Almost half a century ago, in May 1961, two men laid the foundation for what would one day end up as the PC on your desktop
Almost half a century ago, in May 1961, two men laid the foundation for what would one day end up as the PC on your desktop
The word user friendly has many meanings today. Applied to your computer, it could indicate a cute icon that pops up with a 'May I help you?' message when you try to send a mail to your boss explaining why you didn't meet the quarterly target. Of course, while a truly user friendly system would help you explain why, we should be happy with what we have.
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At the cutting edge: Charles Molnar and Wes Clark with the LINC, which introduced the concept of user friendliness, a word that is in ubiquitous use today |
Many years ago, the concept of 'user friendly' possibly meant a computer that would not eat up your punch cards and spew out spaghetti. In all probability, in those days, people couldn't even have been able to define user friendliness.
Pioneering work
But two people dared to dream of a day when there would finally come a computer that would be user friendly.
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These two men were Charles Molnar and Wesley Clark, who created the LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), a 12-bit, 2048-word computer that can be considered to be the father of the modern PC.
Of course, people who have seen the modern PC would not be able to recognise the LINC, which, was designed by MIT and built by Digital Equipment Corporation. The LINC sold for more than $40,000 according to Wikipedia.
How it began
Clark named it Laboratory Instrument Computer for a specific reason it was meant to help out with biomedical research. Clark wanted a machine with which one could communicate with when it was in operation, and this is why there was a strong focus on control.
It is because of this that LINC had a way in which programs could be debugged as they were run. In fact, on a LINC, like with a modern PC compiler, you could actually set breakpoints and ask for execution to be suspended when a particular event happenedu2014like, for instance, a particular area of memory was accessed.
Last LINC
One would have expected the LINCs to have died a long time ago, but one of them at least survived until 1992 and for a computer to live for 30 years is really something, isn't it?
The LINC may be outdated today, but the concept still lives on in the machine on your desktop. Think about it the next time somebody mentions 'user friendly'.
QUICK TAKE>>The LINC was the father of the modern PC
>>It was designed around 48 years ago
>>The last LINC was decommissioned in 1992
The specsForget your Pentiums with 4 GB of RAM and 1440 x 900 display settings for a bit and look at what the LINC had:]
>>Memory: 1 kB (yes, 1 kB) later expanded to 2 kB
>>Display: 256 x 256
>>Storage: Two LINCtape drives, with each spool holding 512 bytes
>>Keyboard: Had a set of keys with locking solenoids for each key, which meant that you couldn't press two keys at once
