History of America

in 101 Objects©

and Then Some

Part 1, Session 81

Band 16

Digital Age

(1945 to Now)

2

Digital Age

(1945 to Now)

•95. ENIAC

• 4. Semiconductors

•96/16. Apple Macintosh Computer/ PC

•97/9. Nam June Paik’s Electronic Super

Highway/Internet

3

95. ENIACFirst US Device that Could be Called a Computer

1944 -US Army Corporal Irwin Goldstein

(foreground) sets the switches on one of

ENIAC's function tables at the University

of Pennsylvania Moore School of

Electrical Engineering.

Massive machine built on simple tubes

requiring an entire building.

One of the first uses of a computer to

assemble ordnance trajectory tables

from very complex equations requiring

thousands of approximations.

This photo has been artificially darkened,

obscuring details such as the women

who were present and the IBM

equipment in use.

(U.S. Army photo)

4

4. Semiconductors — More

Commonly Transistors

A replica of the first working transistor.

John Bardeen, William Shockley and

Walter Brattain at Bell Labs, 1948.

$349.00$0.00/$69.00

monthly service5

More than you want to know

A semiconductor is a material which has electrical conductivity

between that of a conductor such as copper and that of an

insulator such as glass.

Semiconductors are the physical foundation of modern electronics

and the digital world, including transistors, solar cells, light-

emitting diodes (LEDs), quantum dots and digital and analog

integrated circuits.

The modern understanding of the properties of a semiconductor

relies on quantum physics to explain the movement of electrons

inside a lattice of atoms.

The increasing understanding of semiconductor materials and

fabrication processes has made possible continuing increases in

the complexity and speed of semiconductor devices, an effect

known as Moore's Law. 6

Classic Technological Impact

From 1950 on it changed our lives in

uncountable ways!

What did the semiconductor/transistor bring?

1.Dramatic reduction in size and power requirements (think a power cord

plugging into wall socket vs batteries) 1000’s of time smaller.

2.Profound increase in the speed of operations that it can be done. This is

what makes computers and smart phones possible. The vast array of medical

devices, GPS, modern aviation, controls of every sort and more. 7

16. Personal ComputerAlthough IBM's launch of the Personal

Computer (IBM 5150) in 1981 set the industry

standard for what would be personal

computing, IBM had introduced a variety of

small computers for individual users several

years before that.

IBM Personal Computer model 5150 with IBM

CGA monitor (model number 5153), IBM PC

keyboard, IBM 5152 printer and paper stand.

Type: Personal computer

Released: August 12, 1981

Discontinued: April 2, 1987

Cost: $1600

Operating system: IBM BASIC / PC DOS 1.0

CP/M-86

UCSD: p-System

CPU: Intel 8088 @ 4.77 MHz

Memory: 16 kB ~ 256 kB

Sound: 1-channel PWM 8

96. Apple Macintosh Computer

Apple Macintosh

Model: M0001

Introduced: January 1984

Price: US$2495

CPU: Motorola 68000, 7.83 MHz

RAM: 128K, later 512K

Display: 9-inch monochrome screen

512x342 pixels

Ports: Two DB9 serial ports

Printer port

External floppy port

Storage: Internal 400K SSDD floppy

optional external floppy,

$495 OS: Macintosh GUI

(graphical user interface)

Pointing Device: Mouse

9

1984 Super Bowl Commercial

• The Macintosh was introduced by the now

famous $900,000 television commercial by

Ridley Scott, "1984," that most notably aired

on CBS during the third quarter of Super

Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984

• “On January 24th Apple Computer will

introduce the Macintosh computer so 1984

will not be (Orwell’s) 1984”

10

Personal Computers• The first 1981 IBM PCs were klutzy, not flexible, not

intuitive to use and big. Their initial 8.5 inch “floppy”memory discs were bigger than the 3.5 inch shirt pocket size memories later used in the Mac.

• But, they were cheaper.

• Almost all PC brands, Wang being a notable exception, used the Microsoft DOS operating system. Apple built both HW and SW.

• The PCs were a hardware driven competitive product. The Apple products were technology driven products.

• When my work place Mac was threatened in the 1990s, I used a Charlton Heston comment that I would be lying dead at my desk, clutching my Mac before it would be replaced with a Gateway PC!

11

Which way is counter-clockwise?

What is a quarter to 3?

12

Consequences [+ and -]• Both the Mac and the PC revolutionized the American

workplace. Through them now almost everyone is doing clerical tasks. The written or typed letter disappeared. The first hit were secretaries, those who once supported 10 staff were now supporting 25-40 staff as Admin Assistants.

• Email and Instant messages (IMs).

• The demise of written script and letters stored away in a trunk. Is the Cloud better?

• Are we better off now that we were swamped with email and their trails.

• Then the initial useful PowerPoint tool became over whelmed with staff spending vast time with fancy graphics, colors, shadings, audio and automation that actual productive hours dropped.

• Texting — the loss of spelling, grammar, good taste (?)

• Speed, utility and communication 13

Oil Industrial

Refining Revolution

Mass

Production

Automobile

Airplane

Electricity

Electric

Motor

Agriculture

Medicine

Products/Plastics

Computer

Internet

Fiber Optics

Internal

Combustion

Engine

Chemistry

Space

Exploration

Coal Semiconductors

Television

Vast Linkage EarthEarth

Transport

Radio

Communications

Oil

Discovery

14

back_to_work_after_thirty_years.wmv

• The shortest video you've ever seen so pay attention... A woman goes back to work after thirty years.

• Watch carefully, the video is only 5 seconds long, but, you'll get it.

• If you're younger than 40 years old, you probably won't understand it.

• www.youtube.com/embed/qteu4ld_SCE?rel=0

15

97/9. Nam June Paik’s Electronic

Super Highway/Internet

A modern artwork

reflects the high

speed electronically

connected new age.

It evolved from the

first copper telegraph

land and under sea

cables, then telephone

cables, then microwave,

then satellite, fiber optic

Cables and now radio

cell 16

97/9. Internet

Visualization from the Opte Project

of the various routes through a

portion of the Internet

The infrastructure of the Digital Age

17

Telegraph

Morse

Western

Union Co

Telephone

Edison

Telephone

BellAmerican

Telephone Co

Commercial

Plus

Personal

Commercial

Bell

Labs

Phonograph

Phonograph

Disc

Victrola

Radio/TV

Photography

WW II

Computer

New Computer/

Communication Co’s

Internet

Portable

Phones/

Devices

Bell Labs

Switching

Semiconductors

Microwave

CCD

F/O

1845

1945 1970-Now

1876

1880- Now

1906 - 1945 1941 – Now

1969 -Now

Entertainment

Products

1905

18

What Is the Internet?

• The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link several billion devices worldwide.

• It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies.

• The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertextdocuments and applications of the World Wide Web(WWW), the infrastructure to support email, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing and telephony.

19

Internet as Transport to Social Media

• Facebook

• Tweeter

• Tumblr

• Linkedin

• Et al

• They are enjoyable; but are they ultimately useful in our lives?

20

Ubiquitous

• From an academic beginning in the US in the

early 1960s, the internet is part of the daily

personal and business of virtually everyone.

• I put this course together with significant help

from the internet with simple tools.

• My younger grandchildren 3 and 6 use the

internet as just a part of daily life. The 9 and 12

year olds are in a different world, but they still

communicate verbally with their elderly fossils.

21

A Modern Luddite’s Dilemma

22

Bose® Wave SoundTouch Music SystemThis 2014 product is the merger of Plastic,

Mass Production, Semiconductors, Radio, the

Computer and its software, the Internet and

all their underlying technologies.

Bose ad:

•“CDs, FM/AM radio, and the vast universe of

streaming music—millions of songs,

thousands of Internet radio stations, popular

services like Pandora.®

•Enjoy it all with the rich, room-filling sound of

the Wave® SoundTouch™ music system.

•This small, versatile system fits in just about

anywhere around your home where you want

to enjoy your music—living room, kitchen,

bedroom.

•If you have a home Wi-Fi® network, you have

everything you need.”

$600.00

23

Band 17

New Millennium

(2000 to the Future)

24

History Timeline [2000 to the Future]New Millennium (2000 to the Future)

• 2000 US. population is about 291 million, 81 per- cent urban; human genome decoded.

• 2001 September 11 attacks destroy World Trade Center in New York, damaged Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and result in crashed plane near Shanksville, Pennsylvania; President George W. Bush declares "war on terror"; United States launches air attacks in Afghanistan and topples Taliban government.

• 2002 President Bush creates Department of Homeland Security.

• 2003 United States invades Iraq and ousts Saddam Hussein; space shuttle Columbia explodes on reentry, killing the crew.

• 2007 Nancy Pelosi becomes first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives.

• 2008 Barack Obama elected first African-American President.

• 2009 Sonya Sotomayor becomes first Hispanic appointed to the Supreme Court.

• 2011 Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. Navy Seals in Pakistan; more than 6,000 Americans dead in war on terror plus more from 9/11 and other attacks.

• 2012 Barack Obama reelected. 25

New Millennium

(2000 to the Future)

• 98. New York Fire Department Engine Door

From September 11

• 99. Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama “Hope”

Portrait

• 100. David Boxley’s Tsimshian Totem Pole

• 101. Giant Magellan Telescope

26

98. New York Fire Department Engine

Door From September 11

Crumpled and damaged artifacts

point to the tragedy and heroism

of America’s most horrific day.

American life as we knew it changed.

•A further loss of innocence.

•Department of Homeland Security.

•Two wars far from our shores.

•A cloud of random terrorism

•NSA and privacy.

•National/State political turmoil.27

28

99. Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama

“Hope” Portrait

A ubiquitous image aids a

historic Presidential campaign.

The picture begins with an actual

detailed digital photograph and is

transformed into a message

through nuanced colors, shadings

and action words.

29

100. David Boxley’s Tsimshian Totem

PoleSymbol of National Diversity

Carved from mature cedar trees, totem poles are an

important part of the coastal First Nations culture.

Totem poles were created and raised to represent a

family-clan, its kinship system, its dignity, its

accomplishments, it prestige, its adventures, its

stories, its rights and prerogatives.

A totem pole served, in essence, as the emblem of a

family or clan and often as a reminder of its

ancestry.

Today, totem poles are carved for both Natives and

non-Natives. They have come to represent

Northwest Pacific Coast Native tradition and pride.30

101. Giant Magellan Telescope

31

101. Giant Magellan Telescope

• The Giant Magellan Telescope will be one of the next class of super

giant earth-based telescopes that promises to revolutionize our

view and understanding of the universe.

• It will be operational in about 10 years and will be located in Chile.

• The GMT has a unique design that offers several advantages:

– It is a segmented mirror telescope that employs seven of

today's largest stiff monolith mirrors as segments.

– Six off-axis 8.4 meter or 27-foot segments surround a central

on-axis segment, forming a single optical surface with an

aperture of 24.5 meters, or 80 feet in diameter.

• The GMT will have a resolving power 10 times greater than the

Hubble Space Telescope.

• The GMT project is the work of a distinguished international

consortium of leading universities and science institutions.

32

Q: Why is it being built?Are we alone?

•Most people do not realize that, as recently as 100 years ago, scientists thought the Milky Way was the entire universe.

•But in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble, using the famous 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson, determined that there were other galaxies too. That discovery was followed by the realization that the universe was expanding.

•These discoveries revolutionized our view of the universe. The heavens were not static, as had been assumed, but changing over time.

•Like the 100-inch telescope, perhaps the most exciting and intriguing fact is that the GMT promises to make discoveries that we cannot yet imagine.

•Perhaps one of the most exciting questions yet to be answered: Are we alone? The GMT may help answer that.

33

Anybody Out There?• Finding evidence of life on other planets would be a momentous

discovery--certainly one of the greatest in the history of human exploration. What would we do with the knowledge?

• But taking pictures of these so called "extrasolar" planets, which orbit other stars, is extraordinarily difficult. In addition to the vast distance--the very closest star to earth is four light-years away--the biggest problem is the glare of the host star which blocks out most of the reflected light of a small distant planet.

• This is why the great collecting area of the GMT is so important. The GMT mirrors will collect more light than any telescope ever built and the resolution will be the best ever achieved.

• This unprecedented light gathering ability and resolution will help with many other fascinating questions in 21st century astronomy.– How did the first galaxies form?

– What are dark matter and dark energy that comprise most of our universe?

– How did stellar matter from the Big Bang congeal into what we see today?

– What is the fate of the universe? 34

Federation Starship NCC-1701ATo Explore Galaxies beyond our Imagination;

to travel where no human has gone before.

Is this the follow-on to the GMT?35

Here are the Subjects for PhD dissertations: Most Significant Inventions and Break-throughs

Both before our time frame and not in America

• No. 5 - Optical Lenses (glasses)

Allowed people with impaired vision to see well

enough to recognize numbers and words and thus

able to use their innate intelligence to succeed.

• No. 1 - Printing Press and with it, No.6, Paper and No.

25 Alphabetization.

Allowed information and knowledge of all types

to be readily, widely and inexpensively recorded

and transmitted through out all the populations

of the World - Education 36

US Population Growth and Urbanization

• 1790 Census established the population at almost 4 million, 95 percent rural.

• During the 20th century the population almost quadrupled, a growth rate of about 1.3% a year, from about 76 million in 1900 to 281 million in 2000.

• Population reached 200 million in 1968, and 300 million on October 17, 2006.

• 2014 population is 318.2 million with 82 percent living in urban areas.

37

Visit

Read

38

History of America

in 101 Objects©

and Then Some

Part 239

History of America

in 101 Objects©

and Then Some

Part 340