hi I'm Carrie and welcome to crash course computer science early in this series we covered computing history from rusting the dawn of civilization after the birth of electronic general-purpose computers in the mid 1940s a lot of the material was discussed over the past 23 episodes like programming languages and compilers algorithms and integrated circuits hobby disks and operating systems telly types and screens all emerged over roughly a 30-year period from the mid 1940s up to the mid 1970s this is the era of computing before companies like Apple and Microsoft existed and long before anyone tweeted Google dubard it was a formative period setting the stage for personal computers worldwide web self-driving cars virtual reality and many other topics we'll get through in the second half of this series today we're going to step back from circuits and algorithms and review this influential period we'll pay special attention to the historical backdrop of the Cold War the space race and the rise of globalization and consumerism [Music] pretty much immediately after world war ii concluded in 1945 there was tension between the world's two new superpowers the United States and the USSR the Cold War had begun and with it massive government spending on science and engineering computing which had already demonstrated its value in wartime efforts like the Manhattan Project and code breaking Nazi communications was lavished with government funding they enabled huge ambitious computing projects to be undertaken like ENIAC edvac Atlas and whirlwind all mentioned in previous episodes this spurred rapid advances that simply weren't possible in the commercial sector alone where projects were generally expected to recoup development costs through sales this began to change in the early 1950s especially with Eckert and Buckley's UNIVAC won the first commercially successful computer unlike any echo Atlas this was just one single computer it was a model of computer in total more than 40 were built most of these univ acts went to government offices or large companies which was part of the growing military industrial complex in the united states with pockets deep enough to afford the cutting edge famously a univac one built for the US Atomic Energy Commission was used by CBS to predict the results of the 1952 u.s. presidential election with just 1% of the vote the computer correctly predicted an Eisenhower landslide while pundits favored Stevenson it was a media event that helped propel computing to the forefront of the public's imagination computing was unlike machines of the past which generally augmented human physical abilities trucks allowed us to carry more automatic looms whoa faster machine tools were more precise and so on for a bunch of contraptions that typify the Industrial Revolution but computers on the other hand could augment human intellect this potential wasn't lost on Vannevar Bush who in 1945 published an article on a hypothetical computing device he envisioned called the mimics this was a device in which an individual stores all his books records and communications and which is mechanized so it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility it is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory he also predicted that wholly new forms of encyclopedia will appear ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them sound familiar mimics directly inspired several subsequent game-changing systems like Ivan Sutherland sketchpad which we discussed last episode and Doug Engelbart's online system which will cover soon Bush was the head of the US office of scientific research and development which was responsible for funding and coordinating scientific research during World War two with the cold war brewing Bush lobbied for a creation of a peacetime equivalent the National Science Foundation formed in 1950 to this day the NSF provides federal funding to support scientific research in the United States and it is a major reason the US has continued to be a leader in the technology sector it was also in the 1950s that consumers started to buy transistor powered gadgets notable among them was transistor radio which was small durable and battery-powered and it was portable unlike the vacuum tube based radio sets from the 1940s and before it was a runaway success the Furby or iPhone of its day the Japanese government looking for industrial opportunities to bolster their post-war economy soon got in on the action licensing the rights of transistors from Bell Labs in 1952 helping launch the Japanese semiconductor and electronics industry in 1955 the first Sony product was released the TR 55 transistor radio concentrating on quality and price Japanese companies captured half of the US market portable radios in just five years this planted the first seeds of a major industrial rivalry in the decades to come in 1953 there were only around 100 computers on the entire planet and at this point the USSR was only a few years behind the West in computing technology completing their first programmable electronic computer in 1950 but the Soviets were way ahead in the burgeoning space race let's go to the thought-bubble the Soviets launched the world's first satellite into orbit Sputnik one in 1957 and a few years later in 1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space this didn't sit well with the American public and prompted President Kennedy a month after Gagarin's mission to encourage the nation to land a man on the moon within the decade and it was expensive NASA's budget grew almost tenfold peaking in 1966 at roughly 4.5 percent of the u.s. federal budget today it's around half a percent NASA used this funding to tackle a huge array of enormous challenges this culminated in the Apollo program which is peak employed roughly 400,000 people further supported by over 20,000 universities and companies one of these huge challenges was navigating in space NASA needed a computer to process complex trajectories and issue guidance commands to the spacecraft for this they built the Apollo guidance computer there were three significant requirements first the computer had to be fast no surprise there second it has to be small and lightweight there's not a lot of room in a spacecraft and every ounce is precious when you're flying a quarter million miles to the moon and finally it had to be really really ridiculously reliable this is super important in a spacecraft where there's lots of vibration radiation and temperature change and there's no running to best buy it something breaks the technology of the era of vacuum tubes and discrete transistors just weren't up to the task so NASA turned to a brand-new technology integrated circuits which we discussed a few episodes ago the Apollo guidance computer was the first computer to use them a huge paradigm shift nasa was also the only place that could afford them initially each chip cost around $50 and the guidance computer needed thousands of them but by paying that price the Americans were able to beat the Soviets to the moon thanks thought-bubble although the Apollo guidance computer is credited with spurring the development and adoption of integrated circuits it was a low volume product there are only 17 Apollo missions after all it was actually military applications especially the Minuteman and Polaris nuclear missile systems that allowed integrated circuits to become a mass-produced item this rapid advancement was further accelerated by the u.s. building and buying huge powerful computers often called supercomputers because they were frequently 10 times faster than any other computer on the planet upon their release but these machines built by companies like CDC Cray and IBM were also super in cost and pretty much only governments could afford to buy them in the US these machines went to government agencies like the NSA and government research labs like Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories initially the u.s. semiconductor industry boomed buoyed by high profit government contracts however this meant that most US companies overlooked the consumer market where profit margins were small the Japanese semiconductor industry came to dominate this niche by having to operate with lean profit margins in the 1950s and 60s the Japanese had invested heavily in manufacturing capacity to achieve economies of scale in research to improve quality and yields and in automation to keep manufacturing costs low in the 1970s with the space race and Cold War subsiding previously juicy defense contracts began to dry up and consumer conductor and electronics companies found it harder to compete it didn't help the many computing components had been commoditized be around with DRAM so why buy expensive Intel memory when you could buy the same chip for less from Hitachi throughout the 1970s US companies began to downsize consolidate or outright fail Intel had to lay off a third of its workforce in 1974 and even the storied Fairchild Semiconductor was acquired in 1979 after near bankruptcy to survive many of these companies began to outsource their manufacturing in a bid to reduce costs Intel weave drew from its main product category memory ICS and decided to refocus on processes which ultimately saved the company this low and us electronics industry allowed Japanese companies like sharp and Casio to dominate the breakout computing product of the 1970s handheld electronic calculators by using integrated circuits these could be made small and cheap they replaced expensive desktop adding machines you find in offices for most people it was the first time they didn't have to do math on paper or use a slide rule they were an instant hit selling by the millions this server drove down the cost of integrated circuits and led to the development and widespread use of micro processors like the Intel 4004 we've discussed previously this chip was built by Intel in 1971 at the request of Japanese calculator company busy calm soon Japanese electronics were everywhere from televisions of VCRs to digital wristwatches and Walkmans the availability of inexpensive microprocessor spawned in highly new products like video arcades the world got pong in 1972 and breakout in 1976 as cost continued to plummet soon it became possible for regular people to afford computing devices during this time we see the emergence of the first successful home computers like the 1975 Altair 8800 and also the first home gaming consoles like the Atari 2600 in 1977 home now I repeat that home that seems like a small thing today but this was the dawn of a whole new era in computing in just three decades computers have evolved from machines where you could literally walk inside of the CPU assuming you had government clearance to the point where a child could play with a handheld toy containing a microprocessor many times faster critically this dramatic evolution would have been but without two powerful forces at play governments and consumers government funding like the United States provided during the Cold War enabled early adoption of many nascent computing technologies this funding helped flow entire industries relate into computing long enough for the technology to mature and become commercially feasible then businesses and ultimately consumers provided the demand to take it mainstream the Cold War may be over but this relationship continues today governments are still funding science research intelligence agencies are still buying supercomputers humans are still being launched into space and you're still buying TVs Xboxes Playstations laptops and smartphones and for these reasons computing continues to advance a lightning pace I'll see you next week crash course computer science is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios at their channel you can check out a playlist of shows like physics Goldie flicks and PBS space time this episode was filmed at the chad and stacey ever thought studio in indianapolis indiana and it was made with the help of all these nice people and our wonderful graphic scene thought cafe that's where we're going to have to halt and catch fire see you next week [Music]