History of IBM Developments

1956 - FIRST MAGNETIC HARD DISK. IBM introduces the world's first magnetic hard disk for data storage. RAMAC (or Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) offers unprecedented performance by permitting random access to any of the million characters distributed over both sides of 50 two-foot-diameter disks. Produced in San Jose, California, IBM's first hard disk stored about 2,000 bits of data per square inch and had a purchase price of about $10,000 per megabyte. By 1997, the cost of storing a megabyte had dropped to around ten cents.

1957 - FORTRAN. IBM revolutionizes programming with the introduction of FORTRAN (Formula Translator). Created by John Backus, it soon becomes the most widely used computer programming language for technical work. For the first time, engineers and scientists can write computer programs in more natural forms, such as C=A/B rather than as strings of "machine language: 1s and 0s.

1997 - DEEP BLUE. The 32-node IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer, Deep Blue, defeated World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in the first known instance of a computer vanquishing a world champion chess player in tournament-style competition. Also after years of teamwork among Research and Microelectronics divisions, IBM introduced the CMOS 7S process, which allowed manufacturers to use copper wires to link transistors in computer chips instead of relying on traditional aluminum interconnects; a revolutionary advance in semiconductor technology.



Saturday, June 30, 2012

Eugene Ziller, Programmer and author, Brooklyn Born


Eugene Ziller


Biography
Ziller was born in Brooklyn, New York and 
studied at Brooklyn College and Columbia 
University. He did post-graduate work at 
Stanford University under Wallace Stegner. 
He married Shirley Richman, sister of
Dr. Jordan Paul Richman, in 1949. They lived 
in Brooklyn and then they moved to 
Pougkeepsie, New York, where Ziller became
an IBM computer programmer. 
He is the brother of Irving Ziller, the noted Fortran developer, and father of Jason ZIller, who works for Intel.

 Ziller became a school teacher and later worked as supervisor of IBM operations for the Cornell University Crash Injury Research Program. His short stories have appeared in such literary periodicalas as Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Perspective and others. In 1960 he published a book of short stories entitled In This World two of the included short stories (The Season's Dying and Sparrows) won awards the former in Best Articles and Stories and the latter in Prize Stories of 1960: The O.Henry Awards.[1]

 (This bio was derived from Wikipedia and edited by Dr. Jordan Richman, Brother-in-law of Eugene Ziller for his Computer Science Google Blog.))
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