1.
Xerox
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Xerox Corporation /ˈzɪərɒks/ is an American global corporation that sells document solutions and services, and document technology products in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, though its largest population of employees is based around Rochester, New York, the company purchased Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion in early 2010. As a large developed company, it is placed in the list of Fortune 500 companies. Xerox completed the separation of Conduent Incorporated effective on Dec.31,2016, creating two market-leading, publicly- traded companies. In connection with the spin-off, Xerox received a transfer from Conduent of $1.8 billion. Xerox continues to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “XRX”, researchers at Xerox and its Palo Alto Research Center invented several important elements of personal computing, such as the desktop metaphor GUI, the computer mouse and desktop computing. These concepts were frowned upon by the board of directors. The concepts were adopted by Apple and, later, Microsoft, with the help of these innovations, Apple and Microsoft came to dominate the personal computing revolution of the 1980s, whereas Xerox was not a major player. Xerox was founded in 1906 in Rochester as The Haloid Photographic Company, in 1938 Chester Carlson, a physicist working independently, invented a process for printing images using an electrically charged photoconductor-coated metal plate and dry powder toner. However, it would more than 20 years of refinement before the first automated machine to make copies was commercialized, using a document feeder, scanning light. Wilson, credited as the founder of Xerox, took over Haloid from his father and he saw the promise of Carlsons invention and, in 1946, signed an agreement to develop it as a commercial product. Wilson remained as President/CEO of Xerox until 1967 and served as Chairman until his death in 1971, looking for a term to differentiate its new system, Haloid coined the term Xerography from two Greek roots meaning dry writing. Haloid subsequently changed its name to Haloid Xerox in 1958 and then Xerox Corporation in 1961, before releasing the 914, Xerox tested the market by introducing a developed version of the prototype hand-operated equipment known as the Flat-plate 1385. The 1385 was not actually a viable copier because of its speed of operation and it was little more than a high quality, commercially available plate camera mounted as a horizontal rostrum camera, complete with photo-flood lighting and timer. The glass film/plate had been replaced with an aluminum plate. Clever electrics turned this into a developing and reusable substitute for film. A skilled user could produce fast, paper and metal printing plates of a higher quality than almost any other method, having started as a supplier to the offset lithography duplicating industry, Xerox now set its sights on capturing some of offsets market share. The 1385 was followed by the first automatic xerographic printer, the Copyflo, the Copyflo was a large microfilm printer which could produce positive prints on roll paper from any type of microfilm negative
2.
Operating system
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An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing
3.
Central processing unit
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The computer industry has used the term central processing unit at least since the early 1960s. The form, design and implementation of CPUs have changed over the course of their history, most modern CPUs are microprocessors, meaning they are contained on a single integrated circuit chip. An IC that contains a CPU may also contain memory, peripheral interfaces, some computers employ a multi-core processor, which is a single chip containing two or more CPUs called cores, in that context, one can speak of such single chips as sockets. Array processors or vector processors have multiple processors that operate in parallel, there also exists the concept of virtual CPUs which are an abstraction of dynamical aggregated computational resources. Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be rewired to perform different tasks. Since the term CPU is generally defined as a device for software execution, the idea of a stored-program computer was already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchlys ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that it could be finished sooner. On June 30,1945, before ENIAC was made, mathematician John von Neumann distributed the paper entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and it was the outline of a stored-program computer that would eventually be completed in August 1949. EDVAC was designed to perform a number of instructions of various types. Significantly, the programs written for EDVAC were to be stored in high-speed computer memory rather than specified by the wiring of the computer. This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC, which was the considerable time, with von Neumanns design, the program that EDVAC ran could be changed simply by changing the contents of the memory. Early CPUs were custom designs used as part of a larger, however, this method of designing custom CPUs for a particular application has largely given way to the development of multi-purpose processors produced in large quantities. This standardization began in the era of discrete transistor mainframes and minicomputers and has accelerated with the popularization of the integrated circuit. The IC has allowed increasingly complex CPUs to be designed and manufactured to tolerances on the order of nanometers, both the miniaturization and standardization of CPUs have increased the presence of digital devices in modern life far beyond the limited application of dedicated computing machines. Modern microprocessors appear in electronic devices ranging from automobiles to cellphones, the so-called Harvard architecture of the Harvard Mark I, which was completed before EDVAC, also utilized a stored-program design using punched paper tape rather than electronic memory. Relays and vacuum tubes were used as switching elements, a useful computer requires thousands or tens of thousands of switching devices. The overall speed of a system is dependent on the speed of the switches, tube computers like EDVAC tended to average eight hours between failures, whereas relay computers like the Harvard Mark I failed very rarely. In the end, tube-based CPUs became dominant because the significant speed advantages afforded generally outweighed the reliability problems, most of these early synchronous CPUs ran at low clock rates compared to modern microelectronic designs. Clock signal frequencies ranging from 100 kHz to 4 MHz were very common at this time, the design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies facilitated building smaller and more reliable electronic devices
4.
AMD Am2900
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Am2900 is a family of integrated circuits created in 1975 by Advanced Micro Devices. They were constructed with bipolar devices, in a bit-slice topology, by using a bit slicing technique, Am2900 family was able to implement a CCU with data, addresses, and instructions to be any multiple of 4 bits by multiplying the number of ICs. One major problem with this technique was it required a larger amount of ICs to implement what could be done on a single CPU IC. The Am2901 chip was the unit, and the core of the series. It could count using 4 bits and implement binary operations as well as various bit-shifting operations, in the Soviet Union and later Russia the Am2900 family was manufactured as the 1804 series which was still in production as of 2016. There are probably more, but here are some known machines using these parts, The Apollo Computer Tern family. All used the system board emulating the Mc68010 instruction set. Four special instructions were added to the Galileo version of the ATAC, Data General Nova 4, which obtained 16-bit word width using four Am2901 ALUs in parallel, one of the boards had 15 Am2901 ALUs on it. Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 models PDP-11/23, PDP-11/34, and PDP-11/44 floating-point options The Xerox Dandelion, several models of the GEC4000 series minicomputers,4060,4150,4160, and 4090 and all 418x and 419x systems. The UCSD Pascal P-machine processor designed at NCR by Joel McCormack, a number of MAI Basic Four machines. The Tektronix 4052 graphics system computer, the SM-1420, Soviet clone of PDP-11, used Soviet clone of AM2901 perhaps also used in others. The Lilith computer designed at ETH Zürich by Niklaus Wirth, ataris vector graphics arcade machines Tempest, Battlezone, and Red Baron each used 4 Am2901 ICs in their math box auxiliary circuit boards. The Sim-X machine used a 16-bit integer multiplier to optimize graphical transformations, the machine debuted in 1983 and the company shut down in 1987. Eventide H949 Harmonizer, four Am2901 chips are used to generate addresses, many Siemens Teleperm and S5 PLCs used for industrial control were built using the 2900 series. Metheus / Barco Omega 400 and 500 Series graphics systems, four Am2901 chips were used to perform operations on this 1982 display processor. Geac Computer Corporation 2000,6000,8000, and 9000 were all based on 4 x AM2901 chips, the GEAC9500 was based on the AM29101. The GEAC2000 was used in pharmacies, the other models were used in library, banking, and insurance automation. The 2000 was a single processor unit, the 6000 and 8000 contained four processors, each dedicated to one of comms, disk, tape, or program processing
5.
Ethernet
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Ethernet /ˈiːθərnɛt/ is a family of computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks, metropolitan area networks and wide area networks. It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE802.3, over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as token ring, FDDI and ARCNET. The original 10BASE5 Ethernet uses coaxial cable as a medium, while the newer Ethernet variants use twisted pair. Over the course of its history, Ethernet data transfer rates have increased from the original 2.94 megabits per second to the latest 100 gigabits per second. The Ethernet standards comprise several wiring and signaling variants of the OSI physical layer in use with Ethernet, systems communicating over Ethernet divide a stream of data into shorter pieces called frames. As per the OSI model, Ethernet provides services up to, since its commercial release, Ethernet has retained a good degree of backward compatibility. Features such as the 48-bit MAC address and Ethernet frame format have influenced other networking protocols, the primary alternative for some uses of contemporary LANs is Wi-Fi, a wireless protocol standardized as IEEE802.11. Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974 and it was inspired by ALOHAnet, which Robert Metcalfe had studied as part of his PhD dissertation. In 1975, Xerox filed a patent application listing Metcalfe, David Boggs, Chuck Thacker, in 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs published a seminal paper. Metcalfe left Xerox in June 1979 to form 3Com and he convinced Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel, and Xerox to work together to promote Ethernet as a standard. The so-called DIX standard, for Digital/Intel/Xerox, specified 10 Mbit/s Ethernet, with 48-bit destination and source addresses and it was published on September 30,1980 as The Ethernet, A Local Area Network. Data Link Layer and Physical Layer Specifications, version 2 was published in November,1982 and defines what has become known as Ethernet II. Formal standardization efforts proceeded at the time and resulted in the publication of IEEE802.3 on June 23,1983. Ethernet initially competed with two largely proprietary systems, Token Ring and Token Bus, in the process, 3Com became a major company. 3Com shipped its first 10 Mbit/s Ethernet 3C100 NIC in March 1981, an Ethernet adapter card for the IBM PC was released in 1982, and, by 1985, 3Com had sold 100,000. Parallel port based Ethernet adapters were produced for a time, with drivers for DOS, by the early 1990s, Ethernet became so prevalent that it was a must-have feature for modern computers, and Ethernet ports began to appear on some PCs and most workstations. This process was sped up with the introduction of 10BASE-T and its relatively small modular connector. Since then, Ethernet technology has evolved to meet new bandwidth, in addition to computers, Ethernet is now used to interconnect appliances and other personal devices
6.
Workstation
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A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are connected to a local area network. Workstations offered higher performance than mainstream personal computers, especially with respect to CPU and graphics, memory capacity, and multitasking capability. Typically, the factor is that of a desktop computer, consist of a high resolution display, a keyboard and a mouse at a minimum. Workstations were the first segment of the market to present advanced accessories. The increasing capabilities of mainstream PCs in the late 1990s have blurred the lines somewhat with technical/scientific workstations, perhaps the first computer that might qualify as a workstation was the IBM1620, a small scientific computer designed to be used interactively by a single person sitting at the console. One peculiar feature of the machine was that it lacked any actual arithmetic circuitry, to perform addition, it required a memory-resident table of decimal addition rules. This saved on the cost of logic circuitry, enabling IBM to make it inexpensive, the machine was code-named CADET and rented initially for $1000 a month. In 1965, IBM introduced the IBM1130 scientific computer, which was meant as the successor to the 1620, both of these systems came with the ability to run programs written in Fortran and other languages. Both the 1620 and the 1130 were built into roughly desk-sized cabinets, both were available with add-on disk drives, printers, and both paper-tape and punched-card I/O. A console typewriter for direct interaction was standard on each, early examples of workstations were generally dedicated minicomputers, a system designed to support a number of users would instead be reserved exclusively for one person. A notable example was the PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corporation, regarded to be the first commercial minicomputer, Lisp Machines were commercialized beginning 1980 by companies like Symbolics, Lisp Machines, Texas Instruments and Xerox. The first computer designed for single-users, with high-resolution graphics facilities was the Xerox Alto developed at Xerox PARC in 1973, other early workstations include the Terak 8510/a, Three Rivers PERQ and the later Xerox Star. Meanwhile, DARPAs VLSI Project created several spinoff graphics products as well, notably the SGI3130 and it was not uncommon to differentiate the target market for the products, with Sun and Apollo considered to be network workstations, while the SGI machines were graphics workstations. As RISC microprocessors became available in the mid-1980s, these were adopted by many workstation vendors, workstations tended to be very expensive, typically several times the cost of a standard PC and sometimes costing as much as a new car. However, minicomputers sometimes cost as much as a house, additionally, workstations, given their more specialized nature, tend to have higher profit margins than commodity-driven PCs. Additionally, the companies that make the products tend to have very good repair/replacement plans, some low-cost workstations are still expensive by PC standards, but offer binary compatibility with higher-end workstations and servers made by the same vendor. This allows software development to take place on low-cost desktop machines, Graphics workstations often shipped with graphics accelerators
7.
Personal computer
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A personal computer is a multi-purpose electronic computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. PCs are intended to be operated directly by a end-user, rather than by an expert or technician. In the 2010s, PCs are typically connected to the Internet, allowing access to the World Wide Web, personal computers may be connected to a local area network, either by a cable or a wireless connection. In the 2010s, a PC may be, a multi-component desktop computer, designed for use in a location a laptop computer, designed for easy portability or a tablet computer. In the 2010s, PCs run using a system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux. The very earliest microcomputers, equipped with a front panel, required hand-loading of a program to load programs from external storage. Before long, automatic booting from permanent read-only memory became universal, in the 2010s, users have access to a wide range of commercial software, free software and free and open-source software, which are provided in ready-to-run or ready-to-compile form. Since the early 1990s, Microsoft operating systems and Intel hardware have dominated much of the computer market, first with MS-DOS. Alternatives to Microsofts Windows operating systems occupy a minority share of the industry and these include Apples OS X and free open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Berkeley Software Distribution. Advanced Micro Devices provides the alternative to Intels processors. PC is an initialism for personal computer, some PCs, including the OLPC XOs, are equipped with x86 or x64 processors but not designed to run Microsoft Windows. PC is used in contrast with Mac, an Apple Macintosh computer and this sense of the word is used in the Get a Mac advertisement campaign that ran between 2006 and 2009, as well as its rival, Im a PC campaign, that appeared in 2008. Since Apples transition to Intel processors starting 2005, all Macintosh computers are now PCs, the “brain” may one day come down to our level and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far, in the history of computing there were many examples of computers designed to be used by one person, as opposed to terminals connected to mainframe computers. Using the narrow definition of operated by one person, the first personal computer was the ENIAC which became operational in 1946 and it did not meet further definitions of affordable or easy to use. An example of an early single-user computer was the LGP-30, created in 1956 by Stan Frankel and used for science and it came with a retail price of $47, 000—equivalent to about $414,000 today. Introduced at the 1965 New York Worlds Fair, the Programma 101 was a programmable calculator described in advertisements as a desktop computer. It was manufactured by the Italian company Olivetti and invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, the Soviet MIR series of computers was developed from 1965 to 1969 in a group headed by Victor Glushkov
8.
Raster graphics
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Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels, the printing and prepress industries know raster graphics as contones. The opposite to contones is line work, usually implemented as vector graphics in digital systems, the word raster has its origins in the Latin rastrum, which is derived from radere. It originates from the scan of cathode ray tube video monitors. By association, it can refer to a rectangular grid of pixels. The word rastrum is now used to refer to a device for drawing musical staff lines, most modern computers have bitmapped displays, where each on-screen pixel directly corresponds to a small number of bits in memory. The screen is refreshed simply by scanning through pixels and coloring them according to set of bits. The refresh procedure, being speed critical, is implemented by dedicated circuitry. Most computer images are stored in raster graphics formats or compressed variations, including GIF, JPEG, and PNG, three-dimensional voxel raster graphics are employed in video games and are also used in medical imaging such as MRI scanners. GIS programs commonly use rasters that encode geographic data in the values as well as the pixel locations. Raster graphics are resolution dependent, meaning they cannot scale up to a resolution without loss of apparent quality. This property contrasts with the capabilities of graphics, which easily scale up to the quality of the device rendering them. Raster graphics deal more practically than vector graphics with photographs and photo-realistic images, typically, a resolution of 150 to 300 PPI works well for 4-color process printing. However, for printing technologies that perform color mixing through dithering rather than through overprinting, printer DPI and image PPI have a different meaning. Thus, for instance, printing an image at 250 PPI may actually require a printer setting of 1200 DPI, when an image is rendered in a raster-based image editor, the image is composed of millions of pixels. At its core, an image editor works by manipulating each individual pixel. Most pixel-based image editors work using the RGB color model, and this article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the relicensing terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later
9.
Graphical user interface
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GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces, which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard. The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements, beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls. Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of application programming in the area of human–computer interaction. Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the logical design of a stored program. Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks. The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI, typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to the kind of data they hold. The widgets of an interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows a structure in which the interface is independent from and indirectly linked to application functions. This allows users to select or design a different skin at will, good user interface design relates to users more, and to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows, usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a market as application-specific graphical user interfaces. By the 1990s, cell phones and handheld game systems also employed application specific touchscreen GUIs, newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. Sample graphical desktop environments A GUI uses a combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, a series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with, the most common combination of such elements in GUIs is the windows, icons, menus, pointer paradigm, especially in personal computers. The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual device to represent the position of a pointing device, most often a mouse. Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with the pointing device, a window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications, and the windowing system. The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Smaller mobile devices such as personal assistants and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space
10.
Icon (computing)
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In computing, an icon is a pictogram or ideogram displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate a computer system or mobile device. It can serve as an electronic hyperlink or file shortcut to access the program or data, the user can activate an icon using a mouse, pointer, finger, or recently voice commands. Their placement on the screen, also in relation to other icons, in activating an icon, the user can move directly into and out of the identified function without knowing anything further about the location or requirements of the file or code. Graphically, the icon is a picture of objects that users are familiar with from office environment or from other professional arenas. One group of icons was taken from the symbols found across all devices, such as the power on/off symbol. Another group is metaphorically representing desktop objects from the 1980s office environment, a third group of icons are the brand icons used to identify commercial software programs. These commercial icons serve as links on the system to the program or data files created by a specific software provider. Although icons are depicted in graphical user interfaces, icons are sometimes rendered in a TUI using special characters such as MouseText or PETSCII. The design of all computer icons is constricted by the limitations of the device display and they are limited in size, with the standard size about a thumbnail for both desktop computer systems and mobile devices. They are frequently scalable, as they are displayed in different positions in the software, the colors used, of both the image and the icon background, should stand out on different system backgrounds. The detailing of the image needs to be simple, remaining recognizable in varying graphical resolutions. Computer icons are by definition language-independent, they do not rely on letters or words to convey their meaning and these visual parameters place rigid limits on the design of icons, frequently requiring the skills of a graphic artist in their development. Because of their size and versatility, computer icons have become a mainstay of user interaction with electronic media. Icons also provide rapid entry into the system functionality, on most systems, users can create and delete, replicate, select, click or double-click standard computer icons and drag them to new positions on the screen to create a customized user environment. Some common computer icons are taken from the field of standardized icons used across a wide range of electrical equipment. Examples of these are the symbol and the USB icon. The standardization of electronic icons is an important safety-feature on all types of electronics, as a subset of electronic devices, computer systems and mobile devices use many of the same icons, they are incorporated into the design of both the computer hardware and on the software. On the hardware, these identify the functionality of specific buttons
11.
Directory (computing)
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In computing, a directory is a file system cataloging structure which contains references to other computer files, and possibly other directories. On many computers, directories are known as folders, or drawers to provide some relevancy to a workbench or the traditional office file cabinet, files are organized by storing related files in the same directory. In a hierarchical filesystem, a directory contained inside another directory is called a subdirectory, the terms parent and child are often used to describe the relationship between a subdirectory and the directory in which it is cataloged, the latter being the parent. The top-most directory in such a filesystem, which not have a parent of its own, is called the root directory. In modern systems, a directory can contain a mix of files and subdirectories, a reference to a location in a directory system is called a path. In many operating systems, programs have an associated working directory in which they execute, typically, file names accessed by the program are assumed to reside within this directory if the file names are not specified with an explicit directory name. Some operating systems restrict a users access to only their home directory or project directory, in early versions of Unix the root directory was the home directory of the root user, but modern Unix usually uses another directory such as /root for this purpose. In keeping with Unix philosophy, Unix systems treat directories as a type of file, folders are often depicted with icons which visually resemble physical file folders. There is a difference between a directory, which is a file system concept, and the user interface metaphor that is used to represent it. Many operating systems also have the concept of smart folders that reflect the results of a file system search or other operation and these folders do not represent a directory in the file hierarchy. Many email clients allow the creation of folders to organize email and these folders have no corresponding representation in the filesystem structure. If one is referring to a container of documents, the folder is more appropriate. The term directory refers to the way a structured list of document files, operating systems that support hierarchical filesystems implement a form of caching to RAM of recent path lookups. In the Unix world, this is usually called Directory Name Lookup Cache, for local filesystems, DNLC entries normally expire only under pressure from other more recent entries. For network file systems a coherence mechanism is necessary to ensure that entries have not been invalidated by other clients, definition of directory by The Linux Information Project
12.
Computer mouse
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A computer mouse is a pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, physically, a mouse consists of an object held in ones hand, with one or more buttons. Mice often also other elements, such as touch surfaces and wheels. The earliest known publication of the mouse as referring to a computer pointing device is in Bill Englishs July 1965 publication. The plural for the rodent is always mice in modern usage. The plural of a mouse is mouses and mice according to most dictionaries. The first recorded usage is mice, the online Oxford Dictionaries cites a 1984 use. The trackball, a pointing device, was invented in 1944 by Ralph Benjamin as part of a World War II-era fire-control radar plotting system called Comprehensive Display System. Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scientific Service, Benjamins project used analog computers to calculate the future position of target aircraft based on several initial input points provided by a user with a joystick. Benjamin felt that a more elegant input device was needed and invented what they called a ball for this purpose. The device was patented in 1947, but only a prototype using a ball rolling on two rubber-coated wheels was ever built, and the device was kept as a military secret. Another early trackball was built by British electrical engineer Kenyon Taylor in collaboration with Tom Cranston, Taylor was part of the original Ferranti Canada, working on the Royal Canadian Navys DATAR system in 1952. DATAR was similar in concept to Benjamins display, the trackball used four disks to pick up motion, two each for the X and Y directions. When the ball was rolled, the pickup discs spun and contacts on their outer rim made periodic contact with wires, by counting the pulses, the physical movement of the ball could be determined. A digital computer calculated the tracks and sent the data to other ships in a task force using pulse-code modulation radio signals. This trackball used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball and it was not patented, since it was a secret military project. Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute has been credited in published books by Thierry Bardini, Paul Ceruzzi, Howard Rheingold, Engelbart was also recognized as such in various obituary titles after his death in July 2013. That November, while attending a conference on computer graphics in Reno, Nevada, Engelbart began to ponder how to adapt the underlying principles of the planimeter to X-Y coordinate input
13.
Computer network
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A computer network or data network is a telecommunications network which allows nodes to share resources. In computer networks, networked computing devices exchange data with other using a data link. The connections between nodes are established using either cable media or wireless media, the best-known computer network is the Internet. Network computer devices that originate, route and terminate the data are called network nodes, nodes can include hosts such as personal computers, phones, servers as well as networking hardware. Two such devices can be said to be networked together when one device is able to exchange information with the other device, Computer networks differ in the transmission medium used to carry their signals, communications protocols to organize network traffic, the networks size, topology and organizational intent. In most cases, application-specific communications protocols are layered over other more general communications protocols and this formidable collection of information technology requires skilled network management to keep it all running reliably. The chronology of significant computer-network developments includes, In the late 1950s, in 1960, the commercial airline reservation system semi-automatic business research environment went online with two connected mainframes. Licklider developed a group he called the Intergalactic Computer Network. In 1964, researchers at Dartmouth College developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System for distributed users of computer systems. The same year, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a group supported by General Electric and Bell Labs used a computer to route. Throughout the 1960s, Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, and Donald Davies independently developed network systems that used packets to transfer information between computers over a network, in 1965, Thomas Marill and Lawrence G. Roberts created the first wide area network. This was an precursor to the ARPANET, of which Roberts became program manager. Also in 1965, Western Electric introduced the first widely used telephone switch that implemented true computer control, in 1972, commercial services using X.25 were deployed, and later used as an underlying infrastructure for expanding TCP/IP networks. In July 1976, Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs published their paper Ethernet, Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks, in 1979, Robert Metcalfe pursued making Ethernet an open standard. In 1976, John Murphy of Datapoint Corporation created ARCNET, a network first used to share storage devices. In 1995, the transmission speed capacity for Ethernet increased from 10 Mbit/s to 100 Mbit/s, by 1998, Ethernet supported transmission speeds of a Gigabit. Subsequently, higher speeds of up to 100 Gbit/s were added, the ability of Ethernet to scale easily is a contributing factor to its continued use. Providing access to information on shared storage devices is an important feature of many networks, a network allows sharing of files, data, and other types of information giving authorized users the ability to access information stored on other computers on the network
14.
Print server
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A print server, or printer server, is a device that connects printers to client computers over a network. Ancillary functions include the ability to inspect the queue of jobs to be processed, print servers may support a variety of industry-standard or proprietary printing protocols including Internet Printing Protocol, Line Printer Daemon protocol, NetWare, NetBIOS/NetBEUI, or JetDirect. A print server may be a computer with one or more shared printers. Alternatively a print server may be a device on the network, with connections to the LAN. Dedicated server appliances tend to be simple in both configuration and features. Print server functionality may be integrated with other such as a wireless router. A printer may have a print server
15.
Email
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Electronic mail, or email, is a method of exchanging digital messages between people using digital devices such as computers and mobile phones. Email first entered use in the 1960s and by the mid-1970s had taken the form now recognized as email. Email operates across computer networks, which today is primarily the Internet, some early email systems required the author and the recipient to both be online at the same time, in common with instant messaging. Todays email systems are based on a store-and-forward model, Email servers accept, forward, deliver, and store messages. Originally an ASCII text-only communications medium, Internet email was extended by Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions to carry text in character sets. International email, with internationalized email addresses using UTF-8, has been standardized, the history of modern Internet email services reaches back to the early ARPANET, with standards for encoding email messages published as early as 1973. An email message sent in the early 1970s looks very similar to an email sent today. Email played an important part in creating the Internet, and the conversion from ARPANET to the Internet in the early 1980s produced the core of the current services, historically, the term electronic mail was used generically for any electronic document transmission. For example, several writers in the early 1970s used the term to describe fax document transmission, as a result, it is difficult to find the first citation for the use of the term with the more specific meaning it has today. This spelling also appears in most dictionaries, Mail was the form used in the original protocol standard, RFC524. The service is referred to as mail, and a piece of electronic mail is called a message. EMail is a form that has been used in RFCs for the Authors Address and is expressly required for historical reasons. E-mail is sometimes used, capitalizing the initial E as in similar abbreviations like E-piano, E-guitar, A-bomb, by 1968, AUTODIN linked more than 300 sites in several countries. With the introduction of MITs Compatible Time-Sharing System in 1961, multiple users could log in to a system from remote dial-up terminals. Informal methods of using this to pass messages were developed and expanded,1965 – MITs CTSS MAIL and it used the Unix mail client to send messages between system users. The concept was extended to communicate remotely over the Berkeley Network,1979 – EMAIL, an application written by Shiva Ayyadurai for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. 1979 – MH Message Handling System developed at RAND provided several tools for managing electronic mail on Unix, most of them only allowed communication between users logged into the same host or mainframe, although there might be hundreds or thousands of users within an organization. In the early 1980s, networked personal computers on LANs became increasingly important, server-based systems similar to the earlier mainframe systems were developed
16.
Lisp (programming language)
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Lisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in use today. Only Fortran is older, by one year, Lisp has changed since its early days, and many dialects have existed over its history. Today, the best known general-purpose Lisp dialects are Common Lisp, Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, influenced by the notation of Alonzo Churchs lambda calculus. It quickly became the programming language for artificial intelligence research. The name LISP derives from LISt Processor, linked lists are one of Lisps major data structures, and Lisp source code is made of lists. Thus, Lisp programs can manipulate source code as a data structure, the interchangeability of code and data gives Lisp its instantly recognizable syntax. All program code is written as s-expressions, or parenthesized lists, Lisp was invented by John McCarthy in 1958 while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McCarthy published its design in a paper in Communications of the ACM in 1960, entitled Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine and he showed that with a few simple operators and a notation for functions, one can build a Turing-complete language for algorithms. Information Processing Language was the first AI language, from 1955 or 1956, and already included many of the concepts, such as list-processing and recursion, McCarthys original notation used bracketed M-expressions that would be translated into S-expressions. As an example, the M-expression car is equivalent to the S-expression, once Lisp was implemented, programmers rapidly chose to use S-expressions, and M-expressions were abandoned. M-expressions surfaced again with short-lived attempts of MLISP by Horace Enea, Lisp was first implemented by Steve Russell on an IBM704 computer. Russell had read McCarthys paper and realized that the Lisp eval function could be implemented in machine code, the result was a working Lisp interpreter which could be used to run Lisp programs, or more properly, evaluate Lisp expressions. Two assembly language macros for the IBM704 became the operations for decomposing lists, car. From the context, it is clear that the register is used here to mean memory register. Lisp dialects still use car and cdr for the operations that return the first item in a list, the first complete Lisp compiler, written in Lisp, was implemented in 1962 by Tim Hart and Mike Levin at MIT. This compiler introduced the Lisp model of incremental compilation, in which compiled and interpreted functions can intermix freely, the language used in Hart and Levins memo is much closer to modern Lisp style than McCarthys earlier code. Lisp was a system to implement with the compiler techniques
17.
Smalltalk
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Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the new world of computing exemplified by human–computer symbiosis, the language was first generally released as Smalltalk-80. Smalltalk-like languages are in continuing development and have gathered loyal communities of users around them. ANSI Smalltalk was ratified in 1998 and represents the version of Smalltalk. There are a number of Smalltalk variants. The unqualified word Smalltalk is often used to indicate the Smalltalk-80 language, Smalltalk was the product of research led by Alan Kay at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Alan Kay designed most of the early Smalltalk versions, which Dan Ingalls implemented. A later variant actually used for work is now known as Smalltalk-72. Its syntax and execution model were very different from modern Smalltalk variants, after significant revisions which froze some aspects of execution semantics to gain performance, Smalltalk-76 was created. This system had a development environment featuring most of the now familiar tools, later a general availability implementation, known as Smalltalk-80 Version 2, was released as an image and a virtual machine specification. ANSI Smalltalk has been the standard language reference since 1998, two of the currently popular Smalltalk implementation variants are descendants of those original Smalltalk-80 images. Squeak is an open source implementation derived from Smalltalk-80 Version 1 by way of Apple Smalltalk, VisualWorks is derived from Smalltalk-80 version 2 by way of Smalltalk-802.5 and ObjectWorks. As an interesting link between generations, in 2001 Vassili Bykov implemented Hobbes, a machine running Smalltalk-80 inside VisualWorks. During the late 1980s to mid-1990s, Smalltalk environments—including support, training, ParcPlace Systems tended to focus on the Unix/Sun microsystems market, while Digitalk focused on Intel-based PCs running Microsoft Windows or IBMs OS/2. IBM initially supported the Digitalk product, but then entered the market with a Smalltalk product in 1995 called VisualAge/Smalltalk, easel introduced Enfin at this time on Windows and OS/2. Enfin became far more popular in Europe, as IBM introduced it into IT shops before their development of IBM Smalltalk, Enfin was later acquired by Cincom Systems, and is now sold under the name ObjectStudio, and is part of the Cincom Smalltalk product suite. In 1995, ParcPlace and Digitalk merged into ParcPlace-Digitalk and then rebranded in 1997 as ObjectShare, located in Irvine, ObjectShare was traded publicly until 1999, when it was delisted and dissolved. The merged firm never managed to find a response to Java as to market positioning. VisualWorks was sold to Cincom and is now part of Cincom Smalltalk, Cincom has backed Smalltalk strongly, releasing multiple new versions of VisualWorks and ObjectStudio each year since 1999
18.
Software development
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Software development is the process of computer programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications and frameworks resulting in a software product. Therefore, software development may include research, new development, prototyping, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, system software underlies applications and the programming process itself, and is often developed separately. There are many approaches to project management, known as software development life cycle models, methodologies, processes. The waterfall model is a version, contrasted with the more recent innovation of agile software development. A software development process is a framework that is used to structure, plan, a wide variety of such frameworks has evolved over the years, each with its own recognized strengths and weaknesses. One system development methodology is not necessarily suitable for use by all projects, each of the available methodologies is best suited to specific kinds of projects, based on various technical, organizational, project and team considerations. Different approaches to development may carry out these stages in different orders. The level of detail of the produced at each stage of software development may also vary. These stages may also be carried out in turn, or they may be repeated over various cycles or iterations, the more extreme approach usually involves less time spent on planning and documentation, and more time spent on coding and development of automated tests. More “extreme” approaches also promote continuous testing throughout the development lifecycle, there are significant advantages and disadvantages to the various methodologies, and the best approach to solving a problem using software will often depend on the type of problem. If the problem is understood and a solution can be effectively planned out ahead of time. If, on the hand, the problem is unique. The sources of ideas for software products are plenteous, in a marketing evaluation phase, the cost and time assumptions become evaluated. A decision is reached early in the first phase as to whether, based on the detailed information generated by the marketing and development staff. Students of marketing learn marketing and are exposed to finance or engineering. Most of us become specialists in just one area, to complicate matters, few of us meet interdisciplinary people in the workforce, so there are few roles to mimic. Yet, software product planning is critical to the development success and these processes may also cause the role of business development to overlap with software development. Planning is an objective of each and every activity, where we want to discover things that belong to the project, an important task in creating a software program is extracting the requirements or requirements analysis
19.
Xerox Alto
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The Xerox Alto was the first computer designed from its inception to support an operating system based on a graphical user interface, later using the desktop metaphor. The first machines were introduced on 1 March 1973, a decade before mass market GUI machines arose, the Alto uses a custom multi-chip central processing unit filling a small cabinet, and each machine cost tens of thousands of dollars despite its status as a personal computer. Only small numbers were initially, but by the late 1970s about 1,000 were in use at various Xerox labs. Total production was about 2,000 systems, the Alto became well known in Silicon Valley and its GUI was increasingly seen as the future of computing. In 1979, Steve Jobs arranged a deal in which Apple Computer would license the concepts from Xerox in exchange for Xerox being able to stock options in Apple. After two famous visits to see the Alto, Apple engineers used the concepts to introduce the Apple Lisa and Macintosh systems, Xerox eventually commercialized a heavily modified version of the Alto concepts as the Xerox Star, first introduced in 1981. A complete office system including several workstations, storage and a laser printer cost as much as $100,000, and like the Alto, the Star had little direct impact on the market. The Alto was conceived in 1972 in a written by Butler Lampson, inspired by the oN-Line System developed by Douglas Engelbart. It was designed mostly by Charles P. Thacker, due to the success of the pilot run, the team went on to produce approximately 2,000 units over the next ten years. Several Xerox Alto chassis are now on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, for his pioneering design and realization of the Alto, Charles P. Thacker was awarded the 2009 Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery on March 9,2010. The 2004 Charles Stark Draper Prize was awarded to Thacker, Alan C, Kay, Butler Lampson, and Robert W. Taylor for their work on Alto. The following description is based mostly on the August 1976 Alto Hardware Manual by Xerox PARC, Alto uses a microcoded design but, unlike many computers, the microcode engine is not hidden from the programmer in a layered design. Applications such as Pinball take advantage of this to accelerate performance, mass storage is provided by a hard disk drive that uses a removable 2.5 MB one-platter cartridge similar to those used by the IBM2310. The base machine and one disk are housed in a cabinet about the size of a small refrigerator, Alto both blurred and ignored the lines between functional elements. The microcode machine supports up to 16 cooperative tasks, each with fixed priority, the emulator task executes the normal instruction set to which most applications are written. Others tasks serve the display, memory refresh, disk, network, ethernet is likewise supported by minimal hardware, with a shift register that acts bidirectionally to serialize output words and deserialize input words. Its speed was designed to be 3 Mbit/s because the engine could not go faster and continue to support the video display, disk activity. Unlike most minicomputers of the era, Alto does not support a serial terminal for user interface and its input devices are a custom detachable keyboard, a three-button mouse, and an optional 5-key chorded keyboard
20.
PARC (company)
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PARC, formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems. Xerox formed Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated as an owned subsidiary in 2002. Pake selected Palo Alto, California, as the site of what was to become known as PARC. S, the integration of Ethernet prompted the development of the PARC Universal Packet architecture, much like todays Internet. Xerox has been criticized for failing to properly commercialize and profitably exploit PARCs innovations. A favorite example is the user interface, initially developed at PARC for the Alto. Although very significant in terms of its influence on future system design, a small group from PARC led by David Liddle and Charles Irby formed Metaphor Computer Systems. They extended the Star desktop concept into a graphic and communicating office-automation model. Among PARCs distinguished researchers were three Turing Award winners, Butler W. Lampson, Alan Kay, and Charles P. Thacker. The Association for Computing Machinery Software System Award recognized the Alto system in 1984, Smalltalk in 1987, InterLisp in 1992, and the remote procedure call in 1994. Lampson, Kay, Bob Taylor, and Charles P. Thacker received the National Academy of Engineerings prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2004 for their work on the Alto, PARCs developments in information technology served for a long time as standards for much of the computing industry. Many advances were not equalled or surpassed for two decades, enormous timespans in the fast-paced high-tech world, a number of GUI engineers left to join Apple Computer. Work at PARC since the early 1980s includes advances in computing, aspect-oriented programming. Xerox Daybreak GlobalView Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning, Xerox PARC, alexander, Fumbling the Future, How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer ISBN 1-58348-266-0 M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine, J. C. R. Strassmann Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Oral history interview with William Crowther Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
21.
Laser printing
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Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics by repeatedly passing a laser beam back, the drum then selectively collects electrically charged powdered ink, and transfers the image to paper, which is then heated in order to permanently fuse the text and/or imagery. As with digital photocopiers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, however, laser printing differs from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of the medium across the printers photoreceptor. This enables laser printing to copy images more quickly than most photocopiers, invented at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, laser printers were introduced for the office and then home markets in subsequent years by IBM, Canon, Xerox, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and many others. Over the decades, quality and speed have increased as price has fallen, in the 1960s, the Xerox Corporation held a dominant position in the photocopier market. In 1969, Gary Starkweather, who worked in Xeroxs product development department, had the idea of using a beam to draw an image of what was to be copied directly onto the copier drum. After transferring to the recently formed Palo Alto Research Center in 1971, in 1972, Starkweather worked with Butler Lampson and Ronald Rider to add a control system and character generator, resulting in a printer called EARS —which later became the Xerox 9700 laser printer. The first commercial implementation of a printer was the IBM3800 in 1976. It was designed for data centers, where it replaced line printers attached to mainframe computers, the IBM3800 was used for high-volume printing on continuous stationery, and achieved speeds of 215 pages per minute, at a resolution of 240 dots per inch. Over 8,000 of these printers were sold, the Xerox 9700 was brought to market in 1977. Unlike the IBM3800, the Xerox 9700 was not targeted to any particular existing printers. The Xerox 9700 excelled at printing high-value documents on paper with varying content. In 1979, inspired by the Xerox 9700s commercial success, Japanese camera and optics company, Canon, developed a low-cost, desktop laser printer, Canon then began work on a much-improved print engine, the Canon CX, resulting in the LBP-CX printer. Lacking experience in selling to computer users, Canon sought partnerships with three Silicon Valley companies, Diablo Data Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple Computer, the first laser printer designed for office use reached market in 1981, the Xerox Star 8010. The system used a metaphor that was unsurpassed in commercial sales. Although it was innovative, the Star workstation was an expensive system, affordable only to a fraction of the businesses. The first laser printer intended for mass-market sales was the HP LaserJet, released in 1984, it used the Canon CX engine, the LaserJet was quickly followed by printers from Brother Industries, IBM, and others. First-generation machines had large photosensitive drums, of greater than the loaded papers length
22.
El Segundo, California
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El Segundo is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. El Segundo, from Spanish, means The Second in English, located on the Santa Monica Bay, it was incorporated on January 18,1917, and part of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments. The population was 16,654 at the 2010 census, up from 16,033 at the 2000 census, the El Segundo and Los Angeles coastal area was first settled by the Tongva and Chumash Native American tribes hundreds of years ago. The area was once a part of Rancho Sausal Redondo, Rancho Sausal Redondo extended from Playa Del Rey in the North to Redondo Beach in the South. Originally a Mexican land grant owned by Antonio Ygnacio Avila, the rancho was purchased by a Scottish baronet named Sir Robert Burnett. After his return to Scotland, the property was purchased by current manager of the rancho. Daniel Freeman sold portions of the rancho to multiple owners, george H. Peck owned the 840 acres of land the Chevron Refinery now sits on. Peck also developed land in neighboring El Porto where a street bears his name. The city earned its name as it was the site of the second Standard Oil refinery on the West Coast, the company was renamed Chevron in 1984, and the El Segundo refinery will soon enter its second century of operation. The city was incorporated in 1917, the Douglas Aircraft Company plant in El Segundo was one of the major aircraft manufacturing facilities in California during World War II. It was one of the producers of SBD Dauntless dive bombers. The facility, now operated by Northrop Grumman, is still an aircraft plant, pollution and toxic waste cleanup remain issues as El Segundo converts industrial sites to shopping malls and sports facilities. The north and south boundaries of the town are Los Angeles International Airport and Manhattan Beach, Aircraft noise from LAX is a major issue for residents on the north side of El Segundo. Residents are currently active in tree-planting along Imperial Highway, El Segundo is located at 33°55′17″N 118°24′22″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 5.5 square miles. The 2010 United States Census reported that El Segundo had a population of 16,654, the population density was 3,047.9 people per square mile. The racial makeup of El Segundo was 12,997 White,337 African American,68 Native American,1,458 Asian,38 Pacific Islander,799 from other races, Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2,609 persons. The Census reported that 16,578 people lived in households,66 lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, there were 369 unmarried opposite-sex partnerships
23.
Palo Alto, California
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Palo Alto is a charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley and it is named after a coast redwood tree called El Palo Alto. Palo Alto was established by Leland Stanford Sr. when he founded Stanford University, following the death of his son and it has also served as an incubator to several other high-technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Logitech, Intuit, Pinterest, and PayPal. As of the 2010 census, the total resident population is 64,403. Palo Alto is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, the recorded history of Palo Alto dates back to 1769, when Gaspar de Portolá noted an Ohlone settlement. This remains an area of known Indian mounds, a plaque at Middlefield Road and Embarcadero Road commemorates the area. The city got its name from a tall coast redwood tree, named El Palo Alto, a plaque there recounts the story of the Portolà expedition, a 63-man, 200-horse expedition from San Diego to Monterey from November 7–11,1769. The group overshot Monterey in the fog and when they reached modern-day Pacifica, they ascended Sweeney Ridge, thinking the bay was too wide to cross, the group retraced their journey to Monterey, never becoming aware of the Golden Gate entrance to the Bay. Located south of the San Francisquito Creek, west of todays I-280, in 1835, Rafael Soto and family settled near the San Francisquito Creek near Newell and Middlefield, selling goods to travelers. Rafael Soto died in 1839, but his wife, Maria Antonia Mesa, was granted Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito in 1841, in 1839, their daughter María Luisa Soto married John Coppinger, who was the grantee of Rancho Cañada de Raymundo. Rancho Cañada de Raymundo was West of San Francisquito Creek, and began at Alambique Creek, the border of Rancho Corte de Madera. Bear Gulch Creek flowed on his land in Portola Valley, the rancho also abutted Buelnas grant near Skyline Boulevard and Matadero Creek. Upon Coppingers death, Maria inherited it and later married a visiting boat captain, Greer owned a home on the site that is now Town & Country Village on Embarcadero and El Camino Real. Greer Avenue and Court are named for him, to the west of Rafael Soto, near El Camino and following the Creek, was Rancho San Francisquito granted in 1839 to Antonio Buelna and wife Maria Concepcion. To the south of the Sotos, the brothers Secundino and Teodoro Robles in 1849 bought Rancho Rincon de San Francisquito from José Peña, where the Joness house was, then east down Arastradero Rd. to the north property line of Alta Mesa Memorial Park and Terman Park. The property then went along the bay to the Embarcadero, a boundary in the day, then up to the Stanford University gates, up Galvez. The grant was bounded on the south by Mariano Castros Rancho Pastoria de las Borregas grant across San Antonio Road, thats the Robles Rancho, about 80% of Palo Alto and Stanford University. It was whittled down by 1863 through courts to 6,981 acres, stories say their grand hacienda was built on the former meager adobe of José Peña near Ferne off San Antonio Road, midway between Middlefield and Alma Street
24.
Internet
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The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite to link devices worldwide. The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States federal government in the 1960s to build robust, the primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. Although the Internet was widely used by academia since the 1980s, Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world. In the two decades since then, Internet use has grown 100-times, measured for the period of one year, newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators. The entertainment industry was initially the fastest growing segment on the Internet, the Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries, the Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage, each constituent network sets its own policies. The term Internet, when used to refer to the global system of interconnected Internet Protocol networks, is a proper noun. In common use and the media, it is not capitalized. Some guides specify that the word should be capitalized when used as a noun, the Internet is also often referred to as the Net, as a short form of network. Historically, as early as 1849, the word internetted was used uncapitalized as an adjective, the designers of early computer networks used internet both as a noun and as a verb in shorthand form of internetwork or internetworking, meaning interconnecting computer networks. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, however, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks, the term Interweb is a portmanteau of Internet and World Wide Web typically used sarcastically to parody a technically unsavvy user. The ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, the third site was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of growth, fifteen sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks, early international collaborations on the ARPANET were rare. European developers were concerned with developing the X.25 networks, in December 1974, RFC675, by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, used the term internet as a shorthand for internetworking and later RFCs repeated this use. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation funded the Computer Science Network, in 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s. Commercial Internet service providers emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990
25.
ARPANET
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The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network was an early packet switching network and the first network to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP. Both technologies became the foundation of the Internet. ARPANET was initially funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense, the packet switching methodology employed in the ARPANET was based on concepts and designs by Americans Leonard Kleinrock and Paul Baran, British scientist Donald Davies, and Lawrence Roberts. The TCP/IP communications protocols were developed for ARPANET by computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf, as the project progressed, protocols for internetworking were developed by which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation funded the Computer Science Network, in 1982, the Internet protocol suite was introduced as the standard networking protocol on the ARPANET. Packet switching—today the dominant basis for data communications worldwide—was a new concept at the time of the conception of the ARPANET, such stations might be telephones or computers. The dedicated line typically comprises many intermediary lines which are assembled into a chain that stretches all the way from the station to the destination station. Thus, not only can the link be shared, much as a single post box can be used to post letters to different destinations and those ideas encompassed many of the features of the contemporary Internet. In October 1963, Licklider was appointed head of the Behavioral Sciences and Command and he convinced Ivan Sutherland and Bob Taylor that this network concept was very important and merited development, although Licklider left ARPA before any contracts were assigned for development. Taylor recalls the circumstance, For each of three terminals, I had three different sets of user commands. So, if I was talking online with someone at S. D. C. and I wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley, or M. I. T. about this, I had to get up from the S. D. C. Terminal, go over and log into the terminal and get in touch with them. Its obvious what to do, If you have three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to go. Donald Davies at the United Kingdoms National Physical Laboratory independently invented the concept in 1965. His work, presented by a colleague, initially caught the attention of ARPANET developers at a conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and he gave the first public demonstration, having coined the term packet switching, on 5 August 1968 and incorporated it into the NPL network in England. Larry Roberts at ARPA applied Davies concepts of packet switching for the ARPANET, the NPL network followed by ARPANET were the first two networks in the world to use packet switching, and were themselves connected together in 1973. The NPL network was using line speeds of 768 kbit/s, by mid-1968, Taylor had prepared a complete plan for a computer network, and, after ARPAs approval, a Request for Quotation was issued for 140 potential bidders. Most computer science companies regarded the ARPA–Taylor proposal as outlandish, and only twelve submitted bids to build a network, of the twelve, at years end, ARPA considered only two contractors, and awarded the contract to build the network to BBN Technologies on 7 April 1969
26.
Integrated development environment
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An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of a code editor, build automation tools. Most modern IDEs have intelligent code completion, some IDEs, such as NetBeans and Eclipse, contain a compiler, interpreter, or both, others, such as SharpDevelop and Lazarus, do not. The boundary between an integrated development environment and other parts of the software development environment is not well-defined. Sometimes a version control system, or various tools to simplify the construction of a Graphical User Interface, are integrated, many modern IDEs also have a class browser, an object browser, and a class hierarchy diagram, for use in object-oriented software development. Integrated development environments are designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing tight-knit components with similar user interfaces, IDEs present a single program in which all development is done. This program typically provides many features for authoring, modifying, compiling, deploying and debugging software and this contrasts with software development using unrelated tools, such as vi, GCC or make. One aim of the IDE is to reduce the necessary to piece together multiple development utilities. Reducing that setup time can increase productivity, in cases where learning to use the IDE is faster than manually integrating all of the individual tools. Tighter integration of all development tasks has the potential to improve overall productivity beyond just helping with setup tasks, for example, code can be continuously parsed while it is being edited, providing instant feedback when syntax errors are introduced. That can speed learning a new programming language and its associated libraries, some IDEs are dedicated to a specific programming language, allowing a feature set that most closely matches the programming paradigms of the language. However, there are many multiple-language IDEs, while most modern IDEs are graphical, text-based IDEs such as Turbo Pascal were in popular use before the widespread availability of windowing systems like Microsoft Windows and the X Window System. They commonly use function keys or hotkeys to execute frequently used commands or macros, IDEs initially became possible when developing via a console or terminal. Early systems could not support one, since programs were prepared using flowcharts, dartmouth BASIC was the first language to be created with an IDE. Its IDE was command-based, and therefore did not look much like the menu-driven, however it integrated editing, file management, compilation, debugging and execution in a manner consistent with a modern IDE. Maestro I is a product from Softlab Munich and was the worlds first integrated development environment for software, Maestro I was installed for 22,000 programmers worldwide. Until 1989,6,000 installations existed in the Federal Republic of Germany, Maestro was arguably the world leader in this field during the 1970s and 1980s. Today one of the last Maestro I can be found in the Museum of Information Technology at Arlington, one of the first IDEs with a plug-in concept was Softbench
27.
Version control
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Changes are usually identified by a number or letter code, termed the revision number, revision level, or simply revision. For example, an set of files is revision 1. When the first change is made, the set is revision 2. Each revision is associated with a timestamp and the making the change. Revisions can be compared, restored, and with some types of files, the numbering of book editions and of specification revisions are examples that date back to the print-only era. Today, the most capable revision control systems are used in software development. Software tools for revision control are essential for the organization of multi-developer projects, in computer software engineering, revision control is any kind of practice that tracks and provides control over changes to source code. Software developers sometimes use revision control software to maintain documentation and configuration files as well as source code, bugs or features of the software are often only present in certain versions. Therefore, for the purposes of locating and fixing bugs, it is important to be able to retrieve. At the simplest level, developers could simply retain multiple copies of the different versions of the program and this simple approach has been used on many large software projects. While this method can work, it is inefficient as many copies of the program have to be maintained. This requires a lot of self-discipline on the part of developers, consequently, systems to automate some or all of the revision control process have been developed. This ensures that the majority of management of version control steps is hidden behind the scenes, sophisticated revision control that tracks and accounts for ownership of changes to documents and code may be extremely helpful or even indispensable in such situations. Revision control may also track changes to files, such as those typically stored in /etc or /usr/local/etc on Unix systems. This gives system administrators another way to track changes made. Revision control manages changes to a set of data over time and these changes can be structured in various ways. Often the data is thought of as a collection of individual items, such as files or documents. This accords with intuitions about separate files, but causes problems when identity changes, such as during renaming, splitting, or merging of files
28.
Prototype
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A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from. It is a used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics. A prototype is used to evaluate a new design to enhance precision by system analysts. Prototyping serves to provide specifications for a real, working system rather than a theoretical one, in some design workflow models, creating a prototype is the step between the formalization and the evaluation of an idea. The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον prototypon, primitive form, neutral of πρωτότυπος prototypos, original, primitive, from πρῶτος protos, first and τύπος typos, a Working Prototype represents all or nearly all of the functionality of the final product. A Visual Prototype represents the size and appearance, but not the functionality, a User Experience Prototype represents enough of the appearance and function of the product that it can be used for user research. A Functional Prototype captures both function and appearance of the design, though it may be created with different techniques. A Paper Prototype is a printed or hand-drawn representation of the interface of a software product. In some cases, the final production materials may still be undergoing development themselves, process - Mass-production processes are often unsuitable for making a small number of parts, so prototypes may be made using different fabrication processes than the final product. Differences in fabrication process may lead to differences in the appearance of the prototype as compared to the final product, verification - The final product may be subject to a number of quality assurance tests to verify conformance with drawings or specifications. These tests may involve custom inspection fixtures, statistical sampling methods, prototypes are generally made with much closer individual inspection and the assumption that some adjustment or rework will be part of the fabrication process. Prototypes may also be exempted from some requirements that apply to the final product. Engineers and prototype specialists will attempt to minimize the impact of these differences on the role for the prototype. Engineers and prototyping specialists seek to understand the limitations of prototypes to exactly simulate the characteristics of their intended design and it is important to realize that by their very definition, prototypes will represent some compromise from the final production design. Due to differences in materials, processes and design fidelity, it is possible that a prototype may fail to perform acceptably whereas the design may have been sound. In general, it can be expected that individual prototype costs will be greater than the final production costs due to inefficiencies in materials. Prototypes are also used to revise the design for the purposes of reducing costs through optimization and it is possible to use prototype testing to reduce the risk that a design may not perform as intended, however prototypes generally cannot eliminate all risk. As an alternative, rapid prototyping or rapid application development techniques are used for the prototypes, which implement part
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Software engineering
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Software engineering is the application of engineering to the development of software in a systematic method. Practitioners quickly realized that this design was not flexible and came up with the stored program architecture or von Neumann architecture, thus the division between hardware and software began with abstraction being used to deal with the complexity of computing. Programming languages started to appear in the early 1950s and this was another major step in abstraction. Major languages such as Fortran, ALGOL, and COBOL were released in the late 1950s to deal with scientific, algorithmic, the conference was attended by international experts on software who agreed on defining best practices for software grounded in the application of engineering. The result of the conference is a report that defines how software should be developed, the original report is publicly available. Engineering already addresses all issues, hence the same principles used in engineering can be applied to software. The widespread lack of best practices for software at the time was perceived as a software crisis, barry W. Boehm documented several key advances to the field in his 1981 book, Software Engineering Economics. These include his Constructive Cost Model, which relates software development effort for a program, in man-years T, T = k ∗ The book analyzes sixty-three software projects and concludes the cost of fixing errors escalates as the project moves toward field use. The book also asserts that the key driver of software cost is the capability of the development team. Watts Humphrey founded the SEI Software Process Program, aimed at understanding and managing the software engineering process and his 1989 book, Managing the Software Process, asserts that the Software Development Process can and should be controlled, measured, and improved. Modern, generally accepted best-practices for software engineering have been collected by the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC7 subcommittee, Software engineering can be divided into 15 sub-disciplines. They are, Software requirements, The elicitation, analysis, specification, Software design, The process of defining the architecture, components, interfaces, and other characteristics of a system or component. It is also defined as the result of that process, Software construction, The detailed creation of working, meaningful software through a combination of coding, verification, unit testing, integration testing, and debugging. Software testing, An empirical, technical investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test, Software maintenance, The totality of activities required to provide cost-effective support to software. Software development process, The definition, implementation, assessment, measurement, management, change, many software engineers enter the profession by obtaining a university degree or training at a vocational school. One standard international curriculum for undergraduate software engineering degrees was defined by the CCSE, in addition to university education, many companies sponsor internships for students wishing to pursue careers in information technology. These internships can introduce the student to interesting real-world tasks that typical software engineers encounter every day, similar experience can be gained through military service in software engineering. Legal requirements for the licensing or certification of professional software engineers vary around the World, in Canada, there is a legal requirement to have P. Eng when one wants to use the title engineer or practice software engineering
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Communications protocol
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These are the rules or standard that defines the syntax, semantics and synchronization of communication and possible error recovery methods. Protocols may be implemented by hardware, software, or a combination of both, Communicating systems use well-defined formats for exchanging various messages. Each message has a meaning intended to elicit a response from a range of possible responses pre-determined for that particular situation. The specified behavior is independent of how it is to be implemented. Communications protocols have to be agreed upon by the parties involved, to reach agreement, a protocol may be developed into a technical standard. Multiple protocols often describe different aspects of a single communication, a group of protocols designed to work together are known as a protocol suite, when implemented in software they are a protocol stack. Most recent protocols are assigned by the IETF for Internet communication, the ITU-T handles telecommunications protocols and formats for the PSTN. As the PSTN and Internet converge, the two sets of standards are also being driven towards convergence, the nature of a communication, the actual data exchanged and any state-dependent behaviors, is defined by these specifications. In digital computing systems, the rules can be expressed by algorithms, expressing the algorithms in a portable programming language makes the protocol software operating-system independent. Operating systems usually contain a set of cooperating processes that manipulate shared data to communicate each other. This communication is governed by protocols, which can be embedded in the process code itself. In contrast, because there is no memory, communicating systems have to communicate with each other using a shared transmission medium. Transmission is not necessarily reliable, and individual systems may use different hardware or operating systems, to implement a networking protocol, the protocol software modules are interfaced with a framework implemented on the machines operating system. This framework implements the functionality of the operating system. The best known frameworks are the TCP/IP model and the OSI model and this gave rise to the concept of layered protocols which nowadays forms the basis of protocol design. Systems typically do not use a protocol to handle a transmission. Instead they use a set of cooperating protocols, sometimes called a family or protocol suite. Some of the best known protocol suites are TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, X.25, AX.25, the protocols can be arranged based on functionality in groups, for instance there is a group of transport protocols
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Japanese language
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Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic language family, whose relation to language groups, particularly to Korean. Little is known of the prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, during the Heian period, Chinese had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese. Late Middle Japanese saw changes in features that brought it closer to the modern language, the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region in the Early Modern Japanese period. Following the end in 1853 of Japans self-imposed isolation, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, English loanwords in particular have become frequent, and Japanese words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person, Japanese equivalents of adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener. Japanese has no relationship with Chinese, but it makes extensive use of Chinese characters, or kanji, in its writing system. Along with kanji, the Japanese writing system uses two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana. Latin script is used in a fashion, such as for imported acronyms. Very little is known about the Japanese of this period, Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. Through the spread of Buddhism, the Chinese writing system was imported to Japan, the earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, but they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun method. Some of these Chinese texts show the influences of Japanese grammar, in these hybrid texts, Chinese characters are also occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles. The earliest text, the Kojiki, dates to the early 8th century, the end of Old Japanese coincides with the end of the Nara period in 794
32.
Fuji Xerox
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Its headquarters is in Midtown West in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Fuji Xerox is the worlds longest running joint venture between a Japanese and an American company, Fuji Xerox was established in 1962 as a 50,50 partnership with Rank Xerox. Rank Xerox was absorbed into Xerox Corporation in 1997, originally only a distributor of Rank Xerox products, Fuji Xerox later began to research and develop its own xerographic machines and other devices, beginning with the 2200 photocopier in 1973. Today the company is responsible for the innovation and manufacture of many of the colour printing devices sold by Xerox Corporation and its innovations include the worlds first multifunction printer/copier, the Xero Printer 100, launched in 1987. Fuji Xerox Australia Pty Ltd is Australias No.1 Document Printing and Copying company in the country and it is also the highest performing Fuji Xerox subsidiary in Asia. Its first dealership was NQBE in Mackay, North Queensland, in 1991 Fuji Xerox introduced the tag-line The Document Company which became incorporated into its logo in 1995. This remained a feature of the logo until 2008 when the The Document Company tag-line was dropped from the logo as part of the shift towards a more customer-centric corporate identity. Xerox Corporation transferred its China/Hong Kong Operations to Fuji Xerox in 2000, as of March 2009, the company employed 40,646 people. Further, Xerox Group is ranked No.3 in Best Managed Global Outsourcing Vendors out of 4,839 global outsourcing supplies of various service lines and locations. Compiled by Brown-Wilson Group, Black Book produces a yearly ranking of outsourcing based on survey responses from more than 24,000 executives worldwide. Japanese Football Sponsorship Since 1994, Fuji Xerox have been sponsors of the Japanese Super Cup of football, the headquarters of Fuji Xerox is located in Midtown West in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo. The headquarters of Fuji Xerox moved to its current location on January 15,2007, previously the company was headquartered in the Akasaka Twin Tower in Tameike Sanou. Wiki collection of works on Fuji Xerox
33.
WYSIWYG
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WYSIWYG is an acronym for what you see is what you get. WYSIWYG implies a user interface allows the user to view something very similar to the end result while the document is being created. In general, WYSIWYG implies the ability to manipulate the layout of a document without having to type or remember names of layout commands. The actual meaning depends on the perspective, e. g. WYSIWYG also describes ways to manipulate 3D models in stereo-chemistry, computer-aided design. Modern software does a job of optimizing the screen display for a particular type of output. For example, a processor is optimized for output to a typical printer. The software often emulates the resolution of the printer in order to get as close as possible to WYSIWYG, however, that is not the main attraction of WYSIWYG, which is the ability of the user to be able to visualize what they are producing. In many situations, the differences between what the user sees and what the user gets are unimportant. A preview mode, in which the attempts to present a representation that is as close to the final result as possible. Before the adoption of WYSIWYG techniques, text appeared in editors using the standard typeface. Users were required to enter special non-printing control codes to indicate that text should be in boldface, italics. In this environment there was little distinction between text editors and word processors. These applications typically used an arbitrary markup language to define the codes/tags, each program had its own special way to format a document, and it was a difficult and time-consuming process to change from one word processor to another. The use of tags and codes remains popular today in some applications due to their ability to store complex formatting information. When the tags are made visible in the editor, however, they occupy space in the text and so disrupt the desired layout. The Alto monitor was designed so that one page of text could be seen and then printed on the first laser printers. Bravo was released commercially and the software included in the Xerox Star can be seen as a direct descendant of it. The first release, named BRUNO, ran on the HP1000 minicomputer taking advantage of HPs first bitmapped computer terminal the HP2640, BRUNO was then ported to the HP-3000 and re-released as HP Draw
34.
Apple Lisa
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Apple Lisa was a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19,1983. It was one of the first personal computers to offer a user interface in a machine aimed at individual business users. Development of the Lisa began in 1978, and it underwent many changes during the development period before shipping at the high price of US$9,995 with a 5 MB hard drive. The high price, relatively low performance and unreliable Twiggy floppy disks led to poor sales, in 1982, after Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project, he joined the Macintosh project, at that time developing a much more limited machine with a task-switching interface. Jobs redirected the Macintosh team to build a cheaper and better Lisa, releasing it in January 1984, newer versions of the Lisa were introduced that addressed its faults and lowered its price considerably, but it never really picked up sales compared to the much less expensive Mac. The final revision of the Lisa, the Lisa 2/10, was modified, generally considered a failure, the Lisa nevertheless introduced a number of advanced features that would not re-appear on the Macintosh for a number of years. Among these was a system which featured protected memory and preemptive multitasking. The hardware itself was much more advanced than the Macintosh, with a hard drive and support for up to 2 megabytes of RAM, expansion slots. The main exception being that while the Macintosh also used the 68000 processor, the complexity of the Lisa operating system and its associated programs overtaxed the slower processor enough that users perceived it to be sluggish, particularly when scrolling in documents. While the documentation shipped with the original Lisa only ever referred to it as The Lisa, officially, decades later, Jobs would tell his biographer Walter Isaacson, Obviously it was named for my daughter. The project began in 1978 as an effort to create a modern version of the then-conventional design epitomized by the Apple II. Initial team leader Ken Rothmuller was soon replaced by John Couch, trip Hawkins, who was then on the marketing team for the nascent Lisa project, and Jef Raskin contributed to the change in design. Several years prior to this, research had been going on at Xeroxs Palo Alto Research Center to create a new way to organize everything on the screen, Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC in 1979. He was excited by the revolutionary mouse-driven GUI of the Xerox Alto and was keen to use these ideas back at Apple, a great deal of work was put into making the graphical interface into a mainstream commercial product by the Lisa team. By May 1982 InfoWorld reported that Apples yet-to-be-announced Lisa 68000 network work station is widely rumored to have a mouse. The Lisa was a project at the company, which reportedly spent more than $50 million on its development. More than 90 people participated on the design, plus more on the sales, bruce Daniels was in charge of applications development, and Larry Tesler was in charge of system software. After a six-month period in which the interface was designed, the hardware, operating system
35.
System 7
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System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and was part of the classic Mac OS line of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13,1991, by Apple Computer and it succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS8 in 1997. Features added with the System 7 release included virtual memory, personal file sharing, QuickTime, QuickDraw 3D, System 7 is often used generically to refer to all 7. x versions. With the release of version 7.6 in 1997, Apple officially renamed the operating system Mac OS, System 7 was developed for Macs that used the Motorola 680x0 line of processors, but was ported to the PowerPC after Apple adopted the new processor. The development of the Macintosh Systems up to System 6 followed a smooth progression with the addition of new features. Major additions were fairly limited, notably adding Color QuickDraw and MultiFinder in System 6, some perspective on the scope of the changes can be seen by examining the official system documentation, Inside Macintosh. This initially shipped in three volumes, adding another to describe the changes introduced with the Mac Plus, and another for the Mac II and these limited changes meant that the original Mac system remained largely as it was when initially introduced. That is, the machine was geared towards a single user, however, many of the assumptions of this model were no longer appropriate. Most notable among these was the model, the replacement of which had first been examined in 1986s Switcher. Running MultiFinder normally required larger amount of RAM and a hard drive, while additions had been relatively limited, so had fixes to some of the underlying oddities of the system architecture. If the system were able to support tasks, this one-off solution would no longer be needed - desk accessories could simply be small programs. Yet, as MultiFinder was still optional, such a step had not been taken, numerous examples of this sort of problem could be found throughout the system. Finally, the adoption of hard drives and local area networks led to any number of new features being requested from users and developers. By the late 1980s, the list of new upgrades and suggested changes to the model was considerable. In March 1988, shortly after the release of System 6, development of the ideas contained on the blue and pink cards was to proceed in parallel, and at first the two projects were known simply as blue and pink. Apple intended to have the team release an updated version of the existing Macintosh operating system in the 1990–1991 timeframe. As Blue was aimed at relatively simple upgrades, the feature list reads to some degree as a sort of System 6, a new Sound Manager API, version 2.0, replaced the older ad hoc APIs. The new APIs featured significantly improved hardware abstraction, as well as higher-quality playback, although technically not a new feature for System 7, Sound Manager 2.0 was the first widespread implementation of this technology to make it to most Mac users
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