Making a World of Difference Engineering Ideas into Reality (2014) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1964 Dawn of the Digital Age
1964 Dawn of the Digital Age
Pages 4-17
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 4... ...
such as vaccination programs, antibiotics, and a safer food supply, Another recent invention, the laser, would soon demonstrate its value those crucial improvements in sanitation and water supply helped to health care and fiber-optic communications. And while the Air Force increase the average life expectancy in the United States by 50 was using room-size mainframe computers to process data from percent -- from 47 years to 70 between 1900 and 1960.
|
From page 5... ...
Commissioned to produce experimentation, the team presented their artillery firing tables so gunners in the field could adjust their aim as needed, ENIAC could bosses at Bell Labs with the transistor (above)
|
From page 6... ...
average business, and certainly not your aver- Integrated circuits produced in the 1960s were age consumer, could afford. essential to early aerospace projects such as The crucial engineering advance that the Minuteman missile and the Apollo program, brought computers out of large institutions and which both needed lightweight digital com into much wider use was the integrated circuit, puters for their inertial guidance systems.
|
From page 7... ...
The race toward ever smaller yet High-level programming languages like Fortran, ing applications, some version of Fortran is still used ever more powerful computers was off and COBOL, and BASIC were instrumental in mak- in intensive supercomputing tasks such as weather running. (Updating his forecast in 1975, Moore ing programming faster and considerably less and climate modeling, computational fluid dynamics, predicted that chip capacity would double tedious than hand-coding in the ones and zeros and structural engineering.
|
From page 8... ...
To get the computer to write something you merely typed PRINT, followed by the words to print in quotes. Kemeny wanted the language to be so easy that a complete novice "could use it after three hours of training." Versions of BASIC became popular with the advent of minicomputers such as Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP line in the mid-1960s and then exploded with the introduction of home computers in the mid-1970s.
|
From page 9... ...
Aircraft Company, used that mirror technique to William Bridges of Hughes Research Labs PDP stood for "programmed data produce the first laser (light amplification by devised an argon laser to reattach detached processor," a term chosen to avoid the ste- the stimulated emission of radiation) , by retinas, a condition which, if left untreated, can reotype that "computers" were too big, too energizing chromium atoms in ruby crystals.
|
From page 10... ...
But it is most familiar as the barcode scanner at grocery In May 1961, a month after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and other retail stores where it revolutionized the checkout line. became the first man in space -- chalking up another "first" for the Soviets -- President John Kennedy committed the United States to "achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Although one ob jective of that program was to assert American engineering superior ity over the Soviets, reaching for the moon inspired humanity with a quest that transcended the Cold War.
|
From page 11... ...
The mission also needed could function reliably and accurately in space, space program ignited the public imagination. a computerized inertial guidance system to Draper knew his job would be a race against On Christmas Eve 1968, seven months before determine how much rocket thrust to apply for time, but he promised National Aeronautics the moon landing, Apollo 8 astronaut William critical maneuvers such as landing the lunar and Space Administration (NASA)
|
From page 12... ...
In 2000, President Bill Clinton made the NAE's Draper Prize "for development of access to more precise signals fully available communication satellite technology." In Oc- to the general public. Today, along with similar tober 1964, Syncom 3, the first geostationary satellite systems launched by other nations, the communications satellite, relayed live televi- global positioning system, or GPS, helps guide sion broadcasts of the Tokyo Olympics.
|
From page 13... ...
Up, Up, and Away W hile astronauts were blasting off for the moon in the 1960s, millions of people on Harold Martin of the University of Washington Earth also began soaring to new heights of their own. Carried by commercial jets to Boeing for summer "faculty internships." that cruised at altitudes far above those of propeller-driven planes, air travelers Collectively, they created a method of structur could avoid storms and enjoy safer, more comfortable flights.
|
From page 14... ...
Tetrabeen out of reach for most ordinary Ameri- 1963, which set emissions standards for power ethyl lead, for example, was added to gasoline cans -- so exclusive, in fact, that air travelers plants, steel mills, and other stationary sources, starting in the 1920s, to prevent a phenomenon actually dressed up for their flights (above) -- and recommended emissions standards for in auto engines called knocking -- sudden bursts became the way college students in jeans and vehicles, which would be established by law in of combustion that can damage engines and sneakers would go home for Thanksgiving.
|
From page 15... ...
big oil slick in Cleveland's notoriously polluted Credit for engineering those techniques Cuyahoga River caught fire and damaged belongs to geochemist Clair Patterson, who in two bridges before firefighters extinguished 1965 warned that leaded gasoline and other it. Fires on the Cuyahoga were common, but industrial products were exposing people to in this instance TIME magazine ran a photo of far greater concentrations of lead in air and the Cuyahoga in flames to illustrate the plight water than existed prehistorically.
|
From page 16... ...
By the 1980s resonance imaging, or MRI, uses a magnetic field many doctors used such computerized scans to and radio waves to create detailed images to reassure patients or diagnose ailments prompthelp diagnose a variety of problems, including ly, without the need for invasive diagnostic aneurysms, disorders of the eye, damage from surgery. By enabling the early detection and heart attack or heart disease, and joint disorders treatment of many types of cancer as well as 16 Making a World of Difference
|
From page 17... ...
The first long-lasting they could receive natural heart transplants. implantable pacemaker was invented a couple Kolff was awarded the 2003 Russ Prize for of years later by electrical engineer Wilson "pioneering work on artificial organs, beginning Greatbatch, who miniaturized his device using with the kidney, thus launching a new field that silicon transistors.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.