Hi, I'm Carrie Anne and welcome to Crash Course Computer Science.
Early in this series we covered computing history from roughly the dawn of civilization,
up to the birth of electronic general purpose computers in the mid 1940s.
A lot of the material we've discussed over the past 23 episodes
like programming languages and compilers
algorithms and integrated circuits
Floppy 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, Googled or Uber-d.
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 to 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.
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 1,
the first commercially successful computer.
Unlike any Echo Atlas, this wasn't just one single computer.
It was a model of computers, in total more than 40 were built.
Most of these Univacs 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 U.S 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 Memex.
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?
Memex directly inspired several subsequent game-changing systems,
like Ivan Sutherland Sketchpad, which we discussed last episode,
and Dough Engelbart's online system, which we will cover soon.
Vannevar Bush was the head of the U.S. 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 peace time 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 U.S. 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 the 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 to 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 U.S. Market for 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
you