Articles about Tech History

My first computer was the Sinclair ZX81 which, unsurprisingly, came out in 1981. It had 1kB of memory (but this could be expanded with the addition of a 16kB RAM pack) and a monochrome display. Compare that machine with today’s computers and tablets (and smartphones for that matter), and the advancement is clearly staggering.

The history of the computer is littered with milestones. In 1822 Charles Babbage began work on the Difference Engine, the first automatic computing engine. In 1936 Alan Turing submitted a paper describing a device that could be programmed using symbols on tape. In 1953 IBM released the first mass-produced commercial computer, and in 1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the Apple I.

Continue reading →

On May 1, 1964, Professor John Kemeny ran the first BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) program from a timesharing terminal at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. Created by Kemeny and Professor Thomas Kurtz, BASIC was designed to make it easier for students to use computers.

BASIC enjoyed huge popularity in the mid-late 1970s and 1980s, and anyone over a certain age will likely have learned to program on a microcomputer using it. I certainly did. My first computer was a ZX81 from Sinclair Research. It’s a name people in the UK will recognize instantly but will mean nothing to most outside of the British Isles (it was released -- in a slightly modified form -- as the Timex Sinclair 1000 in the United States). To use it, you had to master Sinclair BASIC and that was my first experience with what initially seemed like an alien language.

Continue reading →

I'm not big on making year-ahead predictions -- common as the stories are at the turn of the year. But it's a slow news week, with the holiday and Consumer Electronics Show still ahead, so I thought: "Why not look into the crystal ball?"

If any of these come to be, something is seriously wrong with the space-time continuum.

Continue reading →

To most people who recognize his name Doug Engelbart was the inventor of the computer mouse but he was much, much more than that. In addition to the mouse and the accompanying chord keyboard, Doug invented computer time sharing, network computing, graphical computing, the graphical user interface and (with apologies to Ted Nelson) hypertext links. And he invented all these things -- if by inventing we mean envisioning how they would work and work together to create the computing environments we know today -- while driving to work one day in 1950.

Doug had a vision of modern computing back in the day when many computers were still mechanical and user interfaces did not even exist. He saw in a flash not only the way we do things today but also the long list of tasks that had to be completed to get from there to here. Now that's vision.

Continue reading →

Twenty-first in a series. The final chapter to the first edition, circa 1991, of Robert X. Cringely's Accidental Empires concludes with some predictions prophetic and others, well...

Remember Pogo? Pogo was Doonesbury in a swamp, the first political cartoon good enough to make it off the editorial page and into the high-rent district next to the horoscope. Pogo was a ‘possum who looked as if he was dressed for a Harvard class reunion and who acted as the moral conscience for the first generation of Americans who knew how to read but had decided not to.

Continue reading →

Twentieth in a series. "Market research firms tend to serve the same function for the PC industry that a lamppost does for a drunk", writes Robert X. Cringely in this installment of 1991 classic Accidental Empires. Context is universal forecast that OS/2 would overtake MS-DOS. Analysts were wrong then, much as they are today making predictions about smartphones, tablets and PCs. The insightful chapter also explains vaporware and product leak tactics IBM pioneered, Microsoft refined and Apple later adopted.

In Prudhoe Bay, in the oilfields of Alaska’s North Slope, the sun goes down sometime in late November and doesn’t appear again until January, and even then the days are so short that you can celebrate sunrise, high noon, and sunset all with the same cup of coffee. The whole day looks like that sliver of white at the base of your thumbnail.

Continue reading →

Nineteenth in a series. "Computer companies don’t go public to raise money; they go public to make real the wealth of their founders", Robert X. Cringely explains in this chapter from 1991 tome Accidental Empires. Other organizations do IPOs to fund future investments, whereas many tech firms already sit on mountains of cash when going public.

We’re at the ballpark, now, and while you and I are taking a second bite from our chilidogs, this is what’s happening in the outfield, according to Rick Miller, a former Gold Glove center fielder for the Bosox and the Angels. When the pitcher’s winding up, and we figure the center fielder’s just stooped over out there, waiting for the photon torpedoes to load and thinking about T-bills or jock itch endorsements, he’s really watching the pitcher and getting ready to catch the ball that has yet to be thrown. Exceptional center fielders use three main factors in judging where the ball will land: what kind of pitch is thrown where in the hitter’s zone, the first six inches of the batter’s swing, and the sound of the ball coming off the bat.

Continue reading →

Eighteenth in a series. The true test of a good writer is time. Chapter 12 of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 classic Accidental Empires passes easily. His observations about what makes, or breaks, high-tech start-ups is as relevant today as 22 years ago. Every entrepreneur should use this installment as a manual for what to do (or not).

America’s advantage in the PC business doesn’t come from our education system, from our fluoridated water, or, Lord knows, from our tax structure. And it doesn’t come from some innate ability we have to run big companies with thousands of employees and billions in sales. The main thing America has had going for it is the high-tech start-up, and, of course, our incredible willingness to fail.

Continue reading →

Seventeenth in a series. Love triangles were commonplace during the early days of the PC. Adobe, Apple and Microsoft engaged in such a relationship during the 1980s, and allegiances shifted -- oh did they. This installment of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 classic Accidental Empires shows how important is controlling a standard and getting others to adopt it.

Of the 5 billion people in the world, there are only four who I’m pretty sure have stayed consistently on the good side of Steve Jobs. Three of them -- Bill Atkinson, Rich Page, and Bud Tribble -- all worked with Jobs at Apple Computer. Atkinson and Tribble are code gods, and Page is a hardware god. Page and Tribble left Apple with Jobs in 1985 to found NeXT Inc., their follow-on computer company, where they remain in charge of hardware and software development, respectively.

Continue reading →

Sixteenth in a series. Robert X. Cringely's tome Accidental Empires takes on a startling prescient tone in this next installment. Remember as you read that the book published in 1991. Much he writes here about Apple cofounder Steve Jobs is remarkably insightful from the context of looking back. Some portions foreshadow the future -- or one possible outcome -- when looking at Apple following Jobs' ouster in 1985 and the company now following his death.

The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley sits alone on many weekday mornings, drinking coffee at II Fornaio, an Italian restaurant on Cowper Street in Palo Alto. He’s not the richest guy around or the smartest, but under a haircut that looks as if someone put a bowl on his head and trimmed around the edges, Steve Jobs holds an idea that keeps some grown men and women of the Valley awake at night. Unlike these insomniacs, Jobs isn’t in this business for the money, and that’s what makes him dangerous.

Continue reading →

Fourteenth in a series. We resume Robert X. Cringely's serialization of his 1991 tech-industry classic Accidental Empires after short repast during a period of rapid-fire news.

This installment reveals much about copying -- a hot topic in lawsuits today -- and how copyrights and patents apply to software and why the latter for a long time didn't.

Continue reading →

Thirteenth in a series. If you ever wondered about the real story behind the IBM PC, this chapter of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 classic is the one for you.

I live in California in a house that I can’t really afford in a neighborhood filled with blue-haired widows and with two-earner couples who have already made the jump from BMW to Acura and in their hearts are flirting with voting Republican.

Continue reading →

Twelfth in a series. No look at the rise of the personal computing industry would be complete without a hard look at Bill Gates. Microsoft's cofounder set out to put a PC on every desktop, and pretty much succeeded. "How?" is the question.

Chapter 6 of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 classic Accidental Empires is fascinating reading in context of where Gates and Microsoft are today and what their success might foreshadow for companies leading the charge into the next computing era.

Continue reading →

Eleventh in a series. The next installment of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 tech-industry classic Accidental Empires is highly appropriate for the industry today. He discusses concepts like "look and feel", how pioneers freely copied ideas and where attitudes began to change. There's something prescient, with respect to aggressive patent litigation by Apple and some other companies today.

This chapter also explores the incredible contribution one research lab, Xerox PARC, made to personal computing as we know it --germinator of graphical user interface, mouse, Ethernet and laser printer, among others. Photo is of the Alto, arguably the first computer workstation and one of many, many products conceived but not marketed.

Continue reading →

Tenth in a series. Editor: Robert X. Cringely's brilliant tome about the rise of the personal computing industry continues, looking at programming languages and operating systems.

Published in 1991, Accidental Empires is an excellent lens for viewing not just the past but future computing.

Continue reading →