrete components, weighed up to 4 tonnes, and consumed up to 13000W.It used 10,600 Ge alloy-junction transistors and 13,200 Ge point-contact diodes on 2300SMS cards interconnected with 5.5mi of wire. Memory varied from 1400 bytes to 16000 bytes memory space.It had a clock rate of 87000cycles/sec corresponding to one clock cycle of 11.7microsecond. In 50 machine cycles corresponding to 0.5ms two positive 20-digit numbers could be added. Today a Pentium IV processor operating at 4GHz can add two 64-bit numbers in 0.5nano second.Magnetic Core Memories were priced at 60 cents per bit(or US$24 per byte in today's currency. This is 300 million times more costly than today's DRAM.Its high speed and enduring print quality made it an Industry Workhorse. By 1961, optical character recognition (OCR) devices were introduced as a peripheral to 1401. The 1401 contributed to the growth of programming as a profession and software as an industry.It had no operating system. IBM had a compatibility problem amongst its various versions and amongst its various peripherals. By April 1964 it introduced System/360. It consolidated software, peripherals and support in one compatible and scalable computer family. 1401 wound down with the announcement of S/360.[This part has been excerpted from"The Legendary IBM 1401 Data Processing System" by Robert Garner Fredrick(Rick) Dill, IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine,Winter 2010,Vol.2,No.1, pp.28-39]