1.
Video game
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A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word video in video game referred to a raster display device. Some theorists categorize video games as an art form, but this designation is controversial, the electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms, examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers to small handheld computing devices, the input device used for games, the game controller, varies across platforms. Common controllers include gamepads, joysticks, mouse devices, keyboards, the touchscreens of mobile devices, and buttons, or even, with the Kinect sensor, a persons hands and body. Players typically view the game on a screen or television or computer monitor, or sometimes on virtual reality head-mounted display goggles. There are often game sound effects, music and, in the 2010s, some games in the 2000s include haptic, vibration-creating effects, force feedback peripherals and virtual reality headsets. In the 2010s, the game industry is of increasing commercial importance, with growth driven particularly by the emerging Asian markets and mobile games. As of 2015, video games generated sales of USD74 billion annually worldwide, early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a Cathode ray tube Amusement Device was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U. S. Written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanens on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961, and the hit ping pong-style Pong, used the DEC PDP-1s vector display to have two spaceships battle each other. In 1971, Computer Space, created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was the first commercially sold and it used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. The game was featured in the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green, Computer Space was followed in 1972 by the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console. Modeled after a late 1960s prototype console developed by Ralph H. Baer called the Brown Box and these were followed by two versions of Ataris Pong, an arcade version in 1972 and a home version in 1975 that dramatically increased video game popularity. The commercial success of Pong led numerous other companies to develop Pong clones and their own systems, the game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants, and convenience stores. The game also became the subject of articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines. Space Invaders was soon licensed for the Atari VCS, becoming the first killer app, the term platform refers to the specific combination of electronic components or computer hardware which, in conjunction with software, allows a video game to operate. The term system is commonly used
2.
Pong
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Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games and the first sports arcade video game. It is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade games such as Computer Space came before it. The game was manufactured by Atari, which released it in 1972. Allan Alcorn created Pong as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Bushnell based the idea on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, which later resulted in a lawsuit against Atari. Surprised by the quality of Alcorns work, Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney decided to manufacture the game, soon after its release, several companies began producing games that copied Pongs gameplay, and eventually released new types of games. As a result, Atari encouraged its staff to more innovative games. The company released several sequels that built upon the gameplay by adding new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a version of Pong exclusively through Sears retail stores. It was also a success and led to numerous copies. The game has been remade on numerous home and portable platforms following its release, Pong has been referenced and parodied in multiple television shows and video games, and has been a part of several video game and cultural exhibitions. Pong is a sports game that simulates table tennis. Players use the paddles to hit a back and forth. The aim is for player to reach eleven points before the opponent. Pong was the first game developed by Atari, after producing Computer Space, Bushnell decided to form a company to produce more games by licensing ideas to other companies. The first contract was with Bally Manufacturing Corporation for a driving game, soon after the founding, Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn because of his experience with electrical engineering and computer science, Bushnell and Dabney also had previously worked with him at Ampex. Prior to working at Atari, Alcorn had no experience with video games, to acclimate Alcorn to creating games, Bushnell gave him a project secretly meant to be a warm-up exercise. Bushnell told Alcorn that he had a contract with General Electric for a product, in 2011, Bushnell stated that the game was inspired by previous versions of electronic tennis he had played before, Bushnell played a version on a PDP-1 computer in 1964 while attending college
3.
Spacewar!
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It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After its initial creation, Spacewar was expanded further by students and employees of universities in the area, including Dan Edwards. It was also spread to many of the few dozen, primarily academic, installations of the PDP-1 computer, the game features two spaceships, the needle and the wedge, engaged in a dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Both ships are controlled by human players, each ship has limited fuel for maneuvering and a limited number of torpedoes, and the ships follow Newtonian physics, remaining in motion even when the player is not accelerating. Flying near the star to provide a gravity assist was a common tactic, ships are destroyed when hit with a torpedo or colliding with the star. At any time, the player can engage a hyperspace feature to move to a new, random location on the screen, though each use has an increasing chance of destroying the ship instead. The game was controlled with switches on the PDP-1, though Alan Kotok and Bob Saunders built an early gamepad to reduce the difficulty. Spacewar is one of the most important and influential games in the history of video games. It was extremely popular in the programming community in the 1960s and was widely ported to other computer systems at the time. It has also been recreated in more programming languages for PDP-1 emulators. It directly inspired many other games, such as the first commercial arcade games, Galaxy Game and Computer Space. In 2007, Spacewar was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time and we had this brand new PDP-1, Steve Russell told Rolling Stone in a 1972 interview. Somebody had built some little pattern-generating programs which made interesting patterns like a kaleidoscope, here was this display that could do all sorts of good things. So we started talking about it, figuring what would be interesting displays and we decided that probably you could make a two-dimensional maneuvering sort of thing, and decided that naturally the obvious thing to do was spaceships. The ships fire torpedoes, which are not affected by the pull of the star. The ships have a number of torpedoes and a limited supply of fuel. Torpedoes are fired one at a time by flipping a switch on the computer or pressing a button on the control pad. The ships follow Newtonian physics, remaining in motion even when the player is not accelerating, each player controls one of the ships and must attempt to shoot down the other ship while avoiding a collision with the star
4.
PLATO (computer system)
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PLATO was the first generalized computer-assisted instruction system. Starting in 1960, it ran on the University of Illinois ILLIAC I computer, by the late 1970s, it supported several thousand graphics terminals distributed worldwide, running on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. PLATO was designed and built by the University of Illinois and functioned for four decades, offering coursework to UIUC students, local schools, courses were taught in a range of subjects, including Latin, chemistry, education and primary mathematics. Rights to market PLATO as a product were licensed by Control Data Corporation. CDC President William Norris planned to make PLATO a force in the computer world, PLATO nevertheless built a strong following in certain markets, and the last production PLATO system did not shut down until 2006, coincidentally just a month after Norris died. Bill that provided free education to World War II veterans, higher education was limited to a minority of the US population. The trend towards greater enrollment was notable by the early 1950s, to wit, if computerized automation increased factory production, it could do the same for academic instruction. The USSRs 1957 launching of the Sputnik I artificial satellite energized the United States government into spending more on science, after weeks of meetings they were unable to agree on a single design. Before conceding failure, Alpert mentioned the matter to laboratory assistant Donald Bitzer, Bitzer, regarded as the Father of PLATO, recognized that in order to provide quality computer-based education, good graphics were critical. This at a time when 10-character-per-second teleprinters were the norm, in 1960, the first system, PLATO I, operated on the local ILLIAC I computer. It included a set for display and a special keyboard for navigating the systems function menus, PLATO II, in 1961. The only remote PLATO III terminal was located near the capitol in Springfield. It was connected to the PLATO III system by a video connection, accordingly, in 1967 the National Science Foundation granted the team steady funding, allowing Alpert to set up the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory at the university. In 1972 a new system named PLATO IV was ready for operation, the PLATO IV terminal was a major innovation. It included Bitzers orange plasma display invention which incorporated both memory and bitmapped graphics into one display and this plasma display included fast vector line drawing capability and ran at 1260 baud, rendering 60 lines or 180 characters per second. The display was a 512×512 bitmap, with character and vector plotting done by hardwired logic. Users could provide their own characters to support rudimentary bitmap graphics, compressed air powered a piston-driven microfiche image selector that permitted colored images to be projected on the back of the screen under program control. The PLATO IV display also included a 16×16 grid infrared touch panel allowing students to answer questions by touching anywhere on the screen and it was also possible to connect the terminal to peripheral devices
5.
Arcade cabinet
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A video game arcade cabinet, also known as a video arcade machine or video coin-op, is the housing within which a video arcade games hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the JAMMA wiring standard, some include additional connectors for features not included in the standard. Note, Because arcade cabinets vary according to the games they were built for or contain, they may not possess all of the parts listed below, A monitor. They may display either raster or vector graphics, raster being most common, standard resolution is between 262.5 and 315 vertical lines, depending on the refresh rate. Slower refresh rates allow for better vertical resolution, monitors may be oriented horizontally or vertically, depending on the game. Some games use more than one monitor, some newer cabinets have monitors that can display high-definition video. Printed circuit boards or arcade system boards, the actual hardware upon which the game runs, some systems, such as the SNK Neo-Geo MVS, use a main board with game carts. Some main boards may hold multiple game carts as well, a power supply to provide DC power to the arcade system boards and low voltage lighting for the coin slots and lighted buttons. A marquee, a sign above the monitor displaying the games title and they are often brightly colored and backlit. A bezel, which is the border around the monitor and it may contain instructions or artwork. A control panel, a surface near the monitor, upon which the games controls are arranged. Control panels sometimes have playing instructions, players often pile their coins or tokens on the control panels of upright and cocktail cabinets. Coin slots, coin returns and the box, which allow for the exchange of money or tokens. They are usually below the control panel, very often, translucent red plastic buttons are placed in between the coin return and the coin slot. When they are pressed, a coin or token that has become jammed in the mechanism is returned to the player. Early coin slots could be defeated using a gas fire or gas oven igniter held against the steel bodywork of the cabinet. In some arcades, the slot is replaced with a card reader that reads data from a game card bought from the arcade operator. The sides of the cabinet are usually decorated with brightly coloured stickers or paint
6.
Star Trek: The Original Series
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Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise and its crew. It later acquired the retronym of Star Trek, The Original Series to distinguish the show within the franchise that it began. The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, roughly during the 2260s, the ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk, first officer and science officer Spock, and chief medical officer Leonard McCoy. Shatners voice-over introduction during each episodes opening credits stated the purpose, Space. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise and its five-year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. The series was produced from September 1966 to December 1967 by Norway Productions and Desilu Productions, Star Trek aired on NBC from September 8,1966 to June 3,1969 and was actually seen first on September 6,1966, on Canadas CTV network. Star Treks Nielsen ratings while on NBC were low, and the network cancelled it after three seasons and 79 episodes. Several years later, the became a bona fide hit in broadcast syndication, remaining so throughout the 1970s, achieving cult classic status. The series contains significant elements of Space Western, as described by Gene Roddenberry, on March 11,1964, Gene Roddenberry, a long-time fan of science fiction, drafted a short treatment for a science-fiction television series that he called Star Trek. This was to be set on board a large interstellar spaceship S. S. Yorktown in the 23rd century, whose crew was dedicated to exploring a small portion of our galaxy. Some of the influences on his idea that Roddenberry noted included A. E. van Vogts tales of the spaceship Space Beagle, Eric Frank Russells Marathon series of stories, and the film Forbidden Planet. Roddenberry also drew heavily from C. S. Foresters Horatio Hornblower novels that depict a sea captain who exercises broad discretionary authority on distant sea missions of noble purpose. Roddenberry often humorously referred to Captain Kirk as Horatio Hornblower in Space, Roddenberry had extensive experience in writing for series about the Old West that had been popular television fare earlier in the 1960s and the 1950s. Armed with this background, the first draft deliberately characterizes the new show as Wagon Train to the stars. Like the familiar Wagon Train, each episode was to be an adventure story, set within the overarching structure of a continuing journey. With the notable exception of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, all future television, in Roddenberrys original concept, the protagonist was Captain Robert April of the starship S. S. Yorktown. This character was developed into Captain Christopher Pike, first portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter, in April 1964, Roddenberry presented the Star Trek draft to Desilu Productions, a leading independent television production company. He met with Herb Solow, Desilus Director of Production, Solow saw promise in the idea and signed a three-year program-development contract with Roddenberry
7.
Dungeons & Dragons
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Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997 and it was derived from miniature wargames with a variation of the Chainmail game serving as the initial rule system. D&Ds publication is commonly recognized as the beginning of modern role-playing games, D&D departs from traditional wargaming and assigns each player a specific character to play instead of a military formation. These characters embark upon imaginary adventures within a fantasy setting, a Dungeon Master serves as the games referee and storyteller, while maintaining the setting in which the adventures occur and playing the role of the inhabitants. The characters form a party that interacts with the settings inhabitants, together they solve dilemmas, engage in battles and gather treasure and knowledge. In the process the characters experience points to become increasingly powerful over a series of sessions. The early success of Dungeons & Dragons led to a proliferation of game systems. Despite this competition, D&D remains the leader in the role-playing game industry. In 1977, the game was split into two branches, the relatively rules-light game system of Dungeons & Dragons and the more structured, AD&D 2nd Edition was published in 1989. In 2000, the line of the game was discontinued. These rules formed the basis of the d20 System which is available under the Open Game License for use by other publishers, Dungeons & Dragons version 3.5 was released in June 2003, with a 4th edition in June 2008. A 5th edition was released during the half of 2014. The game has been supplemented by many adventures as well as commercial campaign settings suitable for use by regular gaming groups. The game has won awards and has been translated into many languages beyond the original English. Dungeons & Dragons is a structured yet open-ended role-playing game and it is normally played indoors with the participants seated around a tabletop. Typically, each player only a single character, which represents an individual in a fictional setting. During the course of play, each player directs the actions of their character, a game often continues over a series of meetings to complete a single adventure, and longer into a series of related gaming adventures, called a campaign. The results of the choices and the overall storyline for the game are determined by the Dungeon Master according to the rules of the game
8.
University of New Hampshire
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The University of New Hampshire is a public research university in the University System of New Hampshire, in the United States. The universitys Durham campus, comprising six colleges, is located in the Seacoast region of the state, a seventh college, the University of New Hampshire at Manchester, occupies the universitys campus in Manchester, the states largest city. The University of New Hampshire School of Law, known as the Franklin Pierce Law Center until 2010, is located in Concord, the University of New Hampshire was founded and incorporated in 1866, as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College. In 1893, UNH moved to Durham, with over 15,000 students between its Durham, Manchester, and Concord campuses, UNH is the largest university in the state. The university is one of only nine land, sea and space grant institutions in the nation, since July 1,2007, Mark W. Huddleston has served as the universitys 19th president. The Morrill Act of 1862 granted federal lands to New Hampshire for the establishment of an agricultural-mechanical college, in 1866, the university was first incorporated as the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts in Hanover, New Hampshire, in association with Dartmouth College. The institution was officially associated with Dartmouth College and was directed by Dartmouths president, Durham resident Benjamin Thompson left his farm and assets to the state for the establishment of an agricultural college. On January 30,1890, Benjamin Thompson died and his will became public, on March 5,1891 Gov. Hiram Americus Tuttle signed an act accepting the conditions of Thompsons will. On April 10,1891, Gov. Tuttle signed a bill authorizing the colleges move to Durham, New Hampshire. In 1892, the Board of Trustees hired Charles Eliot to draw a plan for the first five campus buildings, Thompson, Conant, Nesmith, and Hewitt Shops. Eliot visited Durham and worked for three months to create a plan prior to the move to Durham, the Class of 1892, excited about the pending move to Durham, held commencement exercises in an unfinished barn on the Durham campus. On April 18,1892, the Board of Trustees voted to authorize the faculty to all the arrangements for the packing. In fall 1893, classes began in Durham with 51 freshmen and 13 upperclassmen. Graduate study was established in fall 1893 for the first time. The number of students and the lack of funds for dormitories caused a housing crunch. The lack of housing caused difficulty for attracting women to the university, in 1908, construction on Smith Hall, the first womens dorm, was completed using private and state funds. Prior to the construction of Fairchild Hall in 1915 for male students,50 freshmen lived in the basement of DeMerritt Hall, with the continuing housing shortage for men, the administration encouraged the growth of the UNH Greek system. From the late 1910s through the 1930s, the fraternity system expanded and provided room, in 1923, Gov. Fred Herbert Brown signed a bill changing the name of the college to University of New Hampshire
9.
PDP-11
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The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 had several innovative features, and was easier to program than its predecessors through the additional general-purpose registers. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold and its successor in the mid-range minicomputer niche was the 32-bit VAX-11, named as a nod to the PDP-11s popularity. The PDP-11 is considered by experts to be the most popular minicomputer ever. Design features of the PDP-11 influenced the design of most late-1970s computer systems including the Intel x86, design features of PDP-11 operating systems, as well as other operating systems from Digital Equipment, influenced the design of other operating systems such as CP/M and hence also MS-DOS. For a decade, the PDP-11 was the smallest system that could run Unix and it is commonly stated that the C programming language took advantage of several low-level PDP-11–dependent programming features, albeit not originally by design. In 1967–68, DEC engineers designed a 16-bit, word-addressed machine, management cancelled the project and some of the engineers later left DEC and produced it as the Data General Nova. A subsequent effort, code-named Desk Calculator, looked at a variety of options before choosing what became the 16-bit PDP-11, DECs previous PDP-8 and PDP-9 had 12- and 18-bit words, the PDP-11 family was announced in January 1970 and shipments began early that year. DEC sold over 170,000 PDP-11s in the 1970s, initially manufactured of small-scale transistor–transistor logic, a single-board large scale integration version of the processor was developed in 1975. A two-or-three-chip processor, the J-11 was developed in 1979, the last models of the PDP-11 line were the PDP-11/94 and -11/93 introduced in 1990. The PDP-11 processor architecture has an orthogonal instruction set. For example, instead of such as load and store. More complex instructions such as add likewise can have memory, register, input, most operands can apply any of eight addressing modes to eight registers. The addressing modes provide register, immediate, absolute, relative, deferred, and indexed addressing, use of relative addressing lets a machine-language program be position-independent. Early models of the PDP-11 had no dedicated bus for input/output, an input/output device determined the memory addresses to which it would respond, and specified its own interrupt vector and interrupt priority. DEC openly published the basic Unibus specifications, even offering prototyping bus interface circuit boards, the Unibus made the PDP-11 suitable for custom peripherals. Higher-performance members of the PDP-11 family, starting with the PDP-11/45 Unibus and 11/83 Q-bus systems, instead, memory was interfaced by dedicated circuitry and space in the CPU cabinet, while the Unibus continued to be used for I/O only
10.
Commodore PET
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The Commodore PET is a line of home/personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. The first model, which was named the PET2001, was the personal computer ever made available to retail consumers, after the Apple II. In the 1970s Commodore was one of many companies selling calculators designed around Dallas-based Texas Instruments chips. Commodore responded to this by searching for a set they could purchase outright. At Commodore, Peddle convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead-end, in September 1976 Peddle got a demonstration of Jobs and Wozniaks Apple II prototype, when Jobs was offering to sell it to Commodore, but Commodore considered Jobs offer too expensive. Tramiel demanded that Peddle, Bill Seiler, and John Feagans create a computer in time for the June 1977 Consumer Electronics Show, tramiels son, Leonard, helped design the PETSCII graphic characters and acted as quality control. The result was the first all-in-one home computer, the PET and its 6502 processor controlled the screen, keyboard, cassette tape recorders and any peripherals connected to one of the computers several expansion ports. The machine also included a built-in Datasette for data storage located on the front of the case, the data transfer rate to cassette tape was 1500 baud, but the data was recorded to tape twice for safety, giving an effective rate of 750 baud. The PET2001 was announced at the Winter CES in January 1977, however, the PET was back-ordered for months and to ease deliveries, early in 1978 Commodore decided to cancel the 4 kB version. However, this took six months to finally happen, during which time Microsoft lost money. At the end of the year, the company was saved by Apples decision to license Microsoft BASIC for the Apple II line. The key tops also tended to rub off easily, reliability was fairly poor, although that was not atypical of many early microcomputers. Because of the keyboard on the PET, external replacement ones quickly appeared. On the other hand, Commodore was a year behind Apple, in 1979, Commodore replaced the original PET2001 with an improved model known as the 2001-N. The new machine used a standard green-phosphor monitor in place of the blue in the original 2001. It now had a conventional, full-sized keyboard and no longer sported the built-in cassette recorder, the kernel ROM was upgraded to add support for Commodores newly introduced disk drive line. It was offered in 8kB, 16kB, or 32kB models as the 2001-N8, 2001-N16, the 2001-N switched to using conventional DRAM instead of the 6550 SRAM in the original model. PET 2001-8Ns had eight 2108 DRAMs and 2001-16Ns used sixteen 2108s, the PET4016 used eight 4116 chips
11.
Atari ST
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The Atari ST is a line of home computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial ST model, the 520ST, saw limited release in April-June 1985 and was available in July. The Atari ST is the first personal computer to come with a bitmapped color GUI, the 1040ST, released in 1986, is the first personal computer to ship with a megabyte of RAM in the base configuration and also the first with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than US$1. The Atari ST is part of a generation of home computers that have 16 or 32-bit processors,256 KiB or more of RAM. It includes the Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Apple IIGS, and, in certain markets, ST officially stands for Sixteen/Thirty-two, which refers to the Motorola 68000s 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals. The ST was sold with either Ataris color or monochrome monitor, the systems color graphics modes were only available on the color monitor, while the highest resolution mode needed the monochrome monitor. In some markets, particularly Germany, the machine gained a foothold as a small business machine for CAD. Thanks to its built-in MIDI ports, the ST enjoyed success for running music-sequencer software, the ST was superseded by the Atari STE, Atari TT, Atari MEGA STE, and Falcon computers. The Atari ST was born from the rivalry between home-computer makers Atari, Inc. and Commodore International, when his idea was rejected, Miner left Atari to form a small think tank called Hi-Toro in 1982 and began designing the new Lorraine chipset. The company, which was later renamed Amiga Corporation, was pretending to sell video game controllers to deceive competition while it developed a Lorraine-based computer, Amiga ran out of capital to complete Lorraines development, and Atari, owned by Warner Communications, paid Amiga to continue development work. In return Atari received exclusive use of the Lorraine design for one year as a game console. After one year Atari would have the right to add a keyboard and market the complete computer, as Atari was heavily involved with Disney at the time, it was later code-named Mickey, and the 256K memory expansion board was codenamed Minnie. After leaving Commodore International in January 1984, Jack Tramiel formed Tramel Technology with his sons and other employees and, in April. The company initially considered the National Semiconductor NS320xx microprocessor but was disappointed with its performance and this started the move to the 68000. Tramiel learned that Warner wanted to sell Atari which, in mid-1984, was losing about a million dollars per day, interested in Ataris overseas manufacturing and worldwide distribution network for his new computer, Tramiel negotiated with Warner in May and June 1984. He secured funding and bought Ataris Consumer Division in July, as executives and engineers left Commodore to join Tramiels new Atari Corporation, Commodore responded by filing lawsuits against four former engineers for theft of trade secrets. This company was originally called TTL, later renamed to Atari Corp, at the time of the purchase of Atari Incs assets, there were roughly 900 employees remaining from a high point of 10,000. After the interviews, approximately 100 employees were hired to work at Atari Corp, Amiga Corp. had sought more monetary support from investors in spring 1984
12.
MIDI
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A single MIDI link can carry up to sixteen channels of information, each of which can be routed to a separate device. These messages are sent via a MIDI cable to other devices where they control sound generation, a simple example of a MIDI setup is the use of a MIDI controller such as an electronic musical keyboard to trigger sounds created by a sound module. This MIDI data can also be recorded into a hardware or software device called a sequencer, advantages of MIDI include compactness, ease of modification and manipulation and a wide choice of electronic instruments and synthesizer or digitally-sampled sounds. MIDI technology was standardized in 1983 by a panel of industry representatives. In June 1981, Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi proposed the idea of standardization to Oberheim Electronics founder Tom Oberheim, in October 1981, Kakehashi, Oberheim and Smith discussed the idea with representatives from Yamaha, Korg and Kawai. Smith proposed this standard at the Audio Engineering Society show in November 1981, MIDIs development was announced to the public by Robert Moog, in the October 1982 edition of Keyboard magazine. By the time of the January 1983 Winter NAMM Show, Smith was able to demonstrate a MIDI connection between his Prophet 600 analog synthesizer and a Roland JP-6, the MIDI Specification was published in August 1983. The MIDI standard was unveiled by Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith, MIDIs appeal was originally limited to professional musicians and record producers who wanted to use electronic instruments in the production of popular music. The standard allowed different instruments to speak with other and with computers. This interoperability allowed one device to be controlled from another, which reduced the amount of hardware musicians needed to own, MIDIs introduction coincided with the dawn of the personal computer era and the introductions of samplers and digital synthesizers. The creative possibilities brought about by MIDI technology have been credited as having helped to revive the industry in the 1980s. MIDI introduced many capabilities which transformed the way musicians work, MIDI sequencing made it possible for a user with no notation skills to build complex arrangements. A musical act with as few as one or two members, each operating multiple MIDI-enabled devices, could deliver a performance which sounds similar to that of a larger group of musicians. By performing preproduction in an environment, an artist can reduce recording costs by arriving at a recording studio with a song that is already partially completed and worked out. Educational technology enabled by MIDI has transformed music education and those new to the subject of MIDI might confuse it with digital audio. MIDI symbolically represents a note, whereas digital audio represents the sound produced by the note, MIDI was invented so that musical instruments could communicate with each other and so that one instrument can control another. Analog synthesizers that have no digital component and were built prior to MIDIs development can be retrofit with kits that convert MIDI messages into analog control voltages. When a note is played on a MIDI instrument, it generates a signal that can be used to trigger a note on another instrument
