Pioneers of computing

[allison]

On 03/11/2019 04:49 AM, Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote:
> On 2019-Mar-10, at 3:59 PM, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote:
>>> On 3/10/2019 3:18 PM, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
>>>> Back in 1965 Jack Kilby, Jerry Merryman and James Van Tassel at texas
>>>> Instruments created an integrated circuit designed to replace the
>>>> calulator. Historians, though not all, credit this development as the
>>>> beginning of the electronic-computing revolution that was truly underway by
>>>> the mid-70s. Vintage/classic computing our hobby goes back that far as us
>>>> baby-boomers can attest to.
> . . .
>> Here is a little bit of info on it:
>> http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/ti_cal-tech1.html
>
> On 2019-Mar-10, at 10:48 PM, ben via cctalk wrote:
>> On 3/10/2019 7:30 PM, Guy Dunphy via cctalk wrote:
>>
>>>> Here is a little bit of info on it:
>>>> http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/ti_cal-tech1.html
>>> That's fascinating, thanks. I'd never heard of it.
>>> The Intel 4004 came out in 1971.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004
>>> I'd understood that was the first chip that could be considered a 'processor' (though it required some support chips to do anything.)
>>> The TI Cal-Tech design was begun in 1965 and they had a working calculator in 1967. I wonder if the chips in that had any kind of code programmability?
>> Looking at the vintage calculator page, I would give the "FAR EAST" my vote for the first processor type chips. Everything was in-house development you can say they all came out at the same time. Look at TTL
>> pre 1970 4 gate logic, after 1970 74181 alu 7416x 4 bit counters 7489 16x4 RAM. About 1973 Tristate logic and 32x8 , 256x4 PROMS.
>
> If you read the link provided by Will, the Cal-tech was four ICs, not one.
> It was a forward-thinking lab R&D project which you would expect to be ahead of the IC technology on the market.
>
> It would be several more years, ca. 1971 before the complete logic for a calculator was stuffed onto one chip and available on the market,
> so coincident in time with the 4004.
> There was the TMS-0100 series from TI , single-chip calculators, 1971.
> 	https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/ti/tms0100
>
> TI and others did produce some calculator chip-sets (calc on several dedicated LSI chips) for the market prior to the single-chip implementations.
>
> No, the first 'processor-type' chips didn't come out of the 'far east'.
> The Japanese were producing calculators with hard-wired / random logic / dedicated state-machine architectures in the late 60s.
> With the advent of LSI, they came to the Americans to get chips designed, resulting in one case in the 4004.
>
> See also the TMS1795 (1971) and TMS1000 (1974).
> Rockwell was another of the big players.
>
First I prefix thing with how many of you were over the age of 8 or 10
at the time of the introduction of the calculator?

OK, I was well over that by then.  I started in Jr high with a slipstick
(slide rule) as an early techno geek
so I got to see the industry develop and yes the desk sized computers
were easily early on but the
key thing is pocket calculator just like the Pocket transistor radio. 
Each were of similar level of
change. radios weren't a new idea but mass produced and cheap  pocket
sized was.  So the pocket
calculator was big and when the cost got under 50$ then everyone wanted
it.  I was an early adopter
of the Ti 8 digit 4 banger (-+/*) (TMS103) and took that to college in
the very early 70s.  After that I'd
seen and gotten to use the famous HP65 (then about 650$).  It was a very
different market and use
for the pocket calc than the desktop calc.  The biggest part of the
desktop was printing, the
transactional record of what was done.

The key is we (users and market) went from slide rules in about 69-70 to
calculators in 71-72 and
they were everywhere by 74 and prices dropping very fast.

As to microcomputers and calculators I see them on the parallel path as
they both required the same
technologies to be present to be able to make wither but one was market
driven and the other was
technology driven.  The calculator is however become a dead end in that
it never advanced beyond
a point then it was a computer.  Its utility however is every cell phone
has one.

The CADC Central air data computer was the fly by wire for the F14 and
was a multi-chip system
and programmable, making it the first LSI micro.  The question of single
chip is moot as it was the
later 70s with TMS1000, F8, and 8048 that would put all of the computer
functions on one chip.
The 8080/6502/6800/and friends were all multichip to realize even a
simple functioning system.

Oddly science fiction had computers but calculators were not part of
their forecast..  I know of
only one example that had pocket/portable calculator.

Allison