Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 1.14
On July 20, 1969, television images of Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon
were broadcast to hundreds of millions of viewers around the world.
(Courtesy of NASA)
As it turns out, Voter News Service's prediction was wrong. More than a month after
the election, after a series of recounts and court decisions, George W. Bush was declared
the victor in Florida. With Florida's electoral votes in hand, Bush won the presidency.
Working at his kitchen table in 1937, Bell Labs researcher George Stibitz built a binary
adder out of telephone relays, batteries, flashlight bulbs, tin strips, and wire. He took
his invention back to Bell Labs and enlisted the help of Samuel Williams. Over the next
two years they built the Complex Number Calculator, an electromechanical system that
would add, subtract, multiply, and divide complex numbers.
Stibitz's next action is what sets him apart from other computer pioneers. He made
a teletype machine the input/output device for the Complex Number Calculator. With
this innovation, he did not have to be in the same room as the calculator to use it; he
could operate it remotely.
In 1940 Stibitz demonstrated remote computing to members of the American
Mathematical Society who were meeting at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He
typed numbers into the teletype, which transmitted the data 250 miles to the calculator
in New York City. After the calculator had computed the answer, it transmitted the data
back to the teletype, which printed the result.
In reaction to the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957, the Department of
Defense created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). ARPA funded research
and development at prominent universities. The agency's first director, J. C .R. Licklider,
imagined a “galactic network”—a global computer network that would facilitate the
