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.