TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Apple Computer 30th Birthday

Re: Apple Computer 30th Birthday

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
6 Apr 2006 13:14:29 -0700

May Wong wrote:

> Apple Computer Celebrates Its 30th Birthday Amid Recent Successes,
> Future Challenges

It is interesting in the history of computers and technology how some
companies last many years and others are a flash and burn out quickly.

Whatever happened to Visicalc? WordPerfect? Commodore?

For a while, Compaq and Gateway were the rage. Now it seems to be
Dell.

It should be noted that Hewlett Packard is a much older company, I
believe dating back to the 1930s. They had mini-computers out by 1970.

I doubt younger readers ever heard of Remington Rand. This was a
large company making business products. It took over the newly
invented Univac and ERA groups and became Univac. It merged with
another business giant, Burroughs to become Unisys. It's a much
smaller company today.

Where are DEC (Digital/PDP) and CDC (Control Data Corporation)? What
about Cray?

I date IBM to the start of Herman Hollerith's tabulating company in
1890, though I think IBM itself uses a later date when Thomas
J. Watson Sr was hired as the new manager. (Watson was NOT the
founder of IBM, it already existed. He built it up, though). By the
way, the IBM website has a history section exhibit on Tom Watson Jr,
interesting stuff. Through ups and downs IBM is still a large company
and very high up on the Fortune 500.

It's strange that so many websites and articles refer to the "early
days" and "antiques" of computers to only 30 years ago. The PC
revolution was indeed a big change for society. However, the advent
of computers in business was a much bigger change since it changed
processing from pencil and automation. Even if at home we didn't have
a computer, we were using one at work or businesses we visited used
one. Even if the PC never was developed, many features we see, such
as telephone inquiry, would still have come to pass supported by
mainframes or minis. I submit the 40th Anniversary of System/360 was
quite significant. '

The upcoming 50th anniverseary of the disk drive (this Sept 2006) is
very significant since almost everything we do would be impossible
without random access disk memory.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Lisa, we _need_ a good article on
disk drives for our archives in the history section. Would you
mind preparing one I could keep on file here? PAT]

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