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CAB 500
The CAB 500 (''Calculatrice Automatique Binaire'' ''500'', or Binary Automatic Calculator 500) was a transistorized computer using drum memory designed between 1957-1959 by Société d'Electronique et d'Automatisme (SEA) and manufactured in about a hundred units, with the first one delivered in 1961. It was predominantly distributed in Europe, with a few exemples also being sold in China and Japan. In Japan, it had a distinct market presence through the Yaskawa Electrics Corporation, which held a licensing agreement with SEA. The CAB 500 featured a novel micro-programmed architecture which used transistors and magnetic amplifiers for its logic called symmags, developed by SEA. It also ran an interactive high-level language for real-time calculations, one of the first of its kind, and an incremental compiler for a programming language known as PAF, which bore resemblance to Fortran and BASIC. Alice Recoque played a role in its development. Specifications Designed for scienti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drum Memory
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory of the computer. It was so common that these computers were often referred to as ''drum machines''. Some drums were also used as secondary storage as for example various IBM drum storage drives. Drums were displaced as primary computer memory by magnetic core memory, which offered a better balance of size, speed, cost, reliability and potential for further improvements. Drums in turn were replaced by hard disk drives for secondary storage, which were both less expensive and offered denser storage. The manufacturing of drums ceased in the 1970s. Technical design A drum memory or drum storage unit contained a large metal cylinder, coated on the outside surface with a ferromagnetic recording material. It could be considered the precur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computers Designed In France
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. A computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system (main software), and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation. This term may also refer to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network or computer cluster. A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems. Simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls are included, as are factory devices like industrial robots and computer-aided design, as well as general-purpose devices like personal computers and mobile devices like smartphones. Computers power the Internet, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transistorized Computers
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electrical power, power. The transistor is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more are found embedded in integrated circuits. Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed the concept of a field-effect transistor in 1926, but it was not possible to actually constru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywell, RCA, and UNIVAC. CDC was well-known and highly regarded throughout the industry at the time. For most of the 1960s, Seymour Cray worked at CDC and developed a series of machines that were the fastest computers in the world by far, until Cray left the company to found Cray Research (CRI) in the 1970s. After several years of losses in the early 1980s, in 1988 CDC started to leave the computer manufacturing business and sell the related parts of the company, a process that was completed in 1992 with the creation of Control Data Systems, Inc. The remaining businesses of CDC currently operate as Ceridian. Background and origins: World War II–1957 During World War II the U.S. Navy had built up a classified team of engineers to bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CDC 160 Series
The CDC 160 series was a series of minicomputers built by Control Data Corporation. The CDC 160 and CDC 160-A were 12-bit minicomputers built from 1960 to 1965; the CDC 160G was a 13-bit minicomputer, with an extended version of the CDC 160-A instruction set, and a compatibility mode in which it did not use the 13th bit. The 160 was designed by Seymour Cray - reportedly over a long three-day weekend. It fit into the desk where its operator sat. The 160 architecture uses ones' complement arithmetic with end-around carry. NCR joint-marketed the 160-A under its own name for several years in the 1960s. Overview A publishing company that purchased a CDC 160-A described it as "a single user machine with no batch processing capability. Programmers and/or users would go to the computer room, sit at the console, load the paper tape bootstrap and start up a program." The CDC 160-A was a simple piece of hardware, and yet provided a variety of features which were scaled-down capabilities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quadratic Equation
In algebra, a quadratic equation () is any equation that can be rearranged in standard form as ax^2 + bx + c = 0\,, where represents an unknown (mathematics), unknown value, and , , and represent known numbers, where . (If and then the equation is linear equation, linear, not quadratic.) The numbers , , and are the ''coefficients'' of the equation and may be distinguished by respectively calling them, the ''quadratic coefficient'', the ''linear coefficient'' and the ''constant'' or ''free term''. The values of that satisfy the equation are called ''solution (mathematics), solutions'' of the equation, and ''zero of a function, roots'' or ''zero of a function, zeros'' of the Expression (mathematics), expression on its left-hand side. A quadratic equation has at most two solutions. If there is only one solution, one says that it is a double root. If all the coefficients are real numbers, there are either two real solutions, or a single real double root, or two complex number, c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnetic-core Memory
Magnetic-core memory was the predominant form of random-access computer memory for 20 years between about 1955 and 1975. Such memory is often just called core memory, or, informally, core. Core memory uses toroids (rings) of a hard magnetic material (usually a semi-hard ferrite) as transformer cores, where each wire threaded through the core serves as a transformer winding. Two or more wires pass through each core. Magnetic hysteresis allows each of the cores to "remember", or store a state. Each core stores one bit of information. A core can be magnetized in either the clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. The value of the bit stored in a core is zero or one according to the direction of that core's magnetization. Electric current pulses in some of the wires through a core allow the direction of the magnetization in that core to be set in either direction, thus storing a one or a zero. Another wire through each core, the sense wire, is used to detect whether the cor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM 1620
The IBM 1620 was announced by IBM on October 21, 1959, and marketed as an inexpensive scientific computer. After a total production of about two thousand machines, it was withdrawn on November 19, 1970. Modified versions of the 1620 were used as the CPU of the IBM 1710 and IBM 1720 Industrial Process Control Systems (making it the first digital computer considered reliable enough for real-time process control of factory equipment). Being variable-word-length decimal, as opposed to fixed-word-length pure binary, made it an especially attractive first computer to learn on and hundreds of thousands of students had their first experiences with a computer on the IBM 1620. Core memory cycle times were 20 microseconds for the (earlier) Model I, 10 microseconds for the Model II (about a thousand times slower than typical computer main memory in 2006). The Model II was introduced in 1962. Architecture Memory The IBM 1620 was a variable "word" length decimal ( BCD) computer with a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Société D'électronique Et D'automatisme
The Société d'électronique et d'automatisme (SEA) was an early French computer manufacturer established in 1947 by electrical engineer François-Henri Raymond, which designed and put into operation a significant portion of the first computers in France during the 1950s. The SEA played a major role in driving the development of the French computer industry, training the first generation of engineers and installing about 170 computers between 1955 and its dissolution in 1966, when it merged with Compagnie internationale pour l'informatique, CII. History and achievements In 1947, François-Henri Raymond is sent for a technical trip to the United States where he meets Howard H. Aiken at Harvard University, visits the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT laboratories and comes across John von Neumann's First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, report on the EDVAC and the pioneering concepts of a then futuristic machine: the stored-program computer. Upon returning to Paris, he sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alice Recoque
Alice Recoque (''born'' Arnaud; 29 August 1929 – 28 January 2021) was a French computer scientist, computer engineer and computer architecture specialist. She worked on the designs of mini-computers in the 1970s and led research focused on artificial intelligence. Early life Alice Arnaud was born on 29 August 1929 in Cherchell, Algeria. She finished École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles in 1954 with a title of graduate engineer. Career She started working at Société d'électronique et d'automatisme (SAE) in 1954. At SAE she worked on core memories of CAB1101. In 1956 Alice Recoque and Françoise Becquet started designing the mini-computer CAB500 - the first conversational desktop computer, under the direction of André Richard and François-Henri Raymond. The computer was released in 1960. The CAB500 was a French low cost mini-computer, the purpose of which was to do complex, scientific calculations. She also worked on the CINA industrial computer a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BASIC
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn. In addition to the program language, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs simultaneously on remote terminals. This general model became very popular on minicomputer systems like the PDP-11 and Data General Nova in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hewlett-Packard produced an entire computer line for this method of operation, introducing the HP2000 series in the late 1960s and continuing sales into the 1980s. Many early video games trace their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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