In spite of appearances, nowadays cyberspace existence didn't leap to life fully forged. Earlier they were already a major component of our lives, a few pioneering computing devices either had to captivate the public imagination, institute what could be done by computers, or both. Here, we'll look at some computers that played, and occasionally continue playing, a major role.
6. Xerox PARC Alto
A single-user computer with a graphic user interface with windows and icons, a mouse for pointer control, a localized hard drive, and an Ethernet connection to the rest of the office and/or world--that probably depicts the machine you're using today. Those characteristics 1st came together in the Alto, a trial machine produced at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1974. Xerox, however, never had the steel to put the Alto on the marketplace.
5. TRS-80
Presented in 1977, Radio Shack reckoned its original output run of 3,000 could be used as cash registers if they didn't sell. But sales surpassed that projection by a factor of 80. Among the foremost machines whose documentation was designated for non-geeks, the widespread adoption of the "Trash-80" led to the first third-party mass personalised software system market. For the first time, non-geeky high school youngsters could write computer programs and make a computer do their bidding.
4. Apple II
Ushered in by Apple Computer in 1977 and retained the market for an unprecedented 15 years, the Apple II proved once and for all that there was a mass microcomputer market. Its pioneering use of colour graphics also gained it extensive following in the teaching market--and scorn in the commercial enterprise market, which considered colour as flippant.
3. IBM PC
It was barely the fastest or foxiest personal computer when it appeared in 1981, but it did have those 3 initials, and it launched computer hardware and software standards in a market whose increase had previously been hindered by fragmentation amidst competing architectures. The clone, software, and peripheral device markets that arose around the PC passed directly to today's PC ecosystem.
2. Apple Macintosh
The "computer for the rest of us" elevated the bar for the rest of the PC industry once it emerged in 1984 by deserting the CLI (command line interface) as employed by the PC's MS-DOS operating system and basically everyone else, for a GUI (graphical user interface). That wasn't all, it was commercially successful doing so.
1. IBM Roadrunner
The title of fastest supercomputer has become difficult to retain for long, but the present-day title-holder is also famous for being the 1st machine with sustained throughput outmatching a petaflop -- more than a quadrillion floating point operations per second. Physically, it's bigger than the ENIAC computer brought out in 1946, but, if history is any guidebook, we'll be treated to equal power on a desktop in a couple of decades
por FILIP_FB Qua Dez 05, 2012 11:20 am
