Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!oliveb!intelca!mipos3!martin From: martin@bashful.intel.com (Martin Harriman ~) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Chronology from Early Calculators to Early Computers Message-ID: Date: 8 Sep 88 17:38:25 GMT References: <1988Sep6.212043.23079@sq.uucp> Sender: news@mipos3.intel.com Organization: Corporate CAD, INTeL Corporation, Santa Clara, CA Lines: 13 In-reply-to: msb@sq.uucp's message of 7 Sep 88 01:20:43 GMT This chronology (like almost all "early computer" histories) omits some (moderately interesting) IBM machines. Quite a bit of "computing" got computed on various strange combinations of IBM punch-card equipment in the 40's and early 50's. Los Alamos used such devices (see, for instance, Richard Feynman's autobiography), and Stanford had a strange device called the "Card Programmed Calculator" after the war. One could argue that these were "stored program" devices, though program storage was on cards; the CPC had some limited "branching" capability built in, though much control flow was done manually (loops, for instance, required you to carefully mark your deck, and feed the "loop" through the reader the correct number of times; I suspect devices like these saw the first applications of loop unfolding). --Martin martin@bashful.intel.com