to perform complex calculations with greater speed and accuracy than humans could achieve. The Transistor On December 23, 1947, one of the most far-reaching technologies of the 20th Century was developed at Bell Laboratories by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley - the transistor. But the transistor wasn't available to U.S. manufacturers until 1956, when a seven year-old antitrust law suit against AT&T, the owners of Bell Labs, was settled. The judgment required that AT&T give away licenses to manufacture the transistor to American companies. Following this decision, the transistor was used to replace thousands of vacuum tubes in computers and began the miniaturization of electronics. Because it drastically reduced the size and heat considerations of the large vacuum tubes, the transistor enabled the computer to become a viable tool for business and government. The Computer Mystique From the beginning, computers baffled the populous with their capability. In corporate and government offices and on university campuses, information processing departments sprouted up to serve the computer. The IBM 701, which was introduced in 1952 as a business computer, was comprised of several units that could be shipped and connected at a customer's location, rather than the earlier massive units that had to be assembled on site. In 1953, IBM began shipping the first mass-produced computer, the IBM 650. IBM introduced the first solid-state (transistorized) computer in 1959, the IBM 7090. Then in 1964, IBM culminated over $1 billion in research when it brought out the System/360 series of computers. Unlike other mainframes, the System/360 computers were compatible with each other. By 1960, the computer was king. Companies hired armies of technicians and programmers to write its operating programs and software, fix it, and allocate the precious computer time. The capability of the machines wa...
