Development of the digital computer - I

Imagine working without the benefit of a personal computer, or more likely, many networked computers. In 1957, mainframes were relatively few and far between and certainly not the "personal" kind that did not arrive for nearly another 20 years. The changes that have occurred over the past 45 years in computers and computing are truly revolutionary. As just one example of this technological revolution, computer speed has increased by about a factor of 10/sup 8/ during the 40 years since the author first began to write his own programs in 1963. The computer was an IBM 7094 and the language was MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder, a Fortran-like language). Some of the key events and developments in digital computing are summarized.