From The Dawn Of Silicon Valley Until Today

[Palumboism]

The year is 1955 and Bill Shockley has left Bell Labs to start his own company Shockley semiconductor.  At Bell, Shockley led the team that invented the transistor and he believed the future was in silicon transistors rather than the Germanium of the time.  Shockley chose the location of Mountain View California because it was close to his mother in Palo Alto.

Shockley recruited eight young scientists from all over the country to join him including Bob Noyce.  Shockley's poor people skills and abrasive demeanor lead the group to of eight to set off on their own in 1956 to start their own company.  The company is funded by Sherman Fairchild and called Fairchild Semiconductor.  Shockley called them the treacherous eight.

In 1956 AT&T was forced to give away all of their existing patents royalty free as part of a government anti trust case that would have otherwise broken up the company.  Any company in the world could use the transistor free of charge. 

At Fairchild, Bob Noyce invented the integrated circuit in 1959 on which the entire tech industry is based.  The site is a California registered historical landmark.

[Palumboism]

In 1960, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng invented a type of transistor called MOSFET at Bell Labs.  Most ignored the invention, but Fairchild engineers took particular interest in it and developed and commercialized an integrated circuit using it called the MOS IC in 1964.  MOSFET allows for simpler more efficient IC production.

Bell Labs didn't see much value in MOSFET and licensed it for a very modest fee to any company.  The MOSFET transistor has gone on to become the single most produced object man has ever created.  A new Iphone has 20 billion MOSFET transistors in it.

In a 1965 article for Electronics Magazine, Gordon Moore of Fairchild observed that the number of components on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention with little affect on price.  This statement has become known as Moore's law and has driven the tech industry to this day.  The observation was revised to doubling every two years in 1975.  Die shrinkage is the secret sauce of tech.  It's the reason it gets better every years.

[Palumboism]

In 1968 Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore leave Fairchild to found Intel.

That same year a director from Sharp comes to America and visits eleven semiconductor companies to find a supplier for chips for a new calculator.  Every company says no but one, North American Rockwell Microelectronics.  The following year the Sharp QT-8D Calculator called the Micro Compet with 4 Integrated Circuits is launched.  It's the first calculator with integrated circuits and sells over 400K units the first year.  Also in 1969 a salesman from Fairchild leaves to found a company named AMD to make knock of Fairchild chips.

In 1970 Busicom, a competitor to sharp also comes to America to find chip suppliers and Intel agrees to design and build chips for them.  The result is the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004 released in 1971.  That same year Texas Instruments launches the calculator on a chip TMS1802NC.

What follows is known as the calculator wars that lasted from 1971 to 1974 and brought many companies into making calculators including MITS, Commodore, and Sinclair.  By 1974 Texas Instruments decides to stop selling their chip to other companies and start to make calculators themselves.

MITS responds by getting into computers by making the first personal computer, the MITS Altair.
A freshman at Harvard sees the MITS Altair on the cover of an electronics magazine and decides to drop out of school to form a company with a friend to provide software for this new computer.  The company is named Microsoft.

Commodore Responds by buying a semiconductor company named MOS Technology which has designed a chip named the MOS 6502.  Chuck peddle, head of engineering at MOS Technology tells The CEO of Commodore to get out of calculators and into computers using the MOS 6502.

[NaturalWonder83]

Skynet, a highly advanced computer system possessing artificial intelligence (A.I.), was intended to control electronically linked weapons and defend the United States.

Skynet would eventually become self-aware and launch a global war of extermination against humanity.

The individual most directly responsible was Miles Bennett Dyson. He was the director of special projects at Cyberdyne Systems Corporation.

In a few months, he created a revolutionary type of microprocessor.

In 3 years, Cyberdyne would become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers would be upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they would fly with a perfect operational record.

The "Skynet Funding Bill" would be passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions would be removed from strategic defense.

Skynet would begin to learn at a geometric rate. It would become self-aware at 2:14 A.M. Eastern Time, August 29th. In a panic, they would try to pull the plug.

Skynet would fight back and launch its' missiles against the targets in Russia.

[IroNat]

We're f*cked.

[Palumboism]

We're f*cked.

I don't get the negativity towards AI.  Every other Phase of development for computer development was met with extreme enthusiasm.  From PC's to the internet to smart phones and streaming.  I don't remember anyone being terrified of Netscape Navigator, Yahoo, The Iphone, or Netflix streaming.

Why is it so different for AI?  What's the disconnect?  I think it has to do with the lack of charisma of the people presenting it.  There is no Steve Jobs for AI saying I give you the IPhone.  It's like a public relations disaster what the Sam Altmans and Elon Musks are doing. 

[Humble Narcissist]

I don't get the negativity towards AI.  Every other Phase of development for computer development was met with extreme enthusiasm.  From PC's to the internet to smart phones and streaming.  I don't remember anyone being terrified of Netscape Navigator, Yahoo, The Iphone, or Netflix streaming.

Why is it so different for AI?  What's the disconnect?  I think it has to do with the lack of charisma of the people presenting it.  There is no Steve Jobs for AI saying I give you the IPhone.  It's like a public relations disaster what the Sam Altmans and Elon Musks are doing.

Tech has always scared people. Just look at nuclear weapons. People are terrified of them even though they are the biggest peace makers on the planet. No country with them gets invaded. Ukraine sure wishes they never gave them up. AI will make all our lives much easier just like all the other computer tech.

[GymnJuice]

I don't get the negativity towards AI.  Every other Phase of development for computer development was met with extreme enthusiasm.  From PC's to the internet to smart phones and streaming.  I don't remember anyone being terrified of Netscape Navigator, Yahoo, The Iphone, or Netflix streaming.

Why is it so different for AI?  What's the disconnect?  I think it has to do with the lack of charisma of the people presenting it.  There is no Steve Jobs for AI saying I give you the IPhone.  It's like a public relations disaster what the Sam Altmans and Elon Musks are doing.

I think this will ultimately be a good thing. People are still figuring out how to use these tools effectively, so right now we're seeing an overabundance of AI slop everywhere, from news articles to random websites.

[Palumboism]

HOMEBREW AND
HOW THE APPLE
CAME TO BE
by Stephen Wozniak

[snip]
 The Apple I and II were designed strictly on a hobby, for-fun basis, not to be a product for a company. They were meant to bring down to the club and put on the table during the random access period and demonstrate: Look at this, it uses very few chips. It's got a video screen. You can type stuff on it. Personal computer keyboards and video screens were not well established then. There was a lot of showing off to other members of the club. Schematics of the Apple I were passed around freely, and I'd even go over to people's houses and help them build their own.
    The Apple I and Apple II computers were shown off every two weeks at the club meeting. "Here's the latest little feature," we'd say. We'd get some positive feedback going and turn people on. It's very motivating for a creator to be able to show what's being created as it goes on. It's unusual for one of the most successful products of all time, like the Apple II, to be demonstrated throughout its development.
    Today it's pretty obvious that if you're going to build a billion-dollar product, you have to keep it secret while it's in development because a million people will try to steal it. If we'd been intent on starting a company and selling our product, we'd probably have sat down and said, "Well, we have to choose the right microprocessor, the right number of characters on the screen," etc. All these decisions were being made by other companies, and our computer would have wound up being like theirs-a big square box with switches and lights, no video terminal built in . . .
    We had to be more pragmatic. The 6502 microprocessor, for instance, was chosen for one reason only. It was the first one to sell over the counter for $20. The 8080 cost $370 at the time, and you couldn't get it at any surplus stores. You had to go down to a distributor, and they made you feel like you had to be a company with an account. It wasn't set up for hobbyists or experimenters.

https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/homebrew_and_how_the_apple.php

The Altair 8800 spawned the start of the Home Brew computer club which Steve Jobs and Steve Wazniak were both members.  The Altair 8800 was the only personal computer when the club started.

The article above tell in Wazniak's own words how the Home Brew club spawned the development of the Apple 2 and the resulting Apple computer company.

Note, the MOS 6502 chip they are using is supplied by Commodore computer.

[Palumboism]

Three personal computers launched in 1977 and Byte magazine would reefer to them as the Trinity.  They were the Commodore Pet, the Apple 2, and the Radio Shack TRS80.

First year sales
Radio Shack TRS-80     55,000
Apple II                        8,170 units
Commodore PET              500 units


When Radio Shack launched the TRS-80 directors were so paranoid that the machine would flop that the initial production run was capped at 3,500 units.  At the time Radio Shack had 3500 stores a the thought was if the single unit each store got didn't sell, they could use it for store inventory. 

The TRS-80 used the Zilog Z80 processor with the Apple 2 and Commodore Pet using the MOS 6502.

In 1979 the Atari 400 and 800 would be launched along with the Texas Instruments TI-99/4.

[Palumboism]

By 1980 Big Blue had seen enough to know this was a market they needed to get into.

A young manager and forty employees were sent down to Boca Raton to develop a new PC for IBM far away from the corporate bureaucracy of IBM.

A small software company named Microsoft was commissioned to provide the operating system with IBM agreeing they could license it to other companies if they wanted to.

The IBM 5150 Personal Computer was launched in 1981 and was a huge success.

[NaturalWonder83]

AI will destroy us. Terminator 2 was a warning. Eventually all decisions will be delegated to the computers! They will eventually become self-aware! Human decision will be eliminated! When this happens, the aliens will know it’s time to fully invade earth!

[Humble Narcissist]

AI will destroy us. Terminator 2 was a warning. Eventually all decisions will be delegated to the computers! They will eventually become self-aware! Human decision will be eliminated! When this happens, the aliens will know it’s time to fully invade earth!

The tech bros could use AI as an excuse when really they are eliminating us. Remember the Georgia Guide Stones said Earth would be cut to 200 million.