CHIPS Articles: A Brief History of Computing Part II

I have to give Zippy credit for a lot of the information I am using in these retrospective articles. Never one to throw away anything, he still has every computer he ever owned (and all the software) lovingly preserved at home. Much like Jay Leno collects and restores antique cars, Zippy collects old computers.

I received several inquiries after the CHIPS summer issue from readers who were interested in hearing about what happened with Zippette's twins. I am happy to report that both babies, Cassie and Paul (loosely named for the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux of Greek mythology), are healthy and in good shape. It was a little tense in the delivery room until the anesthesiologist arrived, but once they got Zippy sedated things calmed down quite a bit. The only odd happenings were some unusual EKG readings prior to labor and delivery. While they were monitoring Zippette's contractions, the waveform started oscillating rather strangely. Zippy said that it looked just like someone was playing Pong on the EKG, but he had been pretty heavily sedated. I think, however, that given their parentage these kids may bear some watching.

The Heart of the Machine

At its most basic level, a computer operating system (OS) is the master control program that runs the computer. The OS sets the standards for all the various application programs that run in the computer. The OS "kernel" is the first program loaded when the computer is turned on and resides in memory at all times while the computer is running. The OS controls all user interface, component operation, and file management functions. I should point out at this point that computers don't really need an OS. In the days before standardized operating systems, programmers included almost all of the commands and functions needed for their programs within the programs themselves. However, good programmers are essentially good, lazy people, too. They realized that if certain basic functions used by all programs were already resident in the computer's memory, it would reduce the number of lines of code they had to write.

The user interfaces of most desktop operating systems today are graphics-based or have shell programs that include windows, menus and methods of interaction between you and the computer. Virtually all human/computer interaction in early operating systems prior to the Mac OS was based on text commands entered by the user. Operating systems may support optional interfaces and allow a new shell or skin to be used instead, such as when Windows was first introduced over MS-DOS or Kopernicus Desktop Environment (KDE) or Gnome is used with the Linux OS today.

One of the primary responsibilities of an OS is data management. An OS keeps track of where data resides on our various disk, tape and optical storage devices. While an application program remembers data location by path or file name, the operating system's file manager knows where the data is physically stored on the media itself. In simple terms, you can find your house two ways: street address or longitude and latitude. On your hard disk, your programs know the street address (path) and your OS knows the geospatial (disk sector and block) location.

When you use an application to read or write a file using its file name, the application has to make a call to the operating system through an application programming interface (API). One of the most crucial responsibilities of any programmer is to understand the APIs their software uses to interact with an OS. Except for writing the business logic that performs the actual data processing, programming basically involves writing the code to communicate with the OS and other software. This aspect of computer development is becoming more complex as our operating systems evolve. There are, for example, more than a thousand API calls in modern OS such as Windows, Macintosh or UNIX.

OS History

As with hardware history in the last issue, we will go back a little farther than 20 years. The first significant OS for personal computers was CP/M 2.0. Developed by the late Gary Kildall in 1974, CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) was the first OS to run on machines from different vendors. While it looked for a few years like CP/M would rule the PC world, it was eventually supplanted by Microsoft DOS. There is an enduring piece of computer folklore on how this happened. When IBM began hunting around for an OS for its planned PC, it sent representatives to visit with Gary Kildall to arrange a license for CP/M on the IBM PC. Kildall, however, was allegedly out flying his plane at the time and apparently preferred the big blue sky to Big Blue. Rumor has it that he even "buzzed" his house while the IBM "suits" were standing outside waiting for him. IBM, who wasn't accustomed to being ignored by anyone, let alone an upstart programmer, apparently decided that this was the last straw in a series of inconclusive negotiations. They quickly worked out a deal with a young fellow named Bill Gates. Ironically, 86-DOS, the OS that Microsoft bought and turned into MS-DOS 1.0, employed CP/M commands like Ren, Dir, and Type, which you can still use as part of the MS-DOS function in today's Windows operating system.

Before we launch into the inevitable discussion of the evolution of the Microsoft operating systems that dominate today's desktop computing environment, let us pay tribute to a handful of other operating systems and related programming environments that helped get things started.

Back to BASICs

The first example in this section is not really an operating system. However, as virtually all early desktop PCs ran some form of BASIC, understanding its influence on subsequent OS development is important. The original BASIC was a high-level programming language invented by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1964. BASIC, which stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, was designed to allow students who were not scientists or mathematicians to use computers.

As I mentioned earlier, early computer use required writing custom software for everything, which at the time was something only scientists and mathematicians tended to do. BASIC set the stage for how an OS should behave based on some simple design principles. It was easy for beginners to use, but allowed advanced features to be added for experts. It provided clear, friendly error messages, did not require an understanding of computer hardware, and did a fairly good job of shielding the user from the operating system. The most widespread versions of BASIC were developed by Microsoft. In 1977 Microsoft released Altair BASIC for the MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) Altair, which was the first product it produced for commercial sale. Two years later, IBM licensed a Microsoft BASIC interpreter for their upcoming PC that was included on the PC's BIOS ROM chip and loaded on start-up. Later on, Microsoft sold several versions of BASIC for DOS including BASICA, GW-BASIC, Quick BASIC and Visual Basic for DOS. Microsoft Windows 95 and 98 included a Quick BASIC interpreter on the installation CD-ROM and Windows 98 included a VBScript interpreter. Visual Basic for Applications was added to the Microsoft Office product line in 1997.

Bill Gate's early experience with Altair BASIC and some computer hobbyists may have had some influence on the subsequent development of Microsoft business strategy over the years. In the late 1970s, most computer owners did not buy software, but traded programs with each other for free. However, when Gates and [Paul] Allen finished Altair BASIC, they wanted to sell it. Someone managed to acquire a copy of Altair BASIC just before it was released, copied it, and then gave the copies away for free. This did not sit well with Bill Gates. He had two problems. First, his software had been stolen, copied and given away. Second, and perhaps the greater sin at the time from Gate's standpoint, the pirated software was an early, bug-filled version, which made Altair BASIC look bad in public. In response, he wrote an open letter to the computer community denouncing such "piracy." I found the last line of Gate's letter particularly interesting, as he said: "Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software."

I think he's somewhat ahead of that "ten programmers" goal at this point. If you are interested, the text of Gate's letter can be found at: http://www.tranquileye.com/cyber/1976/gates_open_letter_to_hobbyists.html

OS Also-Rans

Two other operating systems that were in fairly wide use in the 1980s were ProDOS and the Macintosh OS. ProDOS was an OS similar to MS-DOS used primarily on the Apple II line of computers. However, Apple eventually abandoned support for the Apple II line and concentrated all its efforts on the Macintosh. Compared to its contemporaries, the Mac OS seemed to have a lot going for it. It was completely graphical, took full advantage of the mouse, and was the first to bring 16-bit and 32-bit computing to the desktop. However, Macs were much more expensive than IBM PC clones, a situation exacerbated because Apple did not license the Mac OS or allow clones during those early critical years.

While maintaining complete control over all aspects of the computer's performance gave them an arguably superior machine, most business users apparently didn't care too much at the time about sound and graphics quality as long as they could process text and numbers. Obviously this was well before PowerPoint became a dominant force in briefing rooms, otherwise we might all be Mac users today. So while Apple was busy courting the education market with colorful software for children, The IBM PC with MS-DOS went into business.

The OS That Consumed the World

All right, it's time to talk about Microsoft. The version of MS-DOS that truly solidified the Microsoft/IBM platform dominance was 2.0, which was released with the IBM XT in 1983. In particular, DOS 2.0 had commands to support the XT's new 10MB hard drive and allowed users unprecedented control of the inner workings of their PCs through files like AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. MS-DOS prospered through several versions up through Version 6. Throughout it all, the main limitation of DOS was the dreaded 640KB memory limit, which later also haunted several versions of Windows.

Speaking of Windows, while its various modern incarnations may indeed constitute a monopoly on the desktop, it did not have an auspicious beginning. First introduced in 1985, Microsoft Windows versions 1 and 2 were slow, ugly, and underpowered, primarily because of a reliance on DOS and its attendant memory limitations. In 1990, however, Microsoft released Windows 3.0, a complete rewrite that mostly bypassed the 640KB DOS memory limit and came with some cool new "what you see is what you get" applications. I included a limited form of multitasking that allowed you to run applications simultaneously, and a graphical user interface (GUI) desktop environment that was good enough for most users. Version 3.1, released in 1992, added speed and stability, object linking and embedding (OLE), TrueType fonts and drag-and-drop mouse capability.

Windows 3.x was not really an operating system, though, but a "shell" program that ran over the top of DOS. Microsoft's first attempt at a primarily Windows OS was Windows 95. It wasn't perfect, but once again it was good enough to propel Microsoft Windows to its current position as the dominant operating system in the world for personal computers. Since Windows 95, we have had Windows 98, Windows NT Workstation, Windows 2000, Windows Me, and Windows XP. I find it mildly amusing that most people seem to want to "standardize" on "Windows," but their organizations usually have two or more different versions of the OS running on their desktops at any given time.

Zippette once ventured a rare comment (and the only joke I've ever heard her tell) on the Windows alphanumerical soup by asking: "What do you get when you combine a PDA with Windows CE, a desktop running Windows Me, and a network running Windows NT?" The answer? "Windows CEMENT." I'll leave what that might imply to your own interpretation.

Modern OS Contenders

There are still some alternatives to Windows for desktop computers today, although they only represent about 10 percent of the market. The Mac OS today has a stable niche on the desktop, mostly with people who do multimedia, graphics and publishing work. In a major shift last year, Mac OS X is now basically a Unix (FreeBSD) core with a Mac GUI on top that still allows users to run "Classic" applications written for earlier versions of the Mac OS. It remains to be seen if this bold move will increase Apple's share of the desktop market, but reviews of Mac OS X have generally been favorable, and more applications are being released for OS X's "Carbon" environment almost daily.

Another OS that's been getting some notice on the desktop is Linux, another free Unix variant. Linux, however, is still more of a hobbyist's OS, much like MS-DOS was 20 years ago. (Though I should note that Linux is several orders of magnitude more powerful than any version of DOS ever aspired to.) Linux is now available pre-loaded on desktops from a handful of vendors, though choosing it over Windows would be a lot like going to a car dealership and choosing between paying for a Ford Taurus with a warranty or taking home a free M1 Abrams tank kit.

It remains to be seen if GUIs like Macintosh Aqua over FreeBSD or KDE and Gnome over Linux will ever mount a serious challenge to Windows on the desktop. The main factor in this battle for market share will not be the operating systems themselves, but the applications that run on them.

The Soul of the Machine

If the OS is the heart of a computer, the applications that run on it are its soul. Without them, a computer is simply a television with worse programming than your local public access channel. The first killer computer application was VisiCalc. Written in 1979 by first-year Harvard Business School student Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), VisiCalc was the salvation of many Wall Street users who had bought the first microcomputers two years earlier. VisiCalc established spreadsheets as a staple application, setting the stage for Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC in 1982. Many people remember VisiCalc as an application that single-handedly created a large demand for the Apple II. In fact, many people didn't ask for an Apple II, but wanted, "the VisiCalc machine."

Interestingly enough, though, VisiCalc was apparently written originally for the Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80, a computer with a brief and unremarkable history. While I still believe software may be the most important aspect of the computer experience, other factors like the ergonomics of the hardware and corporate marketing did contribute to our computing environment over the years. While VisiCalc may have sold Wall Street on the idea of electronic spreadsheets, Lotus 1-2-3 was the spreadsheet that the business world eventually chose, which helped solidify the IBM PC's grip on world desktop dominance. Lotus won by adding graphics and data-retrieval functions to the standard established by VisiCalc. By the early 1990s, Lotus 1-2-3 was the top-selling application of all time.

However, the dominant spreadsheet program today is Microsoft Excel. VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 may have started the spreadsheet revolution, but they were character-based. Microsoft Excel made the benefits of graphical spreadsheets obvious. In an eerie parallel to VisiCalc, Excel was originally written for a different OS than the one it now dominates on - it was Macintosh software. Once Windows became capable enough to support it, Microsoft ported Excel to Windows. Lotus, on the other hand, was slow to convert 1-2-3 to Windows. People flocked to the GUI version of Excel on Windows and it hasn't yet relinquished its grip on the market.

Other pioneering programs included WordStar, the first program to dominate the word processing market. Its keyboard commands helped simplify cutting, copying, and pasting blocks of text, among other functions. These commands were the model for virtually all subsequent office automation software. It was followed by WordPerfect, which held an 80 percent market share going into the 1990s. Again, though, failure by WordPerfect to develop a Windows version quickly enough led to its virtual demise at the hands of Microsoft Word.

dBase II was the first serious database management system for personal computers. It was allegedly created by Wayne Ratliff to manage a company football pool, but soon became the dominant personal computing DBMS for CP/M and DOS. However, it did not come in a Windows version until 1994, which was too late to the market, and now the dBase language only survives in the form of Xbase. The PC database market is now dominated by yet another Microsoft product, Access.

Another old warhorse that started as a CP/M application is AutoCAD, a computer-aided design program. However, unlike Lotus, WordPerfect, and dBase, AutoCAD has survived and prospered through it's migration through DOS and Windows and remains an industry standard to this day.

Other killer applications that are still a mainstay today are personal financial management programs like Quicken. This checkbook-balancing program may be better suited to the needs of its users than any other program we looked at except VisiCalc. Quicken grew from humble beginnings in the mid-1980s to become multibillion dollar company that has also kept up with changes to Windows and the other operating systems it runs on. Also, most of us use a personal information manager of some type. The pioneer in this area was SideKick 1.0. SideKick was a "terminate and stay resident" (TSR) program, which meant that you could load it on startup and it would run in the background until you wanted to access its pop-up notepad, calendar, and calculator. Pop-up mini-applications like SideKick became commonplace during the DOS era, but when Windows introduced the ability to switch between tasks in the 1990s it pretty much killed off the TSR market. However, personal information managers are now a mainstay of modern home and office life with products like Microsoft Outlook and the Palm Desktop among the most popular.

Desktop publishing has been another staple for PCs, and Aldus PageMaker is the program that launched a million newsletters. PageMaker was based on traditional publishing design and production processes, which helped it gain acceptance when it was introduced. While QuarkXPress might now have a larger share in higher-end publishing, PageMaker remains a competitive desktop publishing system.

Finally, let's look at one groupware product: Lotus Notes. Notes is probably the most innovative and powerful of the numerous contenders in the leading-edge groupware category. Many people do it a grave disservice by referring to it as "just another e-mail system." Notes, however, is much more than just e-mail, as it is designed to help organizations capture corporate knowledge thanks to its unique, replicated message system. Here's a test. Go to an organization that just finished a full-scale, organization-wide reengineering project. Look a couple of employees squarely in the eye and say, "business process reengineering." If they don't roll their eyes heavenward and launch into a diatribe against the evils of management fads, I'm willing to bet that they not only installed Lotus Notes, but they also know how to use it.

Modern Desktop Applications

Two words: Microsoft Office. This suite of office automation software is so dominant that Microsoft could probably give most of its other products away for free and still make enough money to stay in business. OK, that may be an exaggeration, but there's little question that MS Office rules the roost. Office has only one, really tiny potential Achilles' heel: it's tied primarily to the Windows OS. Yes, there's a Macintosh version, but Microsoft is a "Windows" company, as they have made quite clear on numerous occasions. It is a vulnerability because there is a small but growing movement, particularly overseas, to use alternatives like Linux on the desktop instead of Windows. It is also a vulnerability because of free or low-priced competition from suites like OpenOffice and StarOffice that run on both Unix variants and Windows. While they aren't up to the standard of MS Office, people or organizations looking to reduce their annual tithe for information systems may consider them "good enough" in much the same way they picked Windows over the Mac in the GUI OS war. There probably won't be a great, immediate abandonment of MS Office, but I do think there will be some erosion over the next couple of years. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft's reaction will be.

Final Words

Two articles, 7,000 words, and we still haven't done much more than scratch the surface of personal computing. It looks like it will take one more article to cover the third side of this discussion: how personal computers went from standalone playthings to gateways to a wider world of cooperative work. Until next time…

Happy Networking!

The views expressed here are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense or the United States government.