Revolution - 2000 years of computing (Part One)

Taking advantage of my 3-week between-job break, I visited the newly renovated computer history museum (used to be the SGI head quarter). It now hosts a wonderful exhibition called "Revolution, the first 2000 years of computing". You can see the Differential Machine designed by Babbage, the Enigma encryption device, various early computers, and a lot of cool stuff. I spent a wonderful afternoon there. If you have a chance to visit SF Bay Area, this is a must see.

Newly renovated computer history museum

Entrance to the wonderful exhibition

An early digital calculator, remember it? 

ENIAC, one of the earliest computers. At that time, there was no "memory" in computers, the machine had to be "physically" rewired to perform different functions. Really convenient. Finally, when John von Neumann proposed the idea of storing computer data and operations in something called "memory", modern computer architecture was born.

Vacuum tubes in ENIAC, mesmerizingly beautiful.

The earliest computer memory.

The famous Enigma encryption device. Looks just like a typewriter. Who would think the fate of World War II is so closed tied to this simple looking device!

Maintenance console of RAND corporation's JOHNNIAC, another early system. Those old computer systems all had the size of a modern data center. Like ARPANET, they are also built for defense purpose.

SAGE, another system built for defense purpose. At this time, vacuum tube is still used.

Computing unit of a missile guidance system. Notice transistors had replaced vacuum tubes here.

The famous IBM System-360, a general purpose computer. The true revolution of this system was not in the hardware, but in the software. It is the first system that established the Operating System concept. Instead of creating a new OS for every new system, the same OS was used for IBM's later systems. The computer languages supported on this system becomes the precursors of many modern computer languages. The practices used to development this system (the water fall model) becomes the foundation of software engineering field in the following 40 years.

Fred Brooks, who wrote the software engineering classic "the mystical man month" based on his experience as the project manager of IBM System 360. More than 1000 programmers were involved in creating IBM System 360.

CRAY-1, the first super computer. It has a very unconventional design. Below are the power supplies. Above are the computing/logic units, cooled by Freon. How to cool the computer systems had always been a challenge even in the old days.

The logic unit of the Cray-1. The blue wires are the interconnect of the logic units. It took a worker half an year to connect them, another half year to check, so it took at least one year to build a Cray-1.

The interconnect of Cray-1. How to maintain it is totally beyond me.

Computer language family trees

Something dear and near to my heart