Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
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As has already been noted, IBM's 1968 decision to "unbundle" its software was made
in response to antitrust pressures from the federal government. It had been the hope of
IBM executives that such action, combined with its earlier decision to sell as well as lease
its machines, would head off antitrust proceedings against the firm. This proved not to be
the case. In mid-January 1969, right at the tail-end of the Johnson administration, the U.S.
Justice Department filed an antitrust action against the firm.
The Justice Department charged IBM with violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act by
attempting to monopolize the "electronic digital computer system market." Investigations
and proceedings related to this action were to continue until 1982 when, as the rise of the
PC began to make the mainframe look more and more like a dinosaur, the government
would summarily drop the case. Nevertheless, these and other antitrust proceedings were
to be a major distraction for IBM throughout the decades going forward.
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Along with UNIX, other hints - or "seeds," if you will - of the future continued to ap-
pear. The most interesting - and perhaps tragic - of these was the PLATO machine deve-
loped by CDC and its visionary president Bill Norris in the mid 1970s. Providing a unique
window into what was to come, this system (featuring a graphics-based interface) was de-
signed specifically for education - built with the idea of servicing students from kinder-
garten on up to professional schools and colleges. Along with the ground-breaking no-
tion of a graphical user interface (GUI), the CDC-mainframe based PLATO was also built
around the idea of students having instant, interactive access to information from libraries
and archives around the globe. Thus were not only the Macintosh and Windows interfaces
presaged by PLATO, but also the World Wide Web. PLATO's technology, however, proved
far too expensive to be practical for educational institutions. The promise of its innovations
would have to wait for advancing technology to bring costs down across the board.
Another key development was the growing impact of integrated circuits. Back in July
of 1958, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments had jotted some rudimentary ideas concerning the
integrated circuit, and he successfully demonstrated the first working example on Septem-
ber 12, 1958. Applying for a patent on February 6, 1959, Kilby (who would win the 2000
Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the IC) described his new device as "a
body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are
completely integrated." At about this same time, Fairfield Semiconductor's Robert Noyce
came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit, but did it better. How? Noyce made his
chip of silicon, while Kilby's chip was germanium-based.
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