1.
Columbia University
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Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as Kings College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, after the American Revolutionary War, Kings College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción, Columbia administers annually the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally,100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, researchers, faculty, Columbia is second only to Harvard University in the number of Nobel Prize-winning affiliates, with over 100 recipients of the award as of 2016. In 1746 an act was passed by the assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the colleges first president, Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the colleges first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan, in 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queens College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777. The suspension continued through the occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The colleges library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a hospital first by American. Loyalists were forced to abandon their Kings College in New York, the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded Kings Collegiate School. After the Revolution, the college turned to the State of New York in order to restore its vitality, the Legislature agreed to assist the college, and on May 1,1784, it passed an Act for granting certain privileges to the College heretofore called Kings College. The Regents finally became aware of the colleges defective constitution in February 1787 and appointed a revision committee, in April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private board of 24 Trustees. On May 21,1787, William Samuel Johnson, the son of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was unanimously elected President of Columbia College, prior to serving at the university, Johnson had participated in the First Continental Congress and been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The colleges enrollment, structure, and academics stagnated for the majority of the 19th century, with many of the college presidents doing little to change the way that the college functioned. In 1857, the college moved from the Kings College campus at Park Place to a primarily Gothic Revival campus on 49th Street and Madison Avenue, during the last half of the 19th century, under the leadership of President F. A. P. Barnard, the institution assumed the shape of a modern university
2.
Floppy disk
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Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive. Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch media and later in 5¼-inch and 3½-inch sizes, were a form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s into the mid-2000s. These formats are usually handled by older equipment and these disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation. The term floppy disk appeared in print as early as 1970, in 1976, Shugart Associates introduced the first 5¼-inch FDD. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing such FDDs, there were competing floppy disk formats, with hard- and soft-sector versions and encoding schemes such as FM, MFM and GCR. The 5¼-inch format displaced the 8-inch one for most applications, the most common capacity of the 5¼-inch format in DOS-based PCs was 360 kB and in 1984 IBM introduced the 1.2 MB dual-sided floppy disk along with its PC-AT model. IBM started using the 720 kB double-density 3½-inch microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer in 1986 and these disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988 IBM introduced a drive for 2.88 MB DSED diskettes in its top-of-the-line PS/2 models, throughout the early 1980s, limitations of the 5¼-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be practical than the 8-inch format, it was itself too large, as the quality of recording media grew. A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-, 2½-, 3-, 3½-, the large market share of the 5¼-inch format made it difficult for these new formats to gain significant market share. A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1982 by a number of manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted. By the end of the 1980s, 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by 3½-inch disks, by the mid-1990s, 5¼-inch drives had virtually disappeared, as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. Floppy disks became ubiquitous during the 1980s and 1990s in their use with computers to distribute software, transfer data. Before hard disks became affordable to the population, floppy disks were often used to store a computers operating system. Most home computers from that period have a primary OS and BASIC stored as ROM, by the early 1990s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were a five billion standard floppy disks in use. Then, distribution of packages was gradually replaced by CD-ROMs, DVDs. External USB-based floppy disk drives are available, many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such drives
3.
IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
4.
IBM Personal Computer
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The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12,1981 and it was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. IBM compatible became an important criterion for sales growth, only the Apple Macintosh family kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, International Business Machines, one of the worlds largest companies, had a 62% share of the mainframe computer market in 1981. Its share of the computer market, however, had declined from 60% in 1970 to 32% in 1980. In 1979 BusinessWeek asked, Is IBM just another stodgy, mature company, by 1981 its stock price had declined by 22%. IBMs earnings for the first half the year grew by 5. 3%—one third of the inflation rate—while those of minicomputer maker Digital Equipment Corporation grew by more than 35%. B. M, No longer dominates the computer business. IBM wished to avoid the outcome with the new personal computer industry, dominated by the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, Tandy Corporations TRS-80. With $150 million in sales by 1979 and projected growth of more than 40% in the early 1980s. The Japanese project, codenamed Go, ended before the 1981 release of the American-designed IBM PC codenamed Chess, whether IBM had waited too long to enter an industry in which Apple and others were already successful was unclear. An observer stated that IBM bringing out a computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance. Successful microcomputer company Vector Graphics fiscal 1980 revenue was $12 million, the company only sold through its internal sales force, had no experience with resellers or retail stores, and did not introduce the first product designed to work with non-IBM equipment until 1980. Another observer claimed that IBM made decisions so slowly that, when tested, as with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development. IBM had to learn how to develop, mass-produce. The potential importance to microcomputers of a company so prestigious, that a saying in American companies stated No one ever got fired for buying IBM, was nonetheless clear. InfoWorld, which described itself as The Newsweekly for Microcomputer Users, stated that for my grandmother, is far and away the media star, not because of its features, but because it exists at all. When the number eight company in the Fortune 500 enters the field, the influence of a personal computer made by a company whose name has literally come to mean computer to most of the world is hard to contemplate. The editorial acknowledged that some factions in our industry have looked upon IBM as the enemy, desktop sized programmable calculators by Hewlett Packard had evolved into the HP9830 BASIC language computer by 1972. In 1972–1973 a team led by Dr. SCAMP emulated an IBM1130 minicomputer to run APL\1130, in 1973 APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP9800 offered only BASIC
5.
International Space Station
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The International Space Station is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. Its first component launched into orbit in 1998, and the ISS is now the largest man-made body in space, the ISS consists of pressurised modules, external trusses, solar arrays, and other components. ISS components have been launched by Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets, the ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon. The ISS maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 330 and 435 km by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda module or visiting spacecraft and it completes 15.54 orbits per day. The ISS is the space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz. The station has continuously occupied for 16 years and 156 days since the arrival of Expedition 1 on 2 November 2000. This is the longest continuous presence in low Earth orbit. It has been visited by astronauts, cosmonauts and space tourists from 17 different nations, Soyuz has very limited downmass capability. The ISS programme is a joint project among five participating space agencies, NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, the ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station is divided two sections, the Russian Orbital Segment and the United States Orbital Segment, which is shared by many nations. As of January 2014, the American portion of ISS is being funded until 2024, Roscosmos has endorsed the continued operation of ISS through 2024 but has proposed using elements of the Russian Orbital Segment to construct a new Russian space station called OPSEK. On 28 March 2015, Russian sources announced that Roscosmos and NASA had agreed to collaborate on the development of a replacement for the current ISS. NASA later issued a statement expressing thanks for Russias interest in future co-operation in space exploration. According to the original Memorandum of Understanding between NASA and Rosaviakosmos, the International Space Station was intended to be a laboratory, observatory and factory in low Earth orbit. It was also planned to provide transportation, maintenance, and act as a base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars. In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, the ISS was given roles of serving commercial, diplomatic. The ISS provides a platform to conduct scientific research, the ISS simplifies individual experiments by eliminating the need for separate rocket launches and research staff
6.
Serial port
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In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time. Throughout most of the history of computers, data was transferred through serial ports to devices such as modems, terminals. Modern computers without serial ports may require serial-to-USB converters to allow compatibility with RS-232 serial devices, serial ports are still used in applications such as industrial automation systems, scientific instruments, point of sale systems and some industrial and consumer products. Server computers may use a port as a control console for diagnostics. Network equipment often use serial console for configuration, serial ports are still used in these areas as they are simple, cheap and their console functions are highly standardized and widespread. A serial port requires very little supporting software from the host system, some computers, such as the IBM PC, use an integrated circuit called a UART. This IC converts characters to and from asynchronous serial form, implementing the timing and framing of data in hardware, very low-cost systems, such as some early home computers, would instead use the CPU to send the data through an output pin, using the bit-banging technique. Early home computers often had proprietary serial ports with pinouts and voltage levels incompatible with RS-232, low-cost processors now allow higher-speed, but more complex, serial communication standards such as USB and FireWire to replace RS-232. These make it possible to connect devices that would not have operated feasibly over slower serial connections, such as storage, sound. Many personal computer motherboards still have at least one serial port, small-form-factor systems and laptops may omit RS-232 connector ports to conserve space, but the electronics are still there. RS-232 has been standard for so long that the circuits needed to control a serial port became very cheap and often exist on a single chip, sometimes also with circuitry for a parallel port. The individual signals on a serial port are unidirectional and when connecting two devices the outputs of one device must be connected to the inputs of the other, devices are divided into two categories data terminal equipment and data circuit-terminating equipment. A line that is an output on a DTE device is an input on a DCE device and vice versa so a DCE device can be connected to a DTE device with a straight wired cable, conventionally, computers and terminals are DTE while modems and peripherals are DCE. If it is necessary to connect two DTE devices a cross-over null modem, in the form of either an adapter or a cable, generally, serial port connectors are gendered, only allowing connectors to mate with a connector of the opposite gender. With D-subminiature connectors, the male connectors have protruding pins, either type of connector can be mounted on equipment or a panel, or terminate a cable. Connectors mounted on DTE are likely to be male, and those mounted on DCE are likely to be female, however, this is far from universal, for instance, most serial printers have a female DB25 connector, but they are DTEs. The desire to supply serial interface cards with two ports required that IBM reduce the size of the connector to fit onto a single card back panel, a DE-9 connector also fits onto a card with a second DB-25 connector. Starting around the time of the introduction of the IBM PC-AT, serial ports were built with a 9-pin connector to save cost
7.
Unix
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Among these is Apples macOS, which is the Unix version with the largest installed base as of 2014. Many Unix-like operating systems have arisen over the years, of which Linux is the most popular, Unix was originally meant to be a convenient platform for programmers developing software to be run on it and on other systems, rather than for non-programmer users. The system grew larger as the system started spreading in academic circles, as users added their own tools to the system. Unix was designed to be portable, multi-tasking and multi-user in a time-sharing configuration and these concepts are collectively known as the Unix philosophy. By the early 1980s users began seeing Unix as a universal operating system. Under Unix, the system consists of many utilities along with the master control program. To mediate such access, the kernel has special rights, reflected in the division between user space and kernel space, the microkernel concept was introduced in an effort to reverse the trend towards larger kernels and return to a system in which most tasks were completed by smaller utilities. In an era when a standard computer consisted of a disk for storage and a data terminal for input and output. However, modern systems include networking and other new devices, as graphical user interfaces developed, the file model proved inadequate to the task of handling asynchronous events such as those generated by a mouse. In the 1980s, non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms were augmented with Unix domain sockets, shared memory, message queues, and semaphores. In microkernel implementations, functions such as network protocols could be moved out of the kernel, Multics introduced many innovations, but had many problems. Frustrated by the size and complexity of Multics but not by the aims and their last researchers to leave Multics, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, M. D. McIlroy, and J. F. Ossanna, decided to redo the work on a much smaller scale. The name Unics, a pun on Multics, was suggested for the project in 1970. Peter H. Salus credits Peter Neumann with the pun, while Brian Kernighan claims the coining for himself, in 1972, Unix was rewritten in the C programming language. Bell Labs produced several versions of Unix that are referred to as Research Unix. In 1975, the first source license for UNIX was sold to faculty at the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science, UIUC graduate student Greg Chesson was instrumental in negotiating the terms of this license. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the influence of Unix in academic circles led to adoption of Unix by commercial startups, including Sequent, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX. In the late 1980s, AT&T Unix System Laboratories and Sun Microsystems developed System V Release 4, in the 1990s, Unix-like systems grew in popularity as Linux and BSD distributions were developed through collaboration by a worldwide network of programmers
8.
The Muppets
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The Muppets are an ensemble cast of puppet characters known for their self-aware, burlesque, and meta-referential style of variety-sketch comedy. The Muppets debuted on the television program Sam and Friends, which aired from 1955 to 1961, after appearing on skits in several late night talk shows and advertising commercials during the 1960s, the Muppets began appearing on Sesame Street in 1969. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the Muppets diversified into theatrical films, including The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper. The Walt Disney Company began involvement with the Muppets in the late 1980s, Disney acquired the rights to the Muppets in 2004, allowing the characters to gain broader public exposure than in previous years. Under Disneys control, the Muppets enjoyed revitalized success, starring in two films—The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted —as well as a primetime television series on ABC. The Muppets were created by puppeteer Jim Henson in the 1950s, beginning with Kermit the Frog, in 1955, the Muppets were introduced on Sam and Friends, a television program that aired on WRC-TV in Washington D. C. Instead, Henson utilized the natural four-sided frame of a set that viewers would already be watching through as the programs theatre. During the 1960s, the characters—notably Kermit and Rowlf the Dog—appeared on skits in several late-night talk shows and advertising commercials, Rowlf became the first Muppet with a regular spot on network television when he began appearing as Jimmy Deans sidekick on The Jimmy Dean Show. In 1966, Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett began developing a television program targeted towards children. Produced by the Childrens Television Workshop, the show debuted as Sesame Street in 1969, by the early 1970s, the Muppets continued their presence in television, namely appearing in The Land of Gorch segments during the first season of Saturday Night Live. As his involvement with Sesame Street continued, Henson mused about the possibility of creating a television series featuring the Muppets. Two pilot specials, The Muppets Valentine Show and The Muppet Show, Sex and Violence, aired on ABC in 1974 and 1975, respectively. Debuting in 1976, The Muppet Show introduced characters such as Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo and Animal, as well as showcasing regulars Kermit and Rowlf. Through its syndication, The Muppet Show became increasingly popular due to its sketch comedy variety format, unique brand of humor, the show went on to receive twenty-one Primetime Emmy Award nominations during its run, and winning four awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series in 1978. Altogether, the three films received four Academy Award nominations, by 1983, Henson had introduced another television series, Fraggle Rock, which ran on HBO in the United States until 1987. By the late 1980s, Henson entered discussions with Michael Eisner and The Walt Disney Company, in which the latter would acquire Jim Henson Productions and in turn, Disney was interested in purchasing the company for $150 million. In addition to the company and Muppet characters, Eisner expressed a desire to include the Sesame Street characters as part of the acquisition, Henson, declined the proposal, however, consistently referring to such a motive as a non-starter for the deal. As discussions between the two continued, Henson and Walt Disney Imagineering preemptively began developing Muppet-themed attractions for the Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World
9.
PDP-10
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The PDP-10 is a discontinued mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1966 into the 1980s. The PDP-10 architecture is almost identical to the earlier PDP-6 architecture, sharing the same 36-bit word length and its main operating systems, TOPS-10 and TENEX, were used to build out the early ARPANET. For these reasons, the PDP-10 looms large in early hacker folklore, projects to extend the PDP-10 line were eclipsed by the success of the unrelated VAX superminicomputer, and the cancellation of the PDP-10 line was announced in 1983. The original PDP-10 processor is the KA10, introduced in 1968 and it uses discrete transistors packaged in DECs Flip-Chip technology, with backplanes wire wrapped via a semi-automated manufacturing process. Its cycle time is 1 μs and its add time 2.1 μs, in 1973, the KA10 was replaced by the KI10, which uses TTL SSI. This was joined in 1975 by the higher-performance KL10, which is built from ECL, microprogrammed, a smaller, less expensive model, the KS10, was introduced in 1978, using TTL and Am2901 bit-slice components and including the PDP-11 Unibus to connect peripherals. The KA10 has a main memory capacity of 256 kilowords. As supplied by DEC, it did not include paging hardware and this allows each half of a users address space to be limited to a set section of main memory, designated by the base physical address and size. This allows the model of separate read-only shareable code segment and read-write data/stack segment used by TOPS-10 and later adopted by Unix. Some KA10 machines, first at MIT, and later at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, were modified to add memory and support for demand paging. The KI10 and later processors offer paged memory management, and also support a physical address space of 4 megawords. KI10 models include 1060,1070 and 1077, the latter incorporating two CPUs, the original KL10 PDP-10 models use the original PDP-10 memory bus, with external memory modules. Module in this meant a cabinet, dimensions roughly 30 x 75 x 30 in. with a capacity of 32 to 256 kWords of magnetic core memory. The processors used in the DECSYSTEM-20, commonly but incorrectly called KL20, use internal memory, the 10xx models also have different packaging, they come in the original tall PDP-10 cabinets, rather than the short ones used later on for the DECSYSTEM-20. In particular, all ARPAnet TOPS-20 systems had an I/O bus because the AN20 IMP interface was an I/O bus device, both could run either TOPS-10 or TOPS-20 microcode and thus the corresponding operating system. The I/O architecture of the 20xx series KL machines is based on a DEC bus design called the MASSbus, CompuServe for one, designed its own alternative disk controller that could operate on the MASSbus, but connect to IBM style 3330 disk subsystems. Model A and Model B KL10 processors can be thought of as being different CPUs, the first operating system that took advantage of the Model Bs capabilities was TOPS-20 release 3, and user mode extended addressing was offered in TOPS-20 release 4. TOPS-20 versions after release 4.1 would only run on a Model B, TOPS-10 versions 7.02 and 7.03 also use extended addressing when run on a 1090 Model B processor running TOPS-20 microcode
10.
Computer hardware
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Computer hardware is the collection of physical components that constitute a computer system. By contrast, software is instructions that can be stored and run by hardware, hardware is directed by the software to execute any command or instruction. A combination of hardware and software forms a usable computing system, the template for all modern computers is the Von Neumann architecture, detailed in a 1945 paper by Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann. The meaning of the term has evolved to mean a stored-program computer in which an instruction fetch and this is referred to as the Von Neumann bottleneck and often limits the performance of the system. For the third year, U. S. business-to-business channel sales increased. The impressive growth was the fastest sales increase since the end of the recession, sales growth accelerated in the second half of the year peaking in fourth quarter with a 6.9 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2012. There are a number of different types of system in use today. The personal computer, also known as the PC, is one of the most common types of computer due to its versatility, laptops are generally very similar, although they may use lower-power or reduced size components, thus lower performance. The computer case is a plastic or metal enclosure that houses most of the components, a case can be either big or small, but the form factor of motherboard for which it is designed matters more. A power supply unit converts alternating current electric power to low-voltage DC power for the components of the computer. Laptops are capable of running from a battery, normally for a period of hours. The motherboard is the component of a computer. It is usually cooled by a heatsink and fan, or water-cooling system, most newer CPUs include an on-die Graphics Processing Unit. The clock speed of CPUs governs how fast it executes instructions, many modern computers have the option to overclock the CPU which enhances performance at the expense of greater thermal output and thus a need for improved cooling. The chipset, which includes the bridge, mediates communication between the CPU and the other components of the system, including main memory. Random-Access Memory, which stores the code and data that are being accessed by the CPU. For example, when a web browser is opened on the computer it takes up memory, RAM usually comes on DIMMs in the sizes 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, but can be much larger. Read-Only Memory, which stores the BIOS that runs when the computer is powered on or otherwise begins execution, the BIOS includes boot firmware and power management firmware
11.
BASIC
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BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use. In 1964, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed the original BASIC language at Dartmouth College in the U. S. state of New Hampshire and they wanted to enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, versions of BASIC became widespread on microcomputers in the mid-1970s and 1980s. Microcomputers usually shipped with BASIC, often in the machines firmware, having an easy-to-learn language on these early personal computers allowed small business owners, professionals, hobbyists, and consultants to develop custom software on computers they could afford. In the 2010s, BASIC remains popular in many computing dialects and in new languages influenced by BASIC, before the mid-1960s, the only computers were huge mainframe computers. Users submitted jobs on punched cards or similar media to specialist computer operators, the computer stored these, then used a batch processing system to run this queue of jobs one after another, allowing very high levels of utilization of these expensive machines. As the performance of computing hardware rose through the 1960s, multi-processing was developed and this allowed a mix of batch jobs to be run together, but the real revolution was the development of time-sharing. The original BASIC language was released on May 1,1964 by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, the acronym BASIC comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz. BASIC was designed to allow students to write computer programs for the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. It was intended specifically for technical users who did not have or want the mathematical background previously expected. Being able to use a computer to support teaching and research was quite novel at the time, the language was based on FORTRAN II, with some influences from ALGOL60 and with additions to make it suitable for timesharing. Wanting use of the language to become widespread, its designers made the available free of charge. They also made it available to schools in the Hanover area. In the following years, as dialects of BASIC appeared, Kemeny. A version was a part of the Pick operating system from 1973 onward. During this period a number of computer games were written in BASIC. A number of these were collected by DEC employee David H. Ahl and he later collected a number of these into book form,101 BASIC Computer Games, published in 1973. During the same period, Ahl was involved in the creation of a computer for education use
12.
Macintosh
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The Macintosh (/ˈmækᵻntɒʃ/ MAK-in-tosh, is a series of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh computer on January 24,1984 and this was the companys first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse. This first model was renamed to Macintosh 128k for uniqueness amongst a populous family of subsequently updated models which are also based on Apples same proprietary architecture. Since 1998, Apple has largely phased out the Macintosh name in favor of Mac, Macintosh systems still found success in education and desktop publishing and kept Apple as the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade. In the 1990s, improvements in the rival Wintel platform, notably with the introduction of Windows 3.0, then Windows 95, gradually took market share from the more expensive Macintosh systems. The performance advantage of 68000-based Macintosh systems was eroded by Intels Pentium, even after a transition to the superior PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line in 1994, the falling prices of commodity PC components and the release of Windows 95 saw the Macintosh user base decline. In 1998, after the return of Steve Jobs, Apple consolidated its multiple consumer-level desktop models into the all-in-one iMac G3, since their transition to Intel processors in 2006, the complete lineup is entirely based on said processors and associated systems. Its current lineup comprises three desktops, and three laptops and its Xserve server was discontinued in 2011 in favor of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. Apple also develops the operating system for the Mac, currently macOS version 10.12 Sierra, Macs are currently capable of running non-Apple operating systems such as Linux, OpenBSD, and Microsoft Windows with the aid of Boot Camp or third-party software. Apple does not license macOS for use on computers, though it did license previous versions of the classic Mac OS through their Macintosh clone program from 1995 to 1997. The Macintosh project was begun in 1979 by Jef Raskin, an Apple employee who envisioned an easy-to-use, in 1978 Apple began to organize the Apple Lisa project, aiming to build a next-generation machine similar to an advanced Apple III or the yet-to-be-introduced IBM PC. In 1979, Steve Jobs learned of the work on graphical user interfaces taking place at Xerox PARC. He arranged a deal in which Xerox received Apple stock options in return for which Apple would license their designs, the basic layout of the Lisa was largely complete by 1982, at which point Jobs continual suggestions for improvements led to him being kicked off the project. At the same time that the Lisa was becoming a GUI machine in 1979, the design at that time was for a low-cost, easy-to-use machine for the average consumer. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979 and his initial team would eventually consist of himself, Howard, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, and Bud Tribble. Smiths design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 kB by means of soldering sixteen IC sockets to accept 256 kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final products screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel monochrome display, burrels innovative design, combining the low production cost of an Apple II with the computing power of Lisas Motorola 68000 CPU, began to receive Jobs attentions
