Research

Introduction These pages are dedicated to the preservation and restoration of the interesting and valuable history of the Amiga Graphical User Interface known as "Workbench."

The Bare Machine Stacked Job Batch Systems (mid 1950s - mid 1960s) A batch system is one in which jobs are bundled together with the instructions necessary to allow them to be processed without intervention.

So much of the software history of the Personal Computer has been dictated by hardware advancements, not least the Operating System. One such advance was Operating System/2, jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM, making its debut on the PC market in 1987, and, despite some major obstacles being thrown into its path from several directions (not least from one of its creators), has stubbornly stuck around to this day.

About twenty years ago Jobs and Wozniak, the founders of Apple, came up with the very strange idea of selling information processing machines for use in the home. The business took off, and its founders made a lot of money and received the credit they deserved for being daring visionaries. But around the same time, Bill Gates and Paul Allen came up with an idea even stranger and more fantastical: selling computer operating systems. This was much weirder than the idea of Jobs and Wozniak. A computer at least had some sort of physical reality to it. It came in a box, you could open it up and plug it in and watch lights blink. An operating system had no tangible incarnation at all. It arrived on a disk, of course, but the disk was, in effect, nothing more than the box that the OS came in. The product itself was a very long string of ones and zeroes that, when properly installed and coddled, gave you the ability to manipulate other very long strings of ones and zeroes. Even those few who actually understood what a computer operating system was were apt to think of it as a fantastically arcane engineering prodigy, like a breeder reactor or a U-2 spy plane, and not something that could ever be (in the parlance of high-tech) "productized."

The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level (like Wine, unlike UAE), while improving on it in many areas. The source code is available under an open source license, which allows anyone to freely improve upon it.

Designers in the computer industry seek not only to "build the better mousetrap" but to build the best mouse. The computer mouse is an accessory to the personal computer that has become an essential part of operation of the computer. The small device fits neatly in the curve of the user's hand and enables the user, through very limited movements of the hand and fingers to "point and click" instructions to the computer. A rolling ball on the underside of the mouse gives directions on where to move to the cursor (pointer) on the monitor or screen, and one to three buttons (depending on design) allow the user to say yes by clicking the buttons on the right instruction for the computer's next operation.

I gave up any attempt to sort this list by “importance” (too risk) or “category” (frontiers are not always well defined). Instead, I have simply chosen alphabetical order. Chronological order would probably have been better, had I been able to find everybody's birth date, but such is not the case. Furthermore, please consider this list as permanently incomplete and permanently inaccurate. You are welcome to send me corrections to this list. You are also welcome to suggest additions. I'll consider for addition anyone who seems to have made a significant contribution to computer science (in any domain). More probably, I'll just ignore the suggestion, because this list isn't supposed to make any kind of sense, anyway. Moreover, I will certainly not consider any suggestions for removing people from the list.

earliest computers von Neumann architecture bare hardware computer oiperators device drives and library functions input/output control systems monitors 1950s batch systems early 1960s multiprogramming systems calls timesharing mid 1960s late 1960s microprocessors early 1970s UNIX history UNIX takes over mainframes UNIX to the desktop mid 1970s late 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s historical timeline

Introduction Aim of the report The aim of this report is to provide a brief summary of some of the main technological developments that have taken place in information technology and how these developments have had an influence on the way we work and on society in general, in the last thirty years. It would be useful to outline some “working definitions” for some of the terms, which have been introduced in the opening paragraph. These definitions will help define the scope of this report.

Android is a mobile operating system for mobile devices such as mobile telephones and tablet computers developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google.