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How did the early industrial computers, such as UNIVAC, ENIAC, MARK I, etc display output before monitors existed?
Did the first personal computers, like the Altair 8800 or the Simon use monitors, or did they use some alternate output as well?
Moshe
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 5 474
33
The first computers used punch cards or lights. Wikipedia says for ENIAC:
an IBM card punch was used for output
The German Wikipedia-article about Zuse's Z3 (the first apparatus that can be called computer) says:
einer Tastatur mit Lampenfeld für Ein- und Ausgabe von Zahlen und manuelle Steuerung von Berechnungen
That means: it had a keyboard with lights for input and output (programs were read from punch cards, as NobbZ said).
As computers got more common, they used often the already existent teletypes, that means output was made through printing text on paper. Until today, Unix-Terminal emulate to some degree teletypes.
EDIT: You asked specifically about PCs. First PCs came up in the 50s and had different methods for output. The IBM 610 used a keyboard for input and an electric typewriter for output. Also, some other early PCs used printers, i.e. Olivetti Programma 101. The Simon or the Kenbak-1 used lamps for output.
Monitors seem to come up 20 years later, in the 70s. One early model with monitor is the Datapoint 2200 from 1970. And naturally, the milestone Xerox Alto.
More infos about history of PCs at Wikipedia (as usual).
Antwortgenossenschaft
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 930
The Altair used front panel toggle switches (although you could hook up a teletype to its RS-232 interface), so I'm not sure how far you want to go back. Maybe the Altair is considered a "hobbyist" computer, rather than a "personal" computer?
– Robert Harvey – 2011-12-01T17:29:23.267Simon is older than the IBM 610 and is arguably the first personal computer – rlemon – 2011-12-02T15:11:16.130
Many of the early PCs, such as the Apple I, hooked up to a standard television for output. – vocaro – 2011-12-03T07:07:19.850
Relevant Willy Wonka video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sFYSW6QHCQ
– BennyMcBenBen – 2011-12-04T16:15:30.807@rlemon: Wikipedia states the IBM would be first, but the dates itself are strange. I reword that. – Antwortgenossenschaft – 2011-12-06T19:27:02.307
@Antwortgenossenschaft when I said "arguably the first personal computer" I meant due to the fact that the IBM 610 was larger than my desk. – rlemon – 2011-12-06T21:19:39.170
@rlemon: In any way, the beginnings always unclear so it is better not to say which one is the first PC. – Antwortgenossenschaft – 2011-12-09T15:14:14.593
I remember reading (ca 1970, in a computer journal) about a Russian computer of the same era. The government did not trust people to have keypunches or printers, so all input/output was switches and lights, even though this was (based on their reports) a "big" machine. – Daniel R Hicks – 2012-01-12T19:43:05.607
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You may want to check out the Computer History museum's timeline or http://www.thocp.net/index.html
It's been a while since I spent much time there but it is very interesting and may be helpful. It will probably give you some computer names that you could then research to find out how people interacted with them.
Dennis
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 5 768
Really nice resource. Nice answer. – Moshe – 2011-12-01T11:34:33.190
2Yeah, if you go to the second link, under the hardware section and look at the "teletype" you realise how far back the keyboard goes. This even makes me appreciate the mono video terminals I started on in '80. – Dennis – 2011-12-01T11:39:38.010
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Before monitors, computers used Punch Cards, Paper Tape, Banks of Lights, Fan Fold Paper, and Bells for output.
When I was going to school, we submitted our programs to the sysadmin (input) on punch cards and the output was printed on fanfold paper.
To answer your specific questions:
To illustrate an alternate input / output method in use near the dawn of the PC:
Some other early computers:
And even before all that:
And even before that, as @WernerCD and @artistoex pointed out, calculation assistance has been going on for quite a while:
Sean Vikoren
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 350
Teletype. Why /dev is populated with all those tty devices... – Fiasco Labs – 2011-12-16T08:01:23.907
Yes indeed, I remember the ASR-33 Teletype with its smooth rolls of paper. The first game I played was Adventure on a Teletype.
– Sean Vikoren – 2011-12-20T15:37:42.127@artistoex Well done! I'll add that in, thank you. – Sean Vikoren – 2012-01-12T17:49:57.773
@Sean I quoted the wiki article incorrectly--it reads 35,000 yrs ago rather than 35,000 BC. I'm sorry. – artistoex – 2012-01-12T19:12:28.467
@artistoex Thanks for the date fix. Changed to 33,000 BC – Sean Vikoren – 2012-01-12T22:13:17.200
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There have been many I/O devices in the history of computing, from simple light emitting devices such as incandescent light bulbs (and later LEDs) to punch cards to mechanically operated alpha-numerical displays. Pretty much any way you can think of interacting with anything has probably been used to interact with computers, such as bells, whistles and other such things.
Arrays of lights were probably the simplest form of monitor as they could be used in a similar way to the pixels you see on monitors these days.
Monitors are only one of the many ways that have been devised to interact with computers and it stuck because it is the most intuitive and technologically realistic method of dealing with information.
Mokubai
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 64 434
5
Since first Computer is known to be the Zuse Z1 (at least the first binary computer), I looked at it in wikipedia. But all I could find there was that the input was with punched tape. So I would guess, that the output comes on puched tapes too.
Probably you could find it interesting to go through that wikipedia-pages?
NobbZ
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 191
4
Depending on how early you mean, but printers are also output units. You punched in the program, and when it was done it printed the result.
Rook
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 21 622
3+1:If you talk to someone who understand printer drivers, they'll tell you old printer drivers literally just redirected the screen output but through a different port. – surfasb – 2011-12-01T14:23:26.750
1@surfasb that's a PC-centric view. UNIX systems, on the other hand, used teletypewriters (a type of printer), and a modern system simulates one (well, more or less - what it actually simulates is a VT100, which is a type of keyboard-and-monitor device that replaced teletypes) on the screen. – Random832 – 2011-12-01T14:40:45.623
@Random832: That is essentially what I was eluding to, but ya. – surfasb – 2011-12-01T15:01:43.523
@Random832 - I used the term "printer" here rather liberally; telewriters included (amongst some other things as well). – Rook – 2011-12-01T15:15:54.407
2My issue was with surfasb's claim that computers naturally had screen output and "printer drivers" are redirecting that output to the printer. (I suspect this is an incorrect oversimplification even for PCs, but that's another issue) – Random832 – 2011-12-01T15:19:39.053
1@Random832 - Oh, no. I didn't mean that. I ment to say that printers are output devices, just like screens (of any kind), and that at some time they were used instead of ... Feel free to edit the answer if you think of how it can be better phrased. – Rook – 2011-12-01T15:21:49.973
We had an old teletype machine back where I went to college. Normally you used a VT100 terminal, but when you needed a printout, you just did your whole session from the teletype. :-) – Brian Knoblauch – 2011-12-01T21:25:57.520
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Besides all the other output devices mentioned in otehr answers, TV sets were used for output by many computers in the 80s, like Spectrum, Commodore 64, etc.
ypercubeᵀᴹ
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 137
1+1, but a TV is really just a monitor. In ye olden days, a low quality monitor with an RF tuner, but the changes in the technology of monitors have been much more significant than the difference between a monitor and a TV at any particular point in time. These days, the difference between a monitor and a TV is probably even less - odds are already significant and increasing that both will recieve an identical signal via HDMI, for instance. – Steve314 – 2011-12-03T22:48:24.350
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The Difference Engine used brass digits, a bell and a typewriter.
artistoex
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 3 353
0
The first "PC" related to what is commonly known as a PC today, the IBM 5150, used a monitor. You could obtain the system with a high-resolution text mode-only MDA card, or a lower-resolution text and/or color graphics CGA card. Around this time (1981) many home computers were designed to be connected to a television, and the CGA card could indeed be connected to a television.
The late 60's/early 70's saw the introduction of video terminals. These combined a keyboard, CRT display, and character generating hardware and were connected to a minicomputer or mainframe by way of some form of an RS-232 port. So for a while the "monitor" or terminal was considered part of separate self-contained peripheral.
The Altair 8800 had LEDs which you could use to show output if you did not connect a serial terminal to it.
Before the introduction of video terminals you had teletypes. Before then you had punch cards.
LawrenceC
Posted 2011-12-01T11:27:19.677
Reputation: 63 487
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That's not the first PC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers#The_beginnings_of_the_personal_computer_industry
– Antwortgenossenschaft – 2011-12-01T12:40:32.510PC was an abbreviation for "Personal Computer" before the IBM PC was thought of. PC World magazine (the UK one) even started up before the first IBM PC was released, and covered the personal computers of that time such as the Commodore PET and Apple Lisa. IBM effectively stole a generic term, but since it became generic again (though with a different meaning) afterwards... Anyway, even if the IBM 5150 had been the first PC, it still wasn't the first computer. – Steve314 – 2011-12-01T16:37:50.280
@Steve314: edits made – LawrenceC – 2011-12-02T01:39:22.253
Yeah, IBM's previous attempt was called the 5100 "Portable Computer" (at 55 pounds). It incorporated into the single case a keyboard, a 5" B&W display (16x6), and a DC300 tape drive (writing a non-standard format).
– Daniel R Hicks – 2012-01-12T19:57:54.880But probably the first "PC" should be considered to be the HP 9100, though some would give this honor to the Olivetti Programma 101.
– Daniel R Hicks – 2012-01-12T20:03:26.400(Oops -- make that display 16x64.) – Daniel R Hicks – 2012-01-13T18:23:01.127
12Punch cards, punch tape, teletypes, .... the list goes on. The PC didn't take off until there were cheap monitors. – ChrisF – 2011-12-01T11:52:31.930
@ChrisF: I'd debate that the PC didn't take off until Lotus 123 showed up. – surfasb – 2011-12-01T15:02:28.997
Unix systems still refer to text-mode terminals as "tty", teletype. Computers used to use teletypes. – Andrew J. Brehm – 2011-12-01T15:23:18.493
Punched cards, line printers, teletypes, paper tape, in 1962, when I first worked on them. There were some pretty amazing machines. like the line printer could print on multi-layer paper with carbon paper in between. Then it would be run through a burster-decollater to separate the copies. – Mike Dunlavey – 2011-12-01T15:40:08.530
4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus – WernerCD – 2011-12-01T15:40:19.497
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"We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking, beeping and flashing - they're flashing and they're beeping." -Airplane II
– LarsTech – 2011-12-01T16:00:25.230No one remembers storage tubes? – L2G – 2011-12-01T17:15:06.390
@Random - Why was this closed? – Moshe – 2011-12-01T18:45:01.807
1What's the problem you need fixing here? Or is this just a history lesson? – random – 2011-12-01T18:52:20.337
1@random - This is a question related to computer hardware and there is a canonical answer. The community seems to think it should be opened, judging by the number of up votes and reopen votes. It doesn't have to be a problem that needs fixing. – Moshe – 2011-12-01T19:06:15.697
@random why was this closed? I think it fits into the [tag:faq] of this sight. – Naftali aka Neal – 2011-12-01T19:12:25.143
2The answers are all over the place as to what constitutes the meaning of the first computer, ill-defined in the question, and half of them say to just look up Wikipedia, this is either not a real question or not constructive @nea – random – 2011-12-01T19:21:57.590
To avoid extended discussion here, I've posted on meta.
– Moshe – 2011-12-01T19:57:56.027I have an old game programming book. All the programs included a small blurb about their history, some of which reference printing everthing on paper... – Clockwork-Muse – 2011-12-01T23:17:19.303
Folks that had the money would buy a used Teletype for their Altairs. I fixed up old Teletypes for several people back in that era. There were also "glass teletypes" -- crude text-only video terminals. When Centronics came out with their (relatively) inexpensive dot matrix printer it signaled a sea change in small computer peripherals. – Daniel R Hicks – 2011-12-02T04:49:50.007
2Where's the research behind this question? – Kris – 2011-12-02T09:47:17.517