History
The very first computers did not have separate terminals as such; their primitive input/output devices were built in. However, soon it was found to be extremely useful for multiple people to be able to use a computer at the same time, for reasons of cost - early computers were very expensive, both to produce and maintain, and occupied large amounts of floor space. The idea of centralized computing was born. Early text terminals used electro-mechanical teletypewriters, but these were replaced by cathode ray tube displays (as found in 20th century televisions and computers). The text terminal model dominated computing from the 1960s until the rise to dominance of home computers and personal computers in the 1980s.
Read more about this topic: Centralized Computing
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)