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外文资料原文
Progress in puters
Prestige Lecture delivered to IEE, Cambridge, on 5 February 2004
Maurice Wilkes
putnumber of puters in the world had increased and they were much more reliable than the very early ones . To those years we can ascribe the first steps in high level languages and the first operating systems. Experimental time-sharing was beginning, and ultimately puter graphics was to e along.
Above all, transistors began to replace vacuum tubes. This change presented a formidable challenge to the engineers of the day. They had to forget what they knew about circuits and start again. It can only be said that they measured up superbly well to the challenge and that the change could not have gone more smoothly.
Soon it was found possible to put more than one transistor on the same bit of silicon, and this was the beginning of integrated circuits. As time went on, a sufficient level of integration was reached for one chip to acmodate enough transistors for a small number of gates or flip flops. This led to a range of chips known as the 7400 series. The gates and flip flops were independent of one another and each had its own pins. They could be connected by off-chip wiring to make a puter or anything else.
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These chips made a new kind of puter possible. It was called a miniputer. It was something less that a mainframe, but still very powerful, and much m