From Cave Paintings to the Internet An Annotated Interactive Timeline on the History of Information and Media 1955 to 1960 Timeline

IBM introduces the IBM 608 transistor calculator, the first all solid-state computer commercially marketed.

IBM develops magnetic core storage units, a dramatic improvement over cathode ray tube memory technology. By successfully adapting pill-making machines for production, IBM greatly improves the manufacture of these tiny, “doughnut” shaped, iron oxide cores, making the cores reliable and cost effective enough to serve as the basic technology behind every computer’s main memory until the early 1970s.

The ENIAC is turned off for the last time. As primitive as it was, it is estimated that this single machine did more arithmetic during the ten years of its operation than the entire human race had done up till the time of its invention.

Frederick Sanger sequences the amino acids of insulin, the first of any protein. His work “revealed that a protein has a definite constant, genetically determined sequence--and yet a sequence with no general rule for its assembly. Therefore it had to have a code” (Judson, Eighth Day of Creation, p. 188). Sanger will receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1958.

Compagnie des Machines Bull launches the first stored-program electronic computer produced for commercial sale in France, the Gamma ET.

Because of failing health, John von Neumann does not finish his last work, The Computer and the Brain, in which he compares the functions of computers and the human brain.

On the completion of the Welch Medical Library Indexing Project, five authors, including Eugene Garfield, issue the Final Report on Machine Methods for Information Searching.

Eugene Garfield publishes Citation Indexes for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of Ideas. This paper may be the foundation of "bibliometrics." "Eugene Garfield, . . .was deeply involved in the research relating to machine generated indexes in the mid-1950's and early 1960's. One of his earliest points of involvement was a project sponsored by the Armed Forces Medical Library (predecessor to our current National Library of Medicine). The Welch Medical Library Indexing project, as it was called, was to investigate the role of automation in the organization and retrieval of medical literature. The hope was that the problems associated with subjective human judgement in selection of descriptors and indexing terms could be eliminated. By removing the human element, one might thereby increase the speed with which information was incorporated in to the indexes. It might also increase the cost-effectiveness of the indexes. Garfield grasped early on that review articles in the journal literature were heavily reliant on the bibliographic citations that referred the reader to the original published source for the notable idea or concept. By capturing those citations, Garfield believed, the researcher could immediately get a view of the approach taken by another scientist to support an idea or methodology based on the sources that the published writer had consulted and cited as pertinent in the bibliography. As retrieval terms, citations could function as well as keywords and descriptors that were thoughtfully assigned by a professional indexer."

John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon invite participants to a summer session at Dartmouth College to conduct research on what they call Artificial Intelligence (AI), thereby coining the term. (See Reading 11.5.)

Stanford Research Institute begins the computerization of the banking industry by demonstrating a prototype electronic accounting machine using its ERMA (Electronic Recording Method of Accounting) system.

ETL-Mark-2, the first full-scale programmable computer in Japan, is produced by the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Japan. It is built of twenty-one thousand relays and does not store a program.

Ray Dolby, Charles Ginsberg and Charles Anderson of Ampex sell the first video tape recorder. It costs $50,000.

IBM introduces the 650 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) disk-storage system, a memory device based on rotating disks. This is the first hard drive. It permits random access to any of the million characters distributed over both sides of 50 two-foot-diameter disks. It stores about 2,000 bits of data per square inch and has a purchase price of about $10,000 per megabyte. By 1997 the cost of storing a megabyte will drop to around ten cents.

William Ross Ashby writes of intelligence amplification by machines in his book, Introduction to Cybernetics.

FUJIC, the first Japanese stored-program electronic computer, is designed and built by essentially one person--Dr. Okazaki Bunji--for the Fuji Photo Film Company. The project began in 1949.

"Originally designed to perform calculations for lens design by Fuji, the ultimate goal of FUJIC's construction was to achieve a speed 1,000 times that of human calculation for the same purpose – amazingly, the actual performance achieved was double that number.

"Employing approximately 1,700 vacuum tubes, the computer's word length was 33 bits. It had an ultrasonic mercury delay line memory of 255 words, with an average access time of 500 microseconds. An addition or subtraction was clocked at 100 microseconds, multiplication at 1,600 microseconds, and division at 2,100 microseconds."

The First International Congress on Cybernetics is held in Namur, Belgium. Few, if any, of the computer pioneers attend. By this time the field of cybernetics is separated from those of computing and artificial intelligence to emphasize issues of control and communication in learning, automation, and biology. The cybernetics approach expands in Europe and Russia but declines in the United States.

At the Dartmouth summer session on AI, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon demonstrate the first AI program, the Logic Theorist, to find the basic equations of logic as defined in Principia Mathematica by Whitehead and Russell. For one of the equations, the Logic Theorist surpasses its inventors’ expectations by finding a new and better proof. This is the “the first foray by artificial intelligence research into high-order intellectual processes” (Feigenbaum and Feldman, Computers and Thought [1963]).

MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Reading) is demonstrated to the Bank Management Committee of the American Bankers’ Association.

Sperry Rand agrees to cross-license patents with IBM, thereby turning over strategic technology.

Noam Chomsky invents his hierarchy of syntactic forms and transformational-generative grammar--profoundly influential in linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Tthe first transatlantic telephone cable, TAT-1, becomes operational. Since 1927 very expensive radio-based transatlantic telephone service was available. Radio-based transatlantic telephone service took around 2000 calls per year.

The first Italian computer conference is held in Rome.

The first Japanese conference on electronic computers is held at Waseda University in Tokyo.

The Burroughs “Atlas Guidance” computer is used to control the launch of the Atlas missile. It is one of the first computers to use transistors.

IBM phases out vacuum tubes in computer design: “It shall be the policy of IBM to use solid-state circuitry in all machine developments. Furthermore, no new commercial machines or devices shall be announced which make primary use of tube circuitry.”

EDSAC 2, the first large-scale computer with a control unit based on microprogramming, becomes operational in Cambridge, England.

The first SAGE AN/FSQ7 is operational for the SAGE Air Defense System on a limited basis. The system allows online access, in graphical form, to data transmitted to and processed by its computers. Fully deployed by 1963, the IBM-built early warning system will remain operational until 1984. With 23 direction centers situated on the nation’s northern, eastern, and western boundaries, SAGE pioneers the use of computer control over large, geographically distributed systems.

Hans Peter Luhn of IBM publishes A Statistical Approach to Mechanized Encoding of Library Information.

Commercial transistorized computers, including the UNIVAC Solid State 80 and the Philco TRANSAC S-2000, are introduced. These inaugurate the so-called second generation of electronic computers.

Grace Hopper writes the first English-language data-processing compiler, B-0 (FLOW-MATIC) for the UNIVAC II.

John Backus and his team at IBM ship FORTRAN for the IBM 704. This software is proprietary to IBM. It becomes the first high-level programming language to achieve high use.

Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson collaborate on the first significant computer music composition, the Illiac Suite. It is composed on the University of Illinois ILLIAC I computer, the first von Neumann architecture computer to be built and owned by an American university.

Shigeo Satomura demonstrates the application of the Doppler shift in the frequency of ultrasound backscattered by moving cardiac structures. This is the beginning of doppler ultrasound for evaluating blood flow and pressure by bouncing high-frequency sound waves (ultrasound) off red blood cells.

S. Satomura, Ultrasonic Doppler Method for the Inspection of Cardiac Functions. J. Accoust. Soc. Amer. 29 (1957) 1181-85.

John von Neumann dies of cancer at the age of fifty-four.

Francis Crick delivers his paper “On Protein Synthesis,” published in Symp. Soc. Exp. Biol. 12 (1958): 138-63. In it Crick proposes two general principles: 1) The Sequence Hypothesis: “The order of bases in a portion of DNA represents a code for the amino acid sequence of a specific protein. Each ‘word’ in the code would name a specific amino acid. From the two-dimensional genetic text, written in DNA, are forced the whole diversity of uniquely shaped three-dimensional proteins” (gnn.tigr.org.timeline), and 2) The Central Dogma: “Information is transmitted from DNA and RNA to proteins but information cannot be transmitted from a protein to DNA.” This paper “permanently altered the logic of biology.” (Judson)

The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite.

Konrad Zuse produces the Z22, the first commercial electronic digital computer in Germany. It uses vacuum tubes. Zuse KG is the first independent German electronic computer company. It will eventually be purchased by Siemens.

Seymour Cray of Control Data Corporation builds the first transitorized supercomputer, the CDC 1604.

William Higinbotham, head of the Instrumentation Division at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, invents the first video game, "Tennis for Two" run on an analog computer hooked up to an oscilloscope.

Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments conceives of the integrated circuit and constructs a basic prototype.

Independently of Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor invents a process that makes it practical to manufacture integrated circuits.

IBM announces their 1401: a relatively inexpensive computer that proves very popular with businesses, and which begins to compete seriously with existing punched-card equipment

Hans Peter Luhn of IBM develops an automatic document indexing program for the production of literature abstracts. "The complete text of an article in machine-readable form is scanned by an IBM 704 data-processing machine and analyzed in accordance with a standard program. Statistical information derived from word frequency and distribution is used by the machine to compute a relative measure of significance, first for individual words and then for sentences. Sentences scoring highest in significance are extracted and printed out to become the "auto-abstract."

Though modems existed for teletype since the 1940s, these transmitted at speeds of about 150 bpi. To meet demands of the U.S. military, researchers at Bell Labs develop an improved modem (modulator-demodulator), using amplitude magnification to provide a way to convert digital signals to analog signals and back for transmission at speeds up to 1600 bpi over analog telephone lines.

MITRE Corporation is founded to manage the development and production of SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) "an automated control system for collecting, tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft." This will be used by NORAD from the late into the 1980s..

IBM begins production of the the AN/FSQ-7, a military grade version of the Whirlwind. "The AN/FSQ-7 used 55,000 vaccuum tubes, about 1/2 acre(2,000 m²) of floor space, weighed 275 tons and used up to three megawatts of power. Although the failure rate of an individual tube was low due to efforts in quality control. So many were used that the daily failure rate was in the hundreds. Each center had staff dedicated to replacing dead tubes by running up and down the racks of machinery with shopping carts filled with replacements. The AN/FSQ-7s remain the largest computers ever built, and will likely hold that record in the future. Each SAGE site included two computers for redundancy, with one processor on "hot standby" at all times. In spite of the poor reliability of the tubes, this dual-processor design made for remarkably high overall system uptime. 99% availability was not unusual."

In the late 1950s it becomes recognized that the longevity of paper is a function of its acidity or alkalinity: the lower the acidity and higher the alkalinity, the greater the longevity of paper.

John Tukey coins the term "software" in a computing context in American Mathematical Monthly

The U. S. launches its first artificial satellite, Explorer-1, officially known as Satellite 1958 Alpha. It was built at the Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech. It ceases transmission on May 23 after less than 4 months. Explorer I is credited with the most important discovery of the International Geophysical Year--the discovery of one of the belts of radiation surrounding the earth, subsequently named the Van Allen Belts after James Van Allen, the scientist who identified them.

In response to the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik, President Dwight Eisenhower creates the Advanced Research Planning Agency of the Department of Defense (ARPA). It will be renamed DARPA in 1972.

Arthur Lee Samuel first demonstrates that machines can learn from past errors, one of the earliest examples of non-numerical computation.

Allan Newell, Clifford Shaw, and Herbert Simon invent “game tree pruning,” an artificial intelligence technique.

Frank Rosenblatt invents the perceptron, the first precisely specified, computationally oriented neural network.

The National Physical Laboratory at Teddington, England holds the first international symposium on artificial intelligence, calling it Mechanisation of Thought Processes. At this conference John McCarthy delivers his paper Programs with Common Sense.(See Reading 11.6.)

President Eisenhower's brief Christmas greeting is transmitted from the Project SCORE (Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment) satellite. He says: "This is the President of the United States speaking. Through the marvels of scientific advance, my voice is coming to you from a satellite traveling in outer space. My message is a simple one: Through this unique means I convey to you and all mankind, America's wish for peace on Earth and goodwill toward men everywhere." This is the first voice transmission from the world's first communications satellite.

Based on technology originally developed at the Stanford Research Institute, General Electric delivers the first 32 ERMA (Electronic Recording Method of Accounting) computing systems to the Bank of America. The system uses MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Reading.) ERMA will serve as the Bank’s accounting computer and check handling system until 1970.

Wesley A. Clark designs and builds the TX-2 computer at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories. It has 320 kilobytes of fast memory, about twice the capacity of the biggest commercial machines. Other features are magnetic tape storage, an on-line typewriter, the first Xerox printer, paper tape for program input, and a nine inch CRT screen. Among its applications will be development of interactive graphics and research on human-computer interaction.

Gordon Gould files his patent on the LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) based on a discovery he made in 1957. The patent will not be granted until 1977.

Xerox introduces the xerographic copier.

Having been computed by human computers since 1767, the Nautical Almanac is finally produced by an electronic computer. "The computation of the data for the almanacs involved a considerable amount of effort. As late as the mid-20th century, HMNAO employed a small army of human computers to carry out this work. They used the latest technology available at the time: logarithm tables, mechanical calculating machines and electro-mechanical calculating machines. In 1959 the Office obtained its own electronic computer, making it the first part of the RGO to use this emerging technology."

Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson publish the first book on computer-generated music: Experimental Music: Composition with an Electronic Computer, based on work done on the University of Illinois’s ILLIAC computer.

The United States banking industry adopts MICR, (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition), which allows computers to read the data printed on checks.

The British Museum publishes its General Catalogue of Printed Books. Photolithographic Edition to 1955 in 263 folio volumes from 1959 to 1966. These include the catalogue cards of 4,350,000 items. In 1971 and 1972 they issue a Ten-Year Supplement, 1956-1970 in 23 volumes. This is the "most voluminous" printed "catalogue of a single library ever published." (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1964] 109)

A group representing computer users, manufacturers, universities, and the government, meets at the Pentagon to plan COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), a non proprietary computer language designed for business use that can be run on all electronic computers. Its specifications are inspired by the FLOW-MATIC language invented by Grace Hopper and the IBM COMTRAN language.

Arthur Lee Samuel first demonstrates that machines can learn from past errors, one of the earliest examples of non-numerical computation.