Chapters 7 & 8 summary

Chapter 7 starts off talking about personal computer emulation and miniaturization. IBM sales soared and made the competition obsolete. The IBM was faster and they started producing them smaller because the previous computers were extremely large. The PDP-8 minicomputer was the first to have integrated circuits ever used in computers. DEC was the producer of the PDP-8 and it was very successful. After the emulation and miniaturization section, the book gets into talking about the death of the slide rule. In 1935 John Atanasoff began to contemplate a digital computer. Basically the computer took over the slide rule by doing calculations faster and more accurately. Ted Hoff suggested the central processing unit be put on a single chip. After the computer came the hand held calculater which was quite popular in the 70s. At the end of the chapter was video games and the pin ball machine. The video games slowly made the pin ball machine obsolete because they were more action packed and fun to play. Pin ball was very popular when it first came out but video games made it fizzle out. Atari and Nintendo were the new crazes of the video game world.

Chapter 8 talked about the cold war and how the USSR basically stole all of the technology ideas from the USA. The tactic was espionage. One of their satellilites failed because it was equipped with stolen American computer chips. The Soviets were using stolen information and technology from countries in order to survive because they did not have the technology to survive on their own. This chapter was all about how the Soviet Union had stolen technology and information.