computing history

Bilingual

LotusNotes
2 months ago
- The military was a key early customer and funder of digital computing, with many innovations emerging from university research labs serving military contracts.
- PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) was an early computer-based education system developed at the University of Illinois with military funding, emphasizing collaboration and user-generated content.
- PLATO's 'notes' system, created by high school students, became a popular public messaging platform that influenced later social networks and online communities.
- Lotus Notes, developed by Ray Ozzie and Iris Associates, was a groupware platform derived from PLATO's notes system, using a replicated database model for collaboration.
- Lotus Notes was a flexible, schema-less platform that could be customized for various business needs, including email, calendars, and workflow automation.
- Despite early dominance, Lotus Notes declined due to competition from Microsoft Exchange, proprietary standards, and its complex multipurpose nature, eventually being sold to HCL in 2018.
The curious case of the disappearing Polish S
2 months ago
- A bug in Medium prevented Polish users from typing the letter 'Ś' due to a conflict with the Ctrl+S save shortcut.
- Poland lacked localized keyboards during the Communist era, leading to a 'programmer's layout' using Right Alt for diacritics.
- Right Alt is internally mapped to Ctrl+Alt in Windows, causing Ctrl+Alt+S to trigger the blocked Ctrl+S save handler.
- The fix involved modifying the save shortcut handler to block Ctrl+S only when Alt is not pressed.
- The story reflects broader issues of English-centric computing conventions affecting other languages.
Hitachi Ltd, Part I
2 months ago
- Hitachi was founded by Namihei Odaira in 1910, initially producing electric motors and later expanding into electrical generation, consumer electronics, and computing.
- Hitachi began computing research in 1951, developing the HIPAC MK-1 parametron computer in 1957 and the MARS-1 seat reservation system in 1959.
- In 1960, Hitachi licensed IBM patents, but continued developing proprietary computers, including the HITAC 8000 series compatible with IBM System/360.
- Hitachi produced minicomputers like the HITAC 10 (1969) and HITAC 20 (1975), used for scientific and network control applications.
- The company entered the microcomputer market in 1978 with the BASIC Master MB-6880, later releasing MS-DOS and UNIX workstations.
- Hitachi developed supercomputers such as the S-810 (1982) and S-820 (1987), with the latter being the first to have integrated video output.
- The company's CMOS technology, pioneered in 1978, led to low-power SRAM like the HM6147, outperforming Intel's HMOS.
- Hitachi adopted a monkeypod tree as a corporate symbol in 1973, paying annual fees for its exclusive image rights.

computing history

LotusNotes

The curious case of the disappearing Polish S

Hitachi Ltd, Part I