The Big Change

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Smitty37

Passed Away Mar 29, 2018
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In the middle sixties I read a book called "The Big Change" I do not remember who wrote it. The gist of the book was that the 50 years from 1900 to 1950 were the most important in human history with respect to how people (in the USA) lived. He listed and wrote about the major changes that took place in that time frame.

Just to get an idea of what he meant, take a walk around your house and try to find something that the "seeds" for common use were not planted in that time frame. A couple of quick examples...

Air Travel
Computers
Television
Radio
Widespread Electric Power
Indoor plumbing
Electric appliances

The list is almost endless....That was an amazing half century for this country.
 
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My grandma saw saw all that. She said it was mind boggling to think about.

I would say the changes since then were just as revolutionary but the physical scale of the product was smaller thus the perceived changes have been subtler.

On the other hand we just seeing the negative effects of that rapid growth fully manifest themselves.
 
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My Dad was born in a covered wagon as his family tried to escape Oklahoma drought and find riches in California. On the way he was born in New Mexico. Fought in World War II and lived to see man walk on the moon. That is quite a leap in technology
 
My Dad was in school the day the first diesel locomotive went through town. The students heard the whistle and it sounded different so they ran to the windows to see it pass by. I asked him what the teacher did about the disruption in the class. He said nothing because she was also at the window.
 
Haynie said:
My grandma saw saw all that. She said it was mind boggling to think about.

I would say the changes since then were just as revolutionary but the physical scale of the product was smaller thus the perceived changes have been subtler.

On the other hand we just seeing the negative effects of that rapid growth fully manifest themselves.
Click to expand...

I would argue that most of the change we have seen in the last 60 years of my life are related to electronic computers and they were invented in 1946 and our use made possible by the invention of the transistor which happened in 1947...I got married in 1962 and if I look at my possessions today they are pretty much the same except for computers (in all their various forms). It took almost 30 years to get computers small enough for home use and it's taken another 30 to get them where they are today.

The things in my kitchen, living room, dining room and bedroom are such that my father (he passed away in 1961) would instantly recognize what they were with the possible exception of the remote controls. The bathroom is virtually unchanged. The furnace and hotwater heater are nearly identical. One of the telephones in my house my dad would recognize at once....


Even the internet is just a progression of sending digital data across phone lines and telemetry both of which were in place many years ago.
 
I was working in California in the late '60 and early '70 when computers were still huge main frames... controllers looked like refrigerators and disc drives like washing machines... some engineers at IBM came up with a smaller version of the computer and went to management with the idea... IBM management said... no one will want a computer on their desk, they won't need them in the homes.... there's no market for them..... so companies were born to market the "desktop"... 'course everyone jumped on the band wagon and the home computer was developed in just a few short years after that. IBM came into the desktop market later when they realized the market was there.
 
MYth....

TellicoTurning said:
I was working in California in the late '60 and early '70 when computers were still huge main frames... controllers looked like refrigerators and disc drives like washing machines... some engineers at IBM came up with a smaller version of the computer and went to management with the idea... IBM management said... no one will want a computer on their desk, they won't need them in the homes.... there's no market for them..... so companies were born to market the "desktop"... 'course everyone jumped on the band wagon and the home computer was developed in just a few short years after that. IBM came into the desktop market later when they realized the market was there.
Click to expand...
That is a popular myth but never-the-less a myth. I worked at IBM during those years and we (IBM Federal Systems Division) made computers that were (in volume but not weight) smaller than the first PC's and much more powerful....they were designed to go in airplanes and were far too expensive to be considered for desk top use (although we did use some of them that way in house). PC predecessors started showing up in the early to mid-seventies and they were not much more than toys. There were a lot of commodores made but very few were used to do work. The potential of the PC as a desk top tool came AFTER IBM released our first PC and if IBM had not gotten into the PC market it would have probably slowed PC development by 10 years. IBM became the defacto standard, before which there had been no player big enough to become a standard. IBM immediately got 85% of the PC market. That being said IBM never really took PCs as seriously as they should have and never really did well marketing them. That did come back to haunt them.
 
That may be true, a lot of the big companies were slow to realize changes were underway... I worked for a shipping company that handled a number of computer companies...Telex, Tandem, Four Phase, Sperry Univac and such.... they were still the large mainframe types mostly. One of the companies I dealt with was called 2PI or TwoPi, not sure, but the company was started by IBM engineers that tried to sell their idea of the desk top to IBM and were turned away.... they sought financing from other sources, wound up with a consortium out of Australia that financed their start up and shipped most of their systems to Australia.... don't know if they're still around or were bought up by other companies or what happened to them... matter of fact, most of the companies I mentioned I don't hear about anymore.
My son worked for a company in Austin that did programing and something in computer security field... IBM came to the owner and wanted to buy them out. My son said that when IBM decided to take over a company, it was wise to sell or else IBM would just take the technology and bury the company with their sheer size... don't know how much truth, but his concept....the company did sell to IBM and he was absorbed into the IBM family for about 5 years until he got fed up with the internal politics and left for greener pastures. He did well there and it served him well, but he's glad to be more independent.

Another company I worked for in the late '70s was called Digital Telephone... they were a breakaway company from Lynch communications.... again, engineers with a new or innovative idea, approached their parent company who wasn't interested... so they started their own. They built the small behind the desk telephone switch boards... before the switching systems that are now housed in the warehouse or somewhere away from the reception area... and another unit that could be mounted on a telephone pole outside a subdivision and take the place of a brick and mortar substation. I was their first ever traffic manager, about 5 years into their operation... and the first year they actually showed a profit (not my doing).... technology was changing at a very fast pace back then... it was both fun to be part of it and a little daunting if you couldn't keep up with the changes....
 
TellicoTurning said:
That may be true, a lot of the big companies were slow to realize changes were underway... I worked for a shipping company that handled a number of computer companies...Telex, Tandem, Four Phase, Sperry Univac and such.... they were still the large mainframe types mostly. One of the companies I dealt with was called 2PI or TwoPi, not sure, but the company was started by IBM engineers that tried to sell their idea of the desk top to IBM and were turned away.... they sought financing from other sources, wound up with a consortium out of Australia that financed their start up and shipped most of their systems to Australia.... don't know if they're still around or were bought up by other companies or what happened to them... matter of fact, most of the companies I mentioned I don't hear about anymore.
My son worked for a company in Austin that did programing and something in computer security field... IBM came to the owner and wanted to buy them out. My son said that when IBM decided to take over a company, it was wise to sell or else IBM would just take the technology and bury the company with their sheer size... don't know how much truth, but his concept....the company did sell to IBM and he was absorbed into the IBM family for about 5 years until he got fed up with the internal politics and left for greener pastures. He did well there and it served him well, but he's glad to be more independent.

Another company I worked for in the late '70s was called Digital Telephone... they were a breakaway company from Lynch communications.... again, engineers with a new or innovative idea, approached their parent company who wasn't interested... so they started their own. They built the small behind the desk telephone switch boards... before the switching systems that are now housed in the warehouse or somewhere away from the reception area... and another unit that could be mounted on a telephone pole outside a subdivision and take the place of a brick and mortar substation. I was their first ever traffic manager, about 5 years into their operation... and the first year they actually showed a profit (not my doing).... technology was changing at a very fast pace back then... it was both fun to be part of it and a little daunting if you couldn't keep up with the changes....
Click to expand...
Google IBM 5100 and you will find that IBM did indeed have a desk top computer as early as 1973 --- I believe it was withdrawn from the market in 1982 or there about. Cost ranged from about 9K to 20K depending on the memory size.Far too much tobe thought of as a personal computer. I think there were several other versions one being the 5110.
 
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Smitty37 said:
TellicoTurning said:
... IBM management said... no one will want a computer on their desk, they won't need them in the homes.... there's no market for them...
Click to expand...

That is a popular myth but never-the-less a myth.
...
Click to expand...

More a misquote than a myth. It was Ken Olsen of DEC. His actual words were "no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home". But that's out of context too... as DEC was making PCs at the time. Ken was responding to centralized automation computers - think the Jetson's where the computer controls the house.
 
LagniappeRob said:
Smitty37 said:
TellicoTurning said:
... IBM management said... no one will want a computer on their desk, they won't need them in the homes.... there's no market for them...
Click to expand...

That is a popular myth but never-the-less a myth.
...
Click to expand...

More a misquote than a myth. It was Ken Olsen of DEC. His actual words were "no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home". But that's out of context too... as DEC was making PCs at the time. Ken was responding to centralized automation computers - think the Jetson's where the computer controls the house.
Click to expand...
The operative thing here is that at the time IBM was making a desktop computer. Expensive and not for the home, but none-the-less a desktop.
 
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RussFromNH said:
Also, it was Bill Gates that told everyone that 640k was enough memory.
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Strange that {Ken Olsen) would say that too - since the Altair 8800 was marketed in 1975 eventually it used Alair Basic which was the beginning product of Microsoft. For a long time it was the hardware that limited PC's to 640K - they weren't designed to address more memory than that.
 
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My grandmother talks of the old days where she was picked up by a horse and buggy...

My parents talk of the old days where kids were respectful of their parents...

We talk about the old days of himem.sys.. :)
 
When I was in college the only computer on campus was in the engineering department. The way you talked to it was with a stack of punch cards. The get a print out where the computer drew a circle was a monumental task. My first job out of school they were still using punch cards and God help you if you dropped a stack and got them out of order. I got pretty good with a ten key inputing data on an IBM key punch machine.
 
Boz said:
When I was in college the only computer on campus was in the engineering department. The way you talked to it was with a stack of punch cards. The get a print out where the computer drew a circle was a monumental task. My first job out of school they were still using punch cards and God help you if you dropped a stack and got them out of order. I got pretty good with a ten key inputing data on an IBM key punch machine.
Click to expand...
Been there done that. Punched cards had a very long history in the data processing industry...developed for tabulating the 1890 Census they were used at least up through the 2000 elections. They had been used at least a century earlier in the weaving industry - I suppose that was about the first CNC machines.
 
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