Electronic World 1970/10
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Electronic World 1970/10 |
1937 - Alec H. Reeves invented pulse-code modulation (PCM) when he worked for the International Telephone and Telegraph Co. in France. He was granted a French patent in 1938, a British patent in 1939, and U. S. patent 2,272,070 in 1942. The first use of PCM was in telephone transmission in 1962 after the development of integrated circuits made such use practical; the analog voice sound wave within the telephone bandwith of 4000 Hz was sampled at 8000 pulses per second and each pulse was encoded with a digital value; the digital values were multiplexed for transmission as a linear series of identical pulses and each pulse coded with a sampled amplitude at a particular point in time on the voice sound wave.
1939 - John V. Atanasoff and graduate student, Clifford Berry, build the first electronic computer with a magnetic drum storage device. They programmed the computer using the binary algebra of 19th century mathematician George Boole (1815-1864) who demonstrated that simple equations could be written as either true or false.
1948 - The "Baby" computer at the University of Manchester ran the first stored program June 21, using old radar CRT tubes to store 2048 bits per tube (see 50th Anniversary of the Mark I)
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1952 - The novel "Player Piano" is published by Kurt Vonnegut, set in a future world where workers have lost all control to managers and computer-controlled machines. The main character loses his job, goes to a bar, starts a player piano, and the character realizes that there is no human pianist, only his spirit captured in the holes of the piano roll.
1953 - Jay W. Forrester at MIT installed the first magnetic core memory in the Whirlwind computer; the small magnetic rings were developed after 1949 and tested in a 16x16 array in May 1952 (Munro Haynes independently tested core memories the same month in a 80x12 array at IBM); Whirlwind was developed first as a flight trainer for the Navy starting in 1943 but changed to an air defense system after the Russian A-bomb of 1949 and was installed in MEWS Apr. 1951, and IBM joined the project in 1952 and shipped the XD-1 Jan. 1955 to replace the Whirlwind. IBM developed the computers for the SAGE air defense system 1956-84 that used magnetic core memory and magnetic drum storage. The core memory would be used until replaced by integrated circuits in the 1970s. SAGE had great effect on pushing IBM ahead of Remington Rand and making it a world leader in computer R&D .
1954 - IBM built the model 604 computer in October, its first with transistors, that became the basis of the model 608 that shipped Dec. 1957, the first solid-state computer for the commercial market. Tom Watson, Jr., pushed the development of transistors in all new IBM computers.
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1958 - Arthur L. Schawlow published his paper "Infrared and Optical Masers" in the Physical Review of Dec. 1958; this was the key paper that started laser development; the word "laser" not yet coined, rather the word maser was used to refer to semiconductor light amplification and modulation; he worked at Bell Labs with Charles H. Townes of Columbia after Dec. 1957.
1959 - General Electric developed Magnetic Ink Character Recognition for the Bank of America in California to automate check processing.
1959 - Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments in Feb. patented the first integrated circuit; Kilby had made his first germanium IC in Oct. 1958; Robert Noyce at Fairchild used the planar process to make connections of components within a silicon IC in early 1959;
GTE ad, 1974 |
1961 - The IBM 7030 computer in April 1961 pioneered the 8-bit character word length (a "byte") that grew out of the AF contract of Oct. 1958 following Sputnik to develop transistor computers for BMEWS.
1968 - Mr. Dee Hock founded the parent company of VISA as a central credit clearinghouse for Bank of America in California in response to the rise of MasterCard banks in 1966, and began distribution of the first magnetic stripe credit cards.
1971 - Intel produces large scale integrated (LSI) circuits that are used in the first digital audio device, the digital delay line, and would be used in digital audio processors of Sony, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, JVC, and would be used in the Philips compact disc.
1971 - Intel announced Nov. 15 the 4004 microprocessor, with a word length of 4 binary digits (bits) that was OK for calculators but not for alphabets (required min. 6-bit).
1972 - Philips demonstrated its optical videodisc system in Sept., using laser pickup on 12-in. glass disc; improved model shown at Berlin Radio & TV show 1973.
1972 - Nippon Columbia Co. developed a PCM recorder to master soundtracks, stored on videotape, with dynamic range of 87 db.
1975 - Philips/MCA demonstrated its optical videodisc system to the press March 15 at elegant Cotillion Room of Pierre Hotel; 4 days later on March 19 RCA announced its videodisc; the press emphasized the Philips vs. RCA battle in 1975. in 1977, JVC joined the battle with its CED videodisc at 900 rpm.
1976 - The first 16-bit digital recording in the US was made at the Santa Fe Opera on a handmade Soundstream digital tape recorder developed by Dr. Thomas G. Stockham.
 from History of Apple |
1976 - Steve Wozniak demonstrated the Apple I personal computer in April at the Hombrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, and the next year with Steve Jobs began to sell the Apple II with plastic case, a built-in speaker to reproduce sounds, the ability to display color, and in 1978 added a floppy disk drive.
1977 - Nintendo in Japan began to make computer games that stored the data on chips inside a game cartridge that sold for around $40 but only cost a few dollars to manufacture. It introduced its most popular game "Donkey Kong" in 1981, Super Mario Bros in 1985. By 1989, it was earning a profit of $1 billion per year with only 850 employees, controlled 85% of the home video game market, would sell 50 million game machines by 1992 and 1 billion cartridges by 1995.
1977 - AT&T began fiber optic transmission of telephone signals in the Chicago Loop, downtown Chicago. The first intercity fiber optic route began in 1983 between New York and Washington. The first transatlantic fiber optic telephone cable, called TAT-8, began Dec. 8, 1988.
1978 - RCA introduced the Selectavision videodisc that had taken 15 years and $200 million to develop since the 1964 decision by Robert Sarnoff, son of David, to develop a low-cost consumer recorder; Selectavision used a 12-inch vinyl disc at 450 rpm that held 200 times more data than LP, read by electrode on a stylus that sensed change in capacitance; played 2 hours with signal-to-noise of 46db; CED (capacitance electronic discs) sold for $15 and the SFT-100 player sold for $500, cheaper than the Betamax ($900 in 1980) or Philips Laservision or Pioneer Laserdisc (both $750 with discs priced at $40 in 1980).
1978 - PCM consumer audio recording began in June with the introduction of the PCM-1 14-bit Betamax accessory for recording and playback of digital audio with an 80db dynamic range.
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1982 - RCA sold 55,000 Selectavision videodiscs in 3 years, but lost money, dealers never interested because of low profit margin, growing interest in VCR, requirement that they sell software; RCA was completely surprised by the videotape rental business, had instead planned only to sell discs thru dealers; VCRs were selling fast (20m by 1985) and half of the videotape sales were of pornographic content; the Selectavision would be completely withdrawn from the market by 1984.
1982 - Tom Jung used digital audio to make direct 2-track recordings and released the first jazz CDs on his DMP label. He would later pioneer 20-bit recording in order to make full use of the CD 16-bit dynamic range with the added necessary recording headroom of 10dB and reduce the noise evident in lower amplitudes.
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1984 - Sony introduced the D-5 portable compact disc player at the Japan Audio Fair and in the U.S., using the same VSLI chip and miniature laser from Sony's auto CD player, thus building a bridge in the world of portable personal music players from magnetic tape Walkman of 1979 to the DAT Walkman TCD-D3 of 1991 to the digital Discman of 1999.
1985 - Sony and Philips produced the standard for Compact Disc Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) computer discs that would use the same laser technology as the audio CD.
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1987 - Dolby Pro Logic used low-cost integrated circuit chips to encode surround channel information for home speakers.
1988 - for the first time, CD sales surpassed LP sales, leaving CD and cassette as the two dominant consumer formats; more than 1/2 of TV households own a VCR; the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable carried up to 37,000 telephone transmissions and began to replace satellites for telephone communication.
1988 - Sony introduced the D-88 Pocket Discman capable of playing 3-inch compact discs (CD-Singles) introduced in 1987.
1990 - Sony and Philips produce the standard for the Recordable CD-ROM (CD-R).
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1991 - Philips introduced on Oct. 16 the Compact Disc Interactive, or CD-I, player that plugged into a TV and played music and video from an interactive on-screen menu; Polygram Records released on of the first CD-I discs for $14.95, the "`Louis Armstrong: American Songbook," playable on a regular CD player but also with text, interviews and lyrics cued to the music, and two unreleased tracks.
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1992 - IBM and Toshiba In July formed an alliance to develop flash memory cards. In November 1995, Toshiba introduced at the Las Vegas COMDEX show a data storage device called Solid State Floppy Disk Card (SSFDC) using 16 megabit (Mb) NAND flash electrically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM).
1993 - The Tascam division of Teac introduced in February the DA-88 digital 8-track recorder for $4,499, the first modular digital multitrack (MDM) recorder to use the Hi-8 videotape; see TASCAM: The First 25 Years.
1993 - Digital HDTV Grand Alliance in October selected Dolby AC-3 to provide digital surround sound for U.S. HDTV system.
1994 - Fox Network in August began broadcasting entire NFL season in Dolby Surround.
1994 - SanDisk in October introduced the Compact Flash memory card to store audio and visual data on cards no larger than a matchbook holding 4-106 MB of data. SanDisk and Siemens AG in 1997 patented the MultiMediaCard no larger than a postage stamp holding 2-16 MB.
1995 - In September, Sony and Toshiba reached a compromise to develop a single DVD standard by the end of the year rather than continue to develop competing DVD players
1995 - In December the format for DVD-Video and DVD-ROM was established. "It calls for a CD-sized 5-inch (12cm) disc, 0.05 inch (1.2mm) thick, with an MPEG2-compressed storage capacity of 4.7 gigabytes per side (7.5 times that of CDs) and an average transfer speed of 4.69 megabits per second (three times faster than CDs). DVD-Video, for movies and concerts, will provide LD-like imagery while playing for 133 minutes per side. Its soundtrack will allow eight-language dubbing and 32 sets of subtitles. DVD-ROM, for computer data, will handle huge applications, enable impressive visuals, and manage hybrid software for multiple operating systems." (from Pioneer)
1996 - Walter Murch used Sonic Solutions for the first digitally-edited Hollywood film to win an Academy Award. By 1998, Lost in Space became the first major Hollywood with an all-digitally produced soundtrack.
1996 - The AMS Neve Capricorn at Right Track Recording in New York completed the world's first 24-bit digital recording for The Pat Metheny Group's album "Quartet."
1997 - Norsam Technologies developed the HD-ROM to store 165 gigabytes on a single CD-size disk by using a 50-nanometer laser beam rather than the standard 800- and 350 nanometer lasers.
1997 - MP3.com was founded in November by Michael Robertson with 3,000 songs available for free download. In the next 12 months, it became the #1 music site on the Internet with 3 million hits monthly.
1998 - the first MP3 Summit was held July 2 at the UCSD Price Center in San Diego, attended by digital music leaders Scott Jamar of a2bmusic, Xing CEO Hassan Miah, music lawyer Robert Kohn, Gene Hoffman founder of Goodnoise, the first Internet music label, Geffen Records producer Jim Griffen, and Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg, the founder of MP3 compression technology.
1998 - In Sept. the DVD-Audio Working Group of the DVD Forum agreed on the DVD-Audio Format 1.0 specifications. The capacity will be the same 4.7/8.5/9.4/17 GB as DVD-Video, but the sampling rate of 88.2 kHz and 176.4 kHz will be higher for a frequency response of 0-96 kHz rather than 0-48 kHz for DVD-Video at 44.1 kHz and 5-20 kHz for the audio CD; the Maximum Transfer Rate for Audio will be 9.6 Mbps rather than 6.1 Mbps for DVD-Video or 1.4 Mbps for audio CD.
1999 - The CA*net3 fiber optic network in Canada became the fastest computer network in the world, capable of transmitting all 9 symphonies of Beethoven in .065 seconds; see speed comparison chart.
Solid State
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Compact Disc
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Digital Audio Tape
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Helical Scan
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MiniDisc
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