IBM Personal Computer

                             

The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981. It was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida.


The generic term "personal computer" was in use before 1981, applied as early as 1972 to the Xerox PARC's Alto, but because of the success of the IBM Personal Computer, the term "PC" came to mean more specifically a desktop microcomputer compatible with IBM's PC products. Within a short time of the introduction, third-party suppliers of peripheral devices, expansion cards, and software proliferated; the influence of the IBM PC on the personal computer market was substantial in standardizing a platform for personal computers. "IBM compatible" became an important criterion for sales growth; only the Apple Macintosh family kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer.

The birth of the IBM pc

                    

Non-IBM personal computers were available as early as the mid-1970s, first as do-it-yourself kits and then as off-the-shelf products. They offered a few applications but none that justified widespread use.

Drawing on its pioneering SCAMP (Special Computer, APL Machine Portable) prototype of 1973, IBM's General Systems Division announced the IBM 5100 Portable Computer in September 1975. Weighing approximately 50 pounds, the 5100 desktop computer was comparable to the IBM 1130 in storage capacity and performance but almost as small and easy to use as an IBM Selectric Typewriter. It was followed by similar small computers such as the IBM 5110 and 5120.
IBM's own Personal Computer (IBM 5150) was introduced in August 1981, only a year after corporate executives gave the go-ahead to Bill Lowe, the lab director in the company's Boca Raton, Fla., facilities. He set up a task force that developed the proposal for the first IBM PC. Early studies had concluded that there were not enough applications to justify acceptance on a broad basis and the task force was fighting the idea that things couldn't be done quickly in IBM. One analyst was quoted as saying that "IBM bringing out a personal computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance." During a meeting with top executives in New York, Lowe claimed his group could develop a small, new computer within a year. The response: "You're on. Come back in two weeks with a proposal."
Lowe picked a group of 12 strategists who worked around the clock to hammer out a plan for hardware, software, manufacturing setup and sales strategy. It was so well-conceived that the basic strategy remained unaltered throughout the product cycle.
Don Estridge, acting lab director at the time, volunteered to head the project. Joe Bauman, plant manager for the Boca Raton site, offered manufacturing help. Mel Hallerman, who was working on the IBM Series/1, stepped forward with his software knowledge and was brought in as chief programmer. And so it went. As word spread about what was going on, talent and expertise were drawn in.
Estridge decided early that to be successful and to meet deadlines, the group had to stick to the plan: using tested vendor technology; a standardized, one-model product; open architecture; and outside sales channels for quick consumer market saturation.
About a dozen people made up the first development team, recalls Dave Bradley, who wrote the interface code for the new product. "For a month, we met every morning to hash out what it was this machine had to do and then in the afternoons worked on the morning's decisions. We started to build a prototype to take — by the end of the year — to a then little-known company called Microsoft." The team beat that deadline. The engineers were virtually finished with the machine by April 1981, when the manufacturing team took over.
The manufacturing strategy was to simplify everything, devise a sound plan and not deviate. There was not time to develop and test all components. So they shopped for completely functioning and pretested subassemblies, put them together and tested the final product. Zero defects was part of the plan.
In sum, the development team broke all the rules. They went outside the traditional boundaries of product development within IBM. They went to outside vendors for most of the parts, went to outside software developers for the operating system and application software, and acted as an independent business unit. Those tactics enabled them to develop and announce the IBM PC in 12 months -- at that time faster than any other hardware product in IBM's history.
On August 12, 1981, at a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria ballroom in New York City, Estridge announced the IBM Personal Computer with a price tag of $1,565. Two decades earlier, an IBM computer often cost as much as $9 million and required an air-conditioned quarter-acre of space and a staff of 60 people to keep it fully loaded with instructions. The new IBM PC could not only process information faster than those earlier machines but it could hook up to the home TV set, play games, process text and harbor more words than a fat cookbook.
The $1,565 price bought a system unit, a keyboard and a color/graphics capability. Options included a display, a printer, two diskette drives, extra memory, communications, game adapter and application packages — including one for text processing. The development team referred to their creation as a mini-compact, at a mini-price, with IBM engineering under the hood.
The system unit was powered by an Intel 8088 microprocessor operating at speeds measured in millionths of a second. It was the size of a portable typewriter and contained 40K of read-only memory and 16K of user memory, as well as a built-in speaker for generating music. Its five expansion slots could be used to connect such features as expanded memory, display and printing units and game "paddles." The unit also ran self-diagnostic checks.
Containing 83 keys, the keyboard was connected to the unit by a six-foot coiled cable, which meant users could rest it in their lap or on the desktop without moving the rest of the system. It also included such advanced functions for the times as a numeric keypad and 10 special keys that enabled users to write and edit text, figure accounts and store data.
Options included:
A printer that could print in two directions at 80 characters per second in 12 different character styles, and also check itself for malfunctions and provide an out-of-paper signal.
A color/graphics monitor with 16 foreground and background colors and 256 characters for text applications. Its graphics were in four colors.
Multiple 32K and 64K memory cards that could be plugged into the option slots to increase memory to 256K.
Needing new channels to distribute these new computers, IBM turned to ComputerLand; Sears, Roebuck and Co.; and IBM Product Centers to make the IBM PC available to the broadest set of customers.
The response to the announcement was overwhelming. One dealer had 22 customers come in and put down $1,000 deposits on the machines for which he could not promise a delivery date. By the end of 1982, qualified retail outfits were signing on to sell the new machine at the rate of one-a-day as sales actually hit a system-a-minute every business day. Newsweek magazine called it "IBM's roaring success," and the New York Times said, "The speed and extent to which IBM has been successful has surprised many people, including IBM itself."

History of computer technolog

                        

            have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, probably initially in the form of a tally stick. The Antikythera mechanism, dating from about the beginning of the first century BC, is generally considered to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer, and the earliest known geared mechanism. Comparable geared devices did not emerge in Europe until the 16th century, and it was not until 1645 that the first mechanical calculator capable of performing the four basic arithmetical operations was developed.

Electronic computers, using either relays or valves, began to appear in the early 1940s. The electromechanical Zuse Z3, completed in 1941, was the world's first programmable computer, and by modern standards one of the first machines that could be considered a complete computing machine. Colossus, developed during the Second World War to decrypt German messages was the first electronic digital computer. Although it was programmable, it was not general-purpose, being designed to perform only a single task. It also lacked the ability to store its program in memory; programming was carried out using plugs and switches to alter the internal wiring. The first recognisably modern electronic digital stored-program computer was the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), which ran its first program on 21 June 1948.

The development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a new generation of computers to be designed with greatly reduced power consumption. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I, contained 4050 valves and had a power consumption of 25 kilowatts. By comparison the first transistorised computer, developed at the University of Manchester and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

                           

Information technology (IT) is the application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data,often in the context of a business or other enterprise.


The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several industries are associated with information technology, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, engineering, healthcare, e-commerce and computer services.


Humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating and communicating information since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in about 3000 BC, but the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making, and the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs.


Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC – 1450 AD), mechanical (1450–1840), electromechanical (1840–1940) and electronic (1940–present). This article focuses on the most recent period (electronic), which began in about 1940.This technology has made it possible to connect with any part of the world in a matter of seconds.

Children's electronic toy maker Vtech hacked

                              

The firm said that there was "unauthorised access" to the database on 14 November. The app is a gateway for customers to download games, e-books and other content on to their Vtech devices. It is not clear how many customers have been affected, A large amount of data, which looked like it could be from the hack, was seen online but has now been hidden, according to some experts. It also appeared to include a considerable number of children's names, dates of birth and gender.


In an email to customers, the company said: "Upon discovering the unauthorised access we immediately conducted a thorough investigation, which involved a comprehensive check of the affected site and implementation of measures to defend against further attacks." The company stressed it was "important to note that our customer database does not contain any credit card or banking information" nor social security numbers. However it does contain what the Vtech describes as "general user profile information", such as "name, email address, encrypted password, secret question and answer for password retrieval, IP address, mailing address and download history".The firm sells a range of electronic products ranging from toy cars and interactive garages to cameras, games, e-books and tablets.


Professor Alan Woodward, cyber security expert at Surrey University, said it looks like the firm may have been subjected to a simple hacking technique known as anSQL injection. "If that is the case then it really is unforgivable - it is such an old attack that any standard security testing should look for it," he said. "If initial reports are correct then they should be taking their website connection to their databases offline immediately until they can discover how this was done and correct the issue. "They also need to be alerting the parents as soon as possible, with particular emphasis on how their children might be approached using this type of data.



"These breaches are endemic and we have to stop. If that means focusing the minds of these companies through big fines then so be it. It needs to be taken seriously and those responsible held to account." Another security expert, Troy Hunt, said he was extremely concerned by the breach. "When it's hundreds of thousands of children including their names, genders and birthdates, that's off the charts," he wrote. "When it includes their parents as well - along with their home address - and you can link the two and emphatically say 'Here is nine-year-old Mary, I know where she lives and I have other personally identifiable information about her parents (including their password and security question)', I start to run out of superlatives to even describe how bad that is."

Children's electronic toy maker Vtech hacked

German plasma success raises nuclear fusion hopes

                     

The helium plasma - a cloud of loose, charged particles - lasted just a tenth of a second and was about one million degrees Celsius. It was hailed as a breakthrough for the Max Planck Institute's stellarator - a chamber whose design differs from the tokamak fusion devices used elsewhere. The Sun's energy is created by fusion. Physicists are in a worldwide race to create stable fusion devices that could not only mimic the Sun but release abundant energy, without the volumes of toxic waste generated by nuclear fission - the splitting of the atom.The team at Greifswald, in northeastern Germany, aim in future to heat hydrogen nuclei to about 100 million C - the necessary conditions for fusion to take place like in the Sun's interior. They will use deuterium, a heavier type, or isotope, of the element.

The stellarator's plasma was created on Thursday using a microwave laser, a complex combination of magnets and just 10mg of helium. The Max Planck Institute calls its machine Wendelstein 7-X. The project began nine years ago and has cost 1bn euros (£720m; $1.1bn) so far. The EU's main nuclear fusion project is called Iter, at Cadarache, in the south of France. But it will not be fired up until the 2020s. It is controversial, having already cost more than €10bn.


Iter will be a tokamak device - the word comes from Russian, meaning a ring-shaped magnetic chamber. Scientists have been working on nuclear fusion for more than 50 years but the extreme temperatures involved and the difficulty of controlling plasmas mean progress is slow.

Physicists unveiled about neutrinos bombarding the Earth from above, below - and within

                           

Physicists have disclosed a pile of new discoveries about neutrinos assaulting the Earth from above, beneath - and inside. A trial inherent an endless piece of Antarctic ice has multiplied its check of "inestimable neutrinos" from space, via hunting down landings going through the planet from the north. The same group this week reported the most elevated vitality neutrino ever distinguished. Then, an identifier in Italy reported the first firm proof for neutrinos created underneath the Earth's outside. These "geo-neutrinos" convey a great deal less vitality yet can advise researchers about the radioactive procedures creating warmth profound inside of our planet. The quick moving neutrinos from space, by complexity, offer hints about baffling, fierce wellsprings of radiation past our own particular cosmic system. Neutrinos are subatomic particles with no charge and no mass, which once in a while communicate with anything. This implies they can for all intents and purposes cross the Universe in a straight line, going through whole planets undeflected - and undetected. Be that as it may, the IceCube joint effort has bound a cubic kilometer of ice underneath the South Pole with light sensors, to record the flashes made when a neutrino at times chances upon a particle.

Image result for Physicists have unveiled a raft of new findings about neutrinos bombarding the Earth from above, below - and within.In 2013 IceCube declared the first ever location of neutrinos from outside the Solar System: 28 of the particles were discovered moving at rates a long ways past the compass of mankind's best molecule accelerators.Our planet's inside creates incomprehensible measures of warmth: around 20 times the consolidated yield of all the force to be reckoned with's stations. A lot of it is radioactive warmth - however researchers don't know precisely how much. "The best way to truly see the amount of warmth originates from radioactivity is to quantify the neutrinos originating from inside," clarified Aldo Ianni, an individual from the Borexino joint effort. Indicators like Borexino or Super-K in Japan have witnessed some such "geo-neutrinos" as of now, alongside innumerable stray neutrinos delivered by atomic force stations right over the globe.


Be that as it may, in a paper due for production in Physical Review


Image result for Physicists have unveiled a raft of new findings about neutrinos bombarding the Earth from above, below - and within.D, the Borexino group presents historic proof for neutrinos originating from underneath the Earth's covering, in the layer called the mantle. The immense information set contained 77 hopeful neutrinos, of which Dr Ianni said in the range of 24 were computed to originate from the Earth and not from atomic reactors. Furthermore, inside of those 24, the group is just about - yet not totally - sure that some touched base from the mantle. This is on account of there is vulnerability appended to every phase of the count. "It's at 98%, the certainty level - which implies there is still a little likelihood that there is no sign from the mantle," Dr Ianni said. That little likelihood is too expansive for an official "disclosure" as per the standard tenets of molecule material science.


"It's little, however as far as material science it ought to be much littler." From that point forward, the tally of such "inestimable neutrinos" has moved over 50. At a gathering in the Netherlands this week, the group reported a record-breaking occasion that their frosty instrument saw in June 2014. They have proof for a neutrino landing with no less than 2,600 trillion electronvolts (teraelectronvolts, TeV) of vitality - many times more than protons inside the Large Hadron Collider, even after its notable redo.


Also, that figure is just a base. The neutrino itself never made it into the locator; what IceCube saw was an alternate molecule called a muon - the result of a "muon neutrino" (one of three distinct flavors) touching base from the north. "It was made by a neutrino that got through the Earth some place underneath our locator," said IceCube's key specialist Francis Halzen, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


By doing what Prof Halzen calls "back of an envelope" material science estimations, his group can reproduce the neutrino association that spat the muon into the ice, where it dumped those 2,600 TeV. For a tricky, close massless molecule, this neutrino stuffed a punch.


"Utilizing standard model material science, the vitality of this neutrino is some place around 5,000-10,000 TeV, with the in all likelihood esteem some place in the center," Prof Halzen clarified.

Tim Peake drives remote robot on Earth from orbit

                           

The rover known as Bridget enters the "cave" at the Airbus simulation "Mars yard" UK astronaut Tim Peake has performed a challenging remote control experiment on the International Space Station.He had to command a robot rover on Earth, driving it across a big sandpit in Stevenage, near London, that simulated the surface of Mars.The Briton experienced some software glitches, but achieved his objectives.These involved finding a series of painted targets in a darkened room that had been set up to represent a cave on the Red Planet.

It was all part of a European Space Agency (Esa) project which aims to learn how astronauts can control remote systems on other worlds.Known as Meteron (Multi-Purpose End-To-End Robotic Operation Network), the programme has already seen Danish ISS crewman Andreas Mogensen get a robot on Earth to precisely place some pegs in a set of holes.But Major Tim's job, which got under way at 15:00 BST (14:00 GMT), took things up a notch in terms of complexity.Inside the cave were several "science targets" that needed to be mapped. One of his big obstacles was time. His control link had to transmit down to Earth, bounce through numerous communications nodes, before reaching the robot in its simulation "Mars yard" at the Airbus Defence and Space Company.It meant every command - and all the feedback - had several seconds of associated delay. His link also had some drop-outs.At one point, he hit a big rock, which required the intervention of local Airbus engineers to sort out; and then there were some software glitches on the laptops he was using in orbit.But despite all this, Major Tim managed to race through his tasks, finding and mapping five targets in the cave. These targets were boulders that had been painted to show up in the UV light shone from the rover's masthead.Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.Media captionWatch highlights as astronaut Tim Peake controls the roverThe astronaut managed to get in and out of the cave within two hours."That was great driving," Esa's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, told the Briton. "Everyone on the ground is really proud of you. You succeeded to mark five targets. One was actually marked twice due to a software reboot."


Major Tim responded: "Thanks for everyone's help and support. It was an awful lot of work on everyone's behalf to get this up and running, but it was great to see, and I'm really happy everything went so smoothly."Tim Peake, at his workstation, had to deal with seconds of delay and one or two software.The targets had crosses that were illuminated by the rover's UV lights.


Both of the US space agency rovers on the Red Planet today, and those planned in coming years, use a high level of autonomy. Once instructed to go to a location, the vehicles will sense their surroundings and compute the most efficient route. But it is a very slow process.The scenario suggested by Friday's simulation is the possibility that we might one day have an astronaut in orbit above Mars who could assist a surface robot in investigating a location that engineers would normally try to avoid.Going into a cave would be extremely risky. The lack of light would make it harder for the sensors on the autonomous navigation system to discern hazards. And with no sunlight falling on the robot's solar panels, the amount of energy available to operate in the cave might very quickly become an issue.Having a human in the loop could help speed up decision-making, ensuring the rover completes its science investigations with enough time to get back outside the cave and start recharging its batteries.Rovers on another planet would ordinarily use autonomous navigation systems
Airbus DS is leading the development of the rover that Esa will send to Mars in 2018 or, more likely, in 2020. As part of this project, it uses a number of "breadboard" robots to test flight hardware and software.

James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879)

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James was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1831.From his early childhood, he displayed a natural inquisitiveness, always asking how things worked and moved as they did. When he was eight, his mother died, and his father John took responsibility for his upbringing along with his sister-in-law Jane. In 1841, he went to the Edinburgh Academy. He was a satisfactory student, but took great interest in subjects outside the school syllabus, especially geometry, drawing and maths. At the age of 14, he wrote his first scientific paper (Oval Curves). In 1847, he moved to the University of Edinburgh where he studied classes on logic, mathematics, and natural philosophy. However, like at school, he was more interested in pursuing his own studies outside the curriculum. He investigated the properties of polarized light and prisms, and importantly made his early investigations into electric and magnetic equipment. Aged 18, he presented another two scientific paper – though as he was considered too young, it was delivered to the Royal Society by his tutor Kelland instead.

In 1850, he moved to Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied mathematics under the great tutor – William Hopkins. Maxwell, graduated with a top degree in mathematics, and was able to pursue his own research interests. At the time, this included investigating the properties of colour. He delivered his first lecture to the Royal Society Of Edinburgh in March 1855 on hisExperiments on Colour. In the same year, he was made a fellow of Trinity. But, shortly after, in 1856, an opportunity arose to take the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen and he applied and took it. He married Katherine Mary Dewar in 1857.

At Aberdeen he spent part of his time lecturing and marking exam papers, but he still had the opportunity to pursue other areas of research. He was able to display his considerable talent, by providing a theoretical explanation for Saturn’s Rings, it also earned him £130 and the Adams Prize from St John’s College, Cambridge.

In 1860, he suffered a serious bout of smallpox, but survived and moved to Kings College, London. In his time in London, he became acquainted with Michael Faraday at the Royal Institute and made great progress on his work in electro-magnetism, including a model for electromagnetic induction. In one of his most important works, he wrote:

This velocity is so nearly that of light, that it seems we have strong reason to conclude that light itself (including radiant heat, and other radiations if any) is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws. A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (1864), §20.

In 1865, he returned to Glenair in Scotland and wrote a book Theory of Heat (1871)

In 1871, he moved back to Cambridge, working on the development of the Cavendish laboratory.

He died in of abdominal cancer on 5 November 1879 at the age of only 48 .

James Maxwell was a real polymath. As well as his scientific discoveries, he loved poetry and enjoyed drawing. Though many contemporaries mentioned he lacked grace and confidence in social situations. He gained reputation as a typical eccentric scientist. He was also an evangelical Christian. He wrote on the link between science and Christianity

I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonize his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society. (Draft of a reply to an invitation to join the Victoria Institute (1875), in Ch. 12 : Cambridge 1871 To 1879, p. 404)

James Maxwell Scientific Achievements

Maxwell’s equations have had a greater impact on human history than any ten presidents.

– Carl Sagan

• Maxwell’s greatest contribution to science included:
• The observation electromagnetic fields travel at speed of light showing the connection between light and electro magnetism.
• Prediction of waves and oscillating electric and magnetic fields
• Writing equations for electromagnetism. Later known as Maxwell’s equations.
• The concept of the electromagnetic field, which was later worked on by Albert
• Einstein, leading to his theory of special relativity.
• His work on optics and colour, laid foundations for practical colour photography.
• He also helped explain the phenomena of colour blindness
• He developed Kinetic theory for gases – Called Maxwell distribution.
• Work on thermodynamics
• Control theory relating to centrifugal governor used in steam engines.