July in computing history
J.A.N. Lee, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech., Blacksburg, VA 24061-0106, phone (540) 231-5780, fax (540) 231-6075, e-mail janlee@cs.vt.edu
July has been a month for inaugurations: It marks the birth of significant pioneers, the announcement of new machines, and the establishment of computer companies.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard was born July 7, 1752, in Lyons, France. In the late eighteenth century, Jacquard developed a practical automatic loom that wove patterns controlled by a linked sequence of punched cards. From this development, both Charles Babbage and Herman Hollerith derived their own use of cards for their respective machines. Jacquard looms are still used throughout the world. Jacquard died on 7 August 1834, in Ouillins, France.
Through mergers, the company that Hollerith formed evolved to become IBM, which for 30 years promoted and benefited from mechanical punched-card processing. Thus it was appropriate that the first IBM production-line machine, the 
IBM 650, announced on July 2, 1953, was designed to be compatible with the well-established line of mechanical card-processing machines. Thanks partly to a 60 percent discount on the monthly lease, universities across the US were able to obtain these machines and provide a generation of university students with their first computer experience. Because the 650 was a decimal machine, programming and data representation were simpler than with many earlier machines. The computers were soon supported by effective application packages. More than 1,000 IBM 650 computers were delivered to organizations throughout the world.
.
Two other significant events in computer development occurred shortly before the IBM 650 announcement. On July 9, 1951, the Ferranti company inaugurated the Mark I, a derivative of the machine built by Frederic Williams and Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester. The Ferranti Mark I was the first in a line of commercial machines that would form the basis of the British computer industry. The next day, Maurice Wilkes, at the University of Cambridge, unveiled the concept of microprogramming, which would revolutionize the architecture of succeeding machine generations and enable machines of different instructional capabilities to be compatible. Kilburn and Wilkes were designated IEEE Computer Society Pioneers in 1980.
Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore developed the integrated circuit (or microchip) and filed for a patent application on July 30, 1959, on behalf of the Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. The patent application was challenged by a Texas Instruments application on behalf of Jack Kilby. In 1969, the courts ruled in favor of Noyce. The view today is that Kilby built the first integrated circuit, while Noyce provided a practical implementation that could be commercialized. Noyce received the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1980; Kilby was similarly recognized in 1993.
Finally, July is the month of incorporation of both the Control Data Corp. (July 8, 1957) and Intel (July 18, 1968).
Jay Wright Forrester, born 14 July 1918 in Climax, NE, developed the basic concept of random-access storage in 1947 based born July 14, 1918, in Climax, Nebraska, developed the basic concept of random-access storage in 1947 on the basis of glow-discharge cells. In 1949 he recast the concept as toroidal, random-access, coincident-current magnetic storage. Developed as the storage system for the Whirlwind computer, it became the standard internal memory for computers for nearly 30 years. By 1951, the Whirlwind was supporting the planning and design of the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) Air Defense System. Forrester received the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1982.
Jerrier A. Haddad, born July 17, 1922, in New York City, worked for IBM in several technical capacities. He was on the IBM 604 development team and headed the engineering team that produced the IBM 701 (Defense Calculator), the first fully electronic IBM machine and the first intended to be more than a one-off machine. Haddad received the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1984.
Gerrit A. Blaauw, born July 17, 1924, at The Hague, Netherlands, started work with Howard Aiken on the Harvard Mark III and Mark IV systems and contributed to the IBM Stretch and System/360. He received an IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1994.
Arthur Lee Samuel, born in 1901 in Emporia, Kansas, died July 29, 1990, in Menlo Park, California. In 1946, Samuel became professor of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois and participated in designing one of the first electronic computers. There he conceived the idea of a checkers program capable of beating the world champion and demonstrating the power of electronic computers. (It was never tested against the world champion, however.) Later, at IBM, he completed the first checkers program-apparently the world's first self-learning program-on the IBM 701. Just before the demonstration, Thomas J. Watson Sr., IBM founder and president, remarked that the demonstration would raise the price of IBM stock 15 points. He was right. Samuel received an IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1987 for his work on adaptive non-numeric processing.
| Computer magazine page | Publications page | Computer Society home page |
Copyright (c) 1996 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE. For information on obtaining permission, send a blank email message to info.pub.permission@ieee.org
By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.