微机发展简史外文翻译.docx

Progress in ComputersPrestige Lecture delivered to IEE, Cambridge, on 5 February 2004Maurice WilkesComputer LaboratoryUniversity of CambridgeThe first stored program computers began to work around 1950. The one we built in Cambridge, the EDSAC was first used in the summer of 1949.These early experimental computers were built by people like myself with varying backgrounds. We all had extensive experience in electronic engineering and were confident that that experience would stand us in good stead. This proved true, although we had some new things to learn. The most important of these was that transients must be treated correctly; what would cause a harmless flash on the screen of a television set could lead to a serious error in a computer.As far as computing circuits were concerned, we found ourselves with an embarass de richess. For example, we could use vacuum tube diodes for gates as we did in the EDSAC or pentodes with control signals on both grids, a system widely used elsewhere. This sort of choice persisted and the term families of logic came into use. Those who have worked in the computer field will remember TTL, ECL and CMOS. Of these, CMOS has now become dominant.In those early years, the IEE was still dominated by power engineering and we had to fight a number of major battles in order to get radio engineering along with the rapidly developing subject of electronics.dubbed in the IEE light current electrical engineering.properly recognised as an activity in its own right. I remember that we had some difficulty in organising a conference because the power engineers’ ways of doing things were not our ways. A minor source of irritation was that all IEE published papers were expected to start with a lengthy statement of earlier practice, something difficult to do when there was no earlier practiceConsolidation in the 1960s By the late 50s or early 1960s, the heroic pioneering stage was over and the computer field was starting up in real earnest. The number o