User:Eleanorg/Thematic1.1/10 Oct Computer history

HISTORY OF COMPUTER INTERFACES

- Jaquard Looms

Invented 1801. Stored loom's weaving patterns in cards. Breakthrough in weaving industry. One of the first techniques for storing data.

- Punch cards

No specific standard, built on logic of Jaquard looms. Passed data to a computer. Made of card - but more resilient than software, easier to archive.

- Dehomag

Dehomag was subsidiary of IBM, who led the punchcard industry. Provided computing systems for third reich - databases of citizens etc. Also used in social health system in US. Seen by some campaigners as repressive - first widespread storage of personal data.

- Terminal

Rather than punching in instructions, idea developed of typing information in. Separate from the machine - sent data to the computer, which did the computing. VT100 most famous terminal - a little tv-like thing w/keyboard, connected to computer.

- Serial consoles

Another way in to the computer for a superuser, a cable to the computer. In modern computers, console & terminal functions can be accessed from the same machine as you can have multiple user roles.

<r> OpenWrt.org - free wireless firmware, used by activists & artists

- Unix

OS written by ppl from Packard Bell research lab. Idea to break all functions into small isolated chunks. Modular. Philosophy written by Douglas McIlRoy - "write programs that do one thing, and do it well". Basis of Steve Job's failed Nextstep/Openstep OS while he was away from Apple - work eventually went into Mac OSX. Also basis of BSD & Linux.

// Why are FLOSS sites all so ugly? Joke project - re-do CSS with girly flowers etc?

- GNU

Explicitly free OS built on Unix. Needed a kernal, provided by Linus' Linux kernal. Together, became GNU/Linux

- Terminal emulators (ie terminal)

Thing that imitates the old, plugged-in screen

- Shell

Program that runs in the terminal - the text interface. (Bash is the default in Debian.)

- Pipes

Links modular programs. Standard Streams - 'holes' in programs for input, output & errors. Standard In, Standard Out, Standard Error. In/out sent between programs; 'error' not sent to a program but sent to the terminal for you to read. When no pipe exists, std out is printed to the terminal.