hi I'm Carrie and welcome to crash
course computer science early in this
series we covered computing history from
rusting the dawn of civilization after
the birth of electronic general-purpose
computers in the mid 1940s a lot of the
material was discussed over the past 23
episodes like programming languages and
compilers algorithms and integrated
circuits hobby disks and operating
systems telly types and screens all
emerged over roughly a 30-year period
from the mid 1940s up to the mid 1970s
this is the era of computing before
companies like Apple and Microsoft
existed and long before anyone tweeted
Google dubard it was a formative period
setting the stage for personal computers
worldwide web self-driving cars virtual
reality and many other topics we'll get
through in the second half of this
series today we're going to step back
from circuits and algorithms and review
this influential period we'll pay
special attention to the historical
backdrop of the Cold War the space race
and the rise of globalization and
consumerism
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pretty much immediately after world war
ii concluded in 1945 there was tension
between the world's two new superpowers
the United States and the USSR the Cold
War had begun and with it massive
government spending on science and
engineering computing which had already
demonstrated its value in wartime
efforts like the Manhattan Project and
code breaking Nazi communications was
lavished with government funding they
enabled huge ambitious computing
projects to be undertaken like ENIAC
edvac Atlas and whirlwind all mentioned
in previous episodes this spurred rapid
advances that simply weren't possible in
the commercial sector alone where
projects were generally expected to
recoup development costs through sales
this began to change in the early 1950s
especially with Eckert and Buckley's
UNIVAC won the first commercially
successful computer unlike any echo
Atlas this was just one single computer
it was a model of computer in total more
than 40 were built most of these univ
acts went to government offices or large
companies which was part of the growing
military industrial complex in the
united states with pockets deep enough
to afford the cutting edge famously a
univac one built for the US Atomic
Energy Commission was used by CBS to
predict the results of the 1952 u.s.
presidential election with just 1% of
the vote the computer correctly
predicted an Eisenhower landslide while
pundits favored Stevenson it was a media
event that helped propel computing to
the forefront of the public's
imagination computing was unlike
machines of the past which generally
augmented human physical abilities
trucks allowed us to carry more
automatic looms whoa faster machine
tools were more precise and so on for a
bunch of contraptions that typify the
Industrial Revolution but computers on
the other hand could augment human
intellect this potential wasn't lost on
Vannevar Bush who in 1945 published an
article on a hypothetical computing
device he envisioned called the mimics
this was a device in which an individual
stores all his books records and
communications and which is mechanized
so it may be consulted with exceeding
speed and flexibility it is an enlarged
intimate supplement to his memory he
also predicted that wholly new forms of
encyclopedia will appear ready-made with
a mesh of associative trails running
through them sound familiar
mimics directly inspired several
subsequent game-changing systems like
Ivan Sutherland sketchpad which we
discussed last episode and Doug
Engelbart's online system which will
cover soon
Bush was the head of the US office of
scientific research and development
which was responsible for funding and
coordinating scientific research during
World War two
with the cold war brewing Bush lobbied
for a creation of a peacetime equivalent
the National Science Foundation formed
in 1950 to this day the NSF provides
federal funding to support scientific
research in the United States and it is
a major reason the US has continued to
be a leader in the technology sector it
was also in the 1950s that consumers
started to buy transistor powered
gadgets notable among them was
transistor radio which was small durable
and battery-powered and it was portable
unlike the vacuum tube based radio sets
from the 1940s and before it was a
runaway success the Furby or iPhone of
its day
the Japanese government looking for
industrial opportunities to bolster
their post-war economy soon got in on
the action licensing the rights of
transistors from Bell Labs in 1952
helping launch the Japanese
semiconductor and electronics industry
in 1955 the first Sony product was
released the TR 55 transistor radio
concentrating on quality and price
Japanese companies captured half of the
US market portable radios in just five
years this planted the first seeds of a
major industrial rivalry in the decades
to come
in 1953 there were only around 100
computers on the entire planet and at
this point the USSR was only a few years
behind the West in computing technology
completing their first programmable
electronic computer in 1950 but the
Soviets were way ahead in the burgeoning
space race let's go to the
thought-bubble
the Soviets launched the world's first
satellite into orbit Sputnik one in 1957
and a few years later in 1961 Soviet
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first
human in space this didn't sit well with
the American public and prompted
President Kennedy a month after
Gagarin's mission to encourage the
nation to land a man on the moon within
the decade and it was expensive NASA's
budget grew almost tenfold peaking in
1966 at roughly 4.5 percent of the u.s.
federal budget today it's around half a
percent NASA used this funding to tackle
a huge array of enormous challenges this
culminated in the Apollo program which
is peak employed roughly 400,000 people
further supported by over 20,000
universities and companies one of these
huge challenges was navigating in space
NASA needed a computer to process
complex
trajectories and issue guidance commands
to the spacecraft for this they built
the Apollo guidance computer there were
three significant requirements first the
computer had to be fast no surprise
there
second it has to be small and
lightweight there's not a lot of room in
a spacecraft and every ounce is precious
when you're flying a quarter million
miles to the moon and finally it had to
be really really ridiculously reliable
this is super important in a spacecraft
where there's lots of vibration
radiation and temperature change and
there's no running to best buy it
something breaks the technology of the
era of vacuum tubes and discrete
transistors just weren't up to the task
so NASA turned to a brand-new technology
integrated circuits which we discussed a
few episodes ago the Apollo guidance
computer was the first computer to use
them a huge paradigm shift nasa was also
the only place that could afford them
initially each chip cost around $50 and
the guidance computer needed thousands
of them but by paying that price the
Americans were able to beat the Soviets
to the moon
thanks thought-bubble although the
Apollo guidance computer is credited
with spurring the development and
adoption of integrated circuits it was a
low volume product there are only 17
Apollo missions after all it was
actually military applications
especially the Minuteman and Polaris
nuclear missile systems that allowed
integrated circuits to become a
mass-produced item this rapid
advancement was further accelerated by
the u.s. building and buying huge
powerful computers often called
supercomputers because they were
frequently 10 times faster than any
other computer on the planet upon their
release but these machines built by
companies like CDC Cray and IBM were
also super in cost and pretty much only
governments could afford to buy them in
the US these machines went to government
agencies like the NSA and government
research labs like Lawrence Livermore
and Los Alamos National Laboratories
initially the u.s. semiconductor
industry boomed buoyed by high profit
government contracts
however this meant that most US
companies overlooked the consumer market
where profit margins were small the
Japanese semiconductor industry came to
dominate this niche by having to operate
with lean profit margins in the 1950s
and 60s the Japanese had invested
heavily in manufacturing capacity to
achieve economies of scale in research
to improve quality and yields and in
automation to keep manufacturing costs
low in the 1970s with the space race and
Cold War subsiding previously juicy
defense contracts began to dry up and
consumer conductor and electronics
companies found it harder to compete it
didn't help the many computing
components had been commoditized be
around with DRAM so why buy expensive
Intel memory when you could buy the same
chip for less from Hitachi throughout
the 1970s US companies began to downsize
consolidate or outright fail Intel had
to lay off a third of its workforce in
1974 and even the storied Fairchild
Semiconductor was acquired in 1979 after
near bankruptcy to survive many of these
companies began to outsource their
manufacturing in a bid to reduce costs
Intel weave drew from its main product
category memory ICS and decided to
refocus on processes which ultimately
saved the company this low and us
electronics industry allowed Japanese
companies like sharp and Casio to
dominate the breakout computing product
of the 1970s handheld electronic
calculators by using integrated circuits
these could be made small and cheap they
replaced expensive desktop adding
machines you find in offices for most
people it was the first time they didn't
have to do math on paper or use a slide
rule they were an instant hit selling by
the millions
this server drove down the cost of
integrated circuits and led to the
development and widespread use of micro
processors like the Intel 4004 we've
discussed previously this chip was built
by Intel in 1971 at the request of
Japanese calculator company busy calm
soon Japanese electronics were
everywhere from televisions of VCRs to
digital wristwatches and Walkmans the
availability of inexpensive
microprocessor spawned in highly new
products like video arcades the world
got pong in 1972 and breakout in 1976 as
cost continued to plummet soon it became
possible for regular people to afford
computing devices during this time we
see the emergence of the first
successful home computers like the 1975
Altair 8800 and also the first home
gaming consoles like the Atari 2600 in
1977 home now I repeat that home that
seems like a small thing today but this
was the dawn of a whole new era in
computing in just three decades
computers have evolved from machines
where you could literally walk inside of
the CPU assuming you had government
clearance to the point where a child
could play with a handheld toy
containing a microprocessor many times
faster critically this dramatic
evolution would have been
but without two powerful forces at play
governments and consumers government
funding like the United States provided
during the Cold War enabled early
adoption of many nascent computing
technologies this funding helped flow
entire industries relate into computing
long enough for the technology to mature
and become commercially feasible then
businesses and ultimately consumers
provided the demand to take it
mainstream the Cold War may be over but
this relationship continues today
governments are still funding science
research intelligence agencies are still
buying supercomputers humans are still
being launched into space and you're
still buying TVs Xboxes Playstations
laptops and smartphones and for these
reasons computing continues to advance a
lightning pace I'll see you next week
crash course computer science is
produced in association with PBS Digital
Studios at their channel you can check
out a playlist of shows like physics
Goldie flicks and PBS space time
this episode was filmed at the chad and
stacey ever thought studio in
indianapolis indiana and it was made
with the help of all these nice people
and our wonderful graphic scene thought
cafe that's where we're going to have to
halt and catch fire see you next week
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you