Jack Kilby, who invented the integrated circuit, passes away

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I just read that Jack St.Clair Kilby died last week. The sad thing is that I’d never heard of Jack until I read his obituary even though his invention – the integrated circuit (IC) – undoubtedly paved the way for the computerised world in which we live today. His former employer, Texas Instruments, have a tribute site. What I find interesting is that had he not been a new employee (hence with no accrued annual leave), he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to carry out his early experiments whilst the rest of the company were on vacation!

The IBM archives

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

As I was writing my post on Microsoft Host Integration Server (HIS), I came across many unfamiliar terms and IBM technologies. In many cases, some quick googling came up with the answers to my questions but I also stumbled across the IBM archives, which provide a decade-by-decade and year-by-year view of the computing giant’s history.

Happy birthday to the Internet

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Thirty-five years ago this month, computer scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) used a 15′ cable to link two computers, testing a new way to exchange data and ultimately playing a pivotal role in the development of the Internet (then called ARPANET). This link took place on September 2 1969.

Further development throughout the 1970s expanded the network, added e-mail and TCP/IP. The 1980s saw the birth of the domain name system (DNS) and in 1990, the World Wide Web was born.

I remember marvelling at the things I could find using FTP when I was at Uni’ in the early 90s, and a few years later experiencing online services like CompuServe and a very immature world-wide web. Without the Internet we would not have TCP/IP and Unix (arguably we would not have the Internet as it exists today without these technologies).

Since then, the Internet has become ever more pervasive. E-mail has become a globally accepted method of communication, supplemented by new technologies such as instant messaging (IM) and voice over IP (VoIP); breaking news is available globally in an instant; the web is the first port of call for researching information; and the growth in web services in recent years has been immense.

For more information on the development of the Internet, see the Internet Society (ISOC) website.