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:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“It’s nice to be a part of history but people should get it right. I may not be perfect, but I’m bloody close.”
—John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)