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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4

Pictorial Reports on the Computer Field (Computers and Automation, 1957+)

== Computers and Automation Magazine ==

Pictorial Report on the Computer Field:


History of computing hardware in pictures by Computers and Automation:

A PICTORIAL INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS - [1], pp. 49-56

A PICTORIAL MANUAL ON COMPUTERS - [2], pp. 10-13, 15-17, 19-24, 28, 30, 32

A PICTORIAL MANUAL ON COMPUTERS, Part 2 - [3], pp. 12-17, 20-22, 24, 26-27

1958 Pictorial Report on the Computer Field - [4], pp. 6, 8-10, 12-14, 16-18, 20-21

1959 PICTORIAL REPORT ON THE COMPUTER FIELD - [5], pp. 8-19

1960 Pictorial Report on the Computer Field - [6], pp. 13-32

1961 PICTORIAL REPORT ON THE COMPUTER FIELD - [7], pp. digital 24-36, analog 41-45, I/O devices 60-69; 72-78, 83-88 (Bernoulli disk rotating storage device - p. 62, IBM 1301 - 69, Semiconductor Network Computer - 85)

1962 PICTORIAL REPORT ON THE COMPUTER FIELD - [8], pp. 26-42, I/O / components/others: 67-73 / 74-79/80-82

1963 PICTORIAL REPORT ON THE COMPUTER FIELD - [9], pp. 26-44

1964 PICTORIAL REPORT ON THE COMPUTER FIELD - [10], pp. 28-36, 37-51 (UNIVAC FLUID COMPUTER - air-operated, SDS 92 IC, Fairchild Planar II)

1965 Pictorial Report on the Computer Field - [11], pp. 18-30, 31-38; IC memories, Floating Floor :)

1966 Pictorial Report on the Computer Field - [12], pp. 22-

--89.25.210.104 (talk) 18:21, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

It's not clear why these are listed here (or why the list is hidden), but I agree they're interesting to read through. Dicklyon (talk) 20:06, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
I put it here because I didn't know where it could be placed (for public view). Hidden to save vertical space for people not interested (and because I'm using [very] low screen resolution). --MarMi wiki (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
How about as a bulleted list under Computers And Automation Magazine in External Links? Tom94022 (talk) 00:51, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
I redacted the list as a new section (see above) to be put before External Links, can it be put there? --MarMi wiki (talk) 00:45, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
IMO I don't see a new section as appropriate, but a bulleted list under External Links or maybe even under Further Reading seems appropriate. Just my 2 cents, u might want to get other opinions. Tom94022 (talk) 01:00, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Added to FR. It may require splitting to pre and post-1960. --MarMi wiki (talk) 21:48, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Post-1960 (integrated circuit based) - move to 1960s–present?

I think that most of Post-1960 (integrated circuit based) section should be moved to History of computing hardware (1960s–present). --MarMi wiki (talk) 22:08, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

I would go further and combine this article's sections 9 and 10 into one new section "History of computing hardware (1960s–present)" with just a summary and a main link to the History of computing hardware (1960s–present) article. Anything in these two sections not in the main article should be moved and the redundant rest this article in deleted. Tom94022 (talk) 22:40, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

American knowledge of Colossus

It is clear that Americans were intimately involved in the use of Colossu during WWII - see: "Small, Albert W. (December 1944), The Special Fish Report, The American National Archive (NARA) College Campus Washington{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)". So I shall revert the recent edit. --TedColes (talk) 04:15, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Probably a good idea to wedge that ref into the article somewhere. - Snori (talk) 05:27, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Integrated Circuits

I would like to discuss this edit:[13]

@Tom94022: <--ping

It seems to me that computers based on integrated circuits were an important intermediate step between computers based upon discrete transistors and computers based upon microprocessors. I this the section should be restored. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:14, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree that a section on IC-based computers is important for computing history. For those on low budgets, minicomputers (using ICs) were still supreme when people started mucking around with microprocessors. The old "Integrated circuit" section is at permalink. Johnuniq (talk) 01:34, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
I WP:BRD restored it. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:12, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Computers with integrated circuits are basically the whole third generation, in my opinion. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 06:16, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Did you know that they are still available? See [ https://gigatron.io/ ]. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:40, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I've seen a YouTube video about it by the 8-bit guy. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 07:06, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Integrated circuit computers never left the article; some of the history of integrated circuits did. The article should be aligned with the traditional four generations of electronic computers; tube, transistor, IC(not micoprocessor) and (monolithic) microprocessor. @Guy Macon:'s edit sort of messed this up lumping three into one which I will restore. As far as the history of the invention of the IC does it really have much to do with this article and is very well coverred in the integrated circuit article. I will leave the history in until we hear from other editors. Tom94022 (talk) 07:04, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

There's no question that the IC era was important, but the story is more granular than 1,2,3,4 generations. Computer architectures can be independent of the types of logic elements used to implement them. Thus the PDP-8 started with discrete transistors, went through stages of IC designs and ended as a microprocessor. Or going back further, there's the IBM 709 - 7090 transition from vacuum tube to transistor. (Ada Lovelace described the concept clearly in her writing about the Analytical Engine.) A major milestone was the development of standardized IC families, especially TTL. Early 16-bit minicomputers, like the PDP-11 or the DG Nova used the basic 7400-series integrated circuits, with only a few logic elements per chip, what became known as SSI, single scale integration, IIRC. As the technology improved, single chips did more complex operations, such as encoders and decoders or multi bit bus interfaces, medium scale integration. I remember the 74LS245 octal bus transceiver introduction. Previously one needed separate bus driver and bus receiver chips. The '245 cut the chip count for a bus interface in half and was an instant success, so much so that supplies were tight, prices rose, and a black market developed, with thieves stealing supplies of chips from warehouses. The next stage was so called large scale integration, LSI with, for example, bit slice chips like the 1975 AMD Am2900 series that implemented all the circuitry for a CPU four bits at a time. Everyone knew that eventually an entire CPU would fit on a chip, but early designs were very limited in what they could do so machines based on the LSI designs persisted for several years as microprocessors improved.--agr (talk) 12:40, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps we need to split the history into two sections? One could cover the classes of computer -- programmable looms, mechanical adding machines, analog computers, programmable calculators and 10-key adding machines, mainframes, supercomputers, minicomputers, PLCs, personal computers, smart phones, etc. The other could cover technologies -- mechanical (plus hydraulic?), relay, vacuum tube, transistor, LSI, VLSI, Microcontroller, PLD, SoC, etc. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
There is a RS for generations and within generations, classes: see Bell’s Law for the Birth and Death of Computer Classes: A theory of the Computer’s Evolution. So adding the generations is just a start to improving this article and they should not have been reverted out. Tom94022 (talk) 21:17, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

The section History_of_computing_hardware#Integrated_circuits really doesn't say anything about how/when ICs got into computers. The Apollo Guidance Computer should be mentioned as one of the first; it used only one type of small-scale IC (double 3-input NOR). Probably some of you know other early computers based on ICs (is that in what was removed?). Dicklyon (talk) 20:11, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

What was removed was some, not all detail history of ICs as not particularly relevant to this article and a little bit of the history of third generation computers was added but then reverted out. Agreed the section History_of_computing_hardware#Integrated_circuits needs improvement and I'll take a crack at it there. There is a Draft:List_of_integrated_circuit_computers article that has some details that should be moved into History_of_computing_hardware#Integrated_circuits. Tom94022 (talk) 21:17, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle

Per WP:TALKDONTREVERT and WP:BRD I reverted the following rather major removal of sourced material, only to face an editor who chooses to re-revert rather than discuss.[14][15][16] This is the same editor who tried tto deleted a large chunk of material that we discussed in the section above.[17][18]

Before I go any further, I would like to bring this up for discussion. Should that material be deleted or retained? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:22, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

What major removal of material are your referring to! A few sentances in a long article by my count. And it was discussed above. Lets be clear that this is a not just BRD cycles since there were substantive changes made in most of the edits and so far Macon has provided no justification for his reversions other than some deleted material is referenced. I agree there is a legitimate question as to how much of the deleted material should be added back to the article. Here is what was deleted shown in strikethrough:

The idea of the integrated circuit was conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer. Dummer presented the first public description of an integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C. on 7 May 1952:[141] With the advent of the transistor and the work on semi-conductors generally, it now seems possible to envisage electronic equipment in a solid block with no connecting wires.[142] The block may consist of layers of insulating, conducting, rectifying and amplifying materials, the electronic functions being connected directly by cutting out areas of the various layers”. The first practical ICs were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor.[143] Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working integrated example on 12 September 1958.[144] In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as “a body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated.”[145] The first customer for the invention was the US Air Force.[146] Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby.[147] His chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium.

My stated opinion is that this IC history is not particularly relevant to this computer history article (i.e. undue in this context) and is redundant in that it is well coverred in the IC article. Macon's only discussion is that these sentances are referenced. If other editors think this deleted material should be added back to the one section that's fine.
Furthermore, my second edit[19] was not a reversion at all but a substantial revision including new material, new organization and the above deletion. Macon twice reverted all without discussion which is a major violation of WP:BRD. If other editors want to edit that material fine but I suggest it is more appropriate for Macon to discuss rather than edit or revert. Tom94022 (talk) 00:27, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
The basis of this article was User:Michael Hardy's statement that the history of computing is bigger than the history of the hardware. I went back to the 2008 edit history when the microprocessor material was added to this article, such as the Intel 8742. (My motivation was the illustration of the interconnects to the CPU.) At that time, the Post-1960 article had nothing comparable. Indeed, at that time I had to add in material to the integrated circuit article. As the highest-level article on the history of computing, this article did not have to worry about the Post-IC era. The split is artificial. That is why it can include material about the latest advances in computing. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 03:06, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
I see that some of my citations were moved to the post-1960 article and removed from this one. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 10:17, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
It's important that we remember that microprocessor designs are not the be-all and end-all. For example, the electromagnetic pulses in a nuclear war would knock out those designs, and we would be back to vacuum tubes and other radiation-hardened circuit designs for computing. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 11:06, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
A severe geomagnetic storm could also knock them out, something for which there is little planning being done.--TedColes (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Its not clear why we have two articles that overlap, History_of_computing_hardware and History_of_computing_hardware_(1960s–present) but given that's the situation it seems appropriate to me that most of the information about the third and fourth generations of computer hardware belong to the second article while this article has summary sections pointing to the sections in the second article as the main article. To that line, I intend to move much of the microprocessor material to the main article. Comments?

I do think the "generations" belong in both articles and have so edited them into both articles. For this reason I reverted Ancheta Wis change of the section title. I have no objection to a new section on Current Commputers but shouldn't be in History_of_computing_hardware_(1960s–present)? It should include Microprocessor Computers but likely includes other computer devices. Would need to find a reference to add it in either article but I am sure there are some. Tom94022 (talk) 17:45, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, it's all confusing, and I don't totally follow in this discussion who is pushing in which direction. But I think I agree with you that we don't need to discuss the many inventors of the integrated circuit in these computer articles. We just need to discuss how IC technology was adopted into computer hardware. Dicklyon (talk) 18:03, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Reference 118

Reference 118 is a link to a patent application. It is used at the end of a sentence saying that magnetic core was dominant until the mid-1970s. This is not in the source. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:00, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Computer History Museum says magnetic core lasted until 1980, supplanted by   DRAM   devices: 4K DRAM devices 1973, 16K DRAM 1976, 64K DRAM 1979[1] [2] --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 04:39, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Computer History Museum Main Memory: The Winners: MOS DRAMs Replace Magnetic Core Arrays
  2. ^ "By 1976 everyone adopted Mostek’s approach for 16K and larger DRAMs."
My point is that reference 118 doesn't support the sentence to which it is attached. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:13, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
We can augment the reference, can't we. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 05:16, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, please do. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:47, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Fixed. Tom94022 (talk) 07:02, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

"Moderne"

Per Wikipedia:Disambiguation: There are three important aspects to disambiguation: "Making the links for ambiguous terms point to the correct article title. For example, an editor of an astronomy article may have created a link to Mercury, and this should be corrected to point to Mercury (planet)."

The term Modern is vague and meaningless. Modern history covers the period from the 16th to the 21st century. Modernity is also used for the "socio-cultural norms" of the world prior to World War II, and is associated with Modernism as an art movement (late 19th century to early 20th century).

Meanwhile contemporary history refers to the present time period. Dimadick (talk) 19:24, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

IMO the ordinary dictionary meaning of the adjective "modern" is sufficient and unambiguous in this context so no link is needed to either Modern history or Contemporary history nor is any required under the quoted aspect of Wikipedia:Disambiguation above nor under any other aspect of the policy. From a stylistic perspective "modern history" reads better to my eyes than "contemporary history" as support I would note a Google search has the terms in a ratio of about 16M/4M. As a style issue then MOS:VAR would seem to require the existing style be retained. Tom94022 (talk) 20:17, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
We are not a dictionary, and this is a history article. And the Wikipedia:Manual of Style specifically mentions cases where "the existing style is problematic". Dimadick (talk) 15:24, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Does this article need MOSFET history?

I think not! A recent edit reverted without relevant discussion the removal of material that is not particularly relevant to this article and well covered in the linked article and elsewhere. I'm going to revert it again and hopefully there will be some discussion here and not edit warring. Tom94022 (talk) 01:24, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia

What needs to be acknowledged is sourcing. The work had a source, and a volunteer who did the work. The licensing depends on this. At the very least, the Wikipedia article that served as the impetus ought to be noted, in order for the work to be freely available. User:Michael Hardy formed this article and a family of others with his frank admission of what he realized he did not know. Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia was formulated in 2009 and there has been copying of this History of computing hardware. This article is very old (in Wikipedia terms), but those of us who wrote it still know its story, and we gladly shared our knowledge. Some of us are still around. The more recent articles need to acknowledge their sources. (See the links) --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 06:57, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Can you please spell out the problem. Are you saying that someone moved text from this article to another article without the attribution required by WP:CWW? What other article? Johnuniq (talk) 07:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
It's a synchronization problem. We were writing articles all these years, and a culture arose, but some points got omitted during this time, without specifically acknowledging WP sources. So the problem arose gradually. I'm pretty sure it happened in good faith. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 07:22, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Lots of text is added and later removed. That is not a problem. The question now is what text should be in this article, and what text should be in a related article. Johnuniq (talk) 07:36, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia, "state that content was copied from that source" in the summary, not just the article. A simple acknowledgement of "Who got what, and when." --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 07:47, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
I linked to WP:CWW above, and it's why I asked for the problem to be spelled out. Johnuniq (talk) 07:50, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
The links resolve to the same article. The problem is credit for licensing. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 07:57, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

The above subsection is not particularly relevant to the question raised. It doesn't matter whether irrelevant material is copied from within Wikipedia or obtained from reliable sources it is still not relevant to this article. Similarly, it is not particularly relevant that the disputed material was in the article at some distant time. Nor does the age of the article or prior authors particularly matter. History of MOSFETs just not deserve a place in this article. I suppose if a reliable source can be found perhaps a single sentence might be added; something along the lines of, "Modern microprocessors are built upon MOSFET technology." Tom94022 (talk) 20:10, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Earliest?

See Talk:Analog computer#Earliest? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:23, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Just as the Antikythera mechanism was to calculate the date of the sacred olympic games, the south-pointing chariot was for the emperor of China, whose only duty was to face south; the Mandate of Heaven to justly govern then determined what army would win in battle. This was the state of military technology (think a hail of bronze-tipped bolts fired from crossbows) during the Warring States period. (See Science and Civilisation in China, I read this in the 1970s, so it would have been in one of the Volumes 1 to 4 -- there are now over 27 such books.) --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 18:20, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Entire Class of Electro/Mechanical Computers MISSING

Entire Class of Electro/Mechanical Computers MISSING

There were thousands of types of mechanical & electro-mechanical load/store computers used for hundreds of years.

Most of these used a sled, cart, or feeder robot that would take a sequence control (such as an index number, turns, box or document number, page or slot, etc) and go fetch or access something.

These, by storing values, performed almost any sequence of computations from any library of punched tape, reels, feed tape, mechanical route cards, etc...

There were huge tabulation and computational facilities supporting these little bots that followed routes on rails or channels to leads anywhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.58.187.157 (talk) 19:07, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

You probably had tabulating machines in mind, but they weren't computers. MarMi wiki (talk) 23:37, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
The "sled, cart, or feeder robot that would take a sequence control (such as an index number, turns, box or document number, page or slot, etc) and go fetch or access something" did not exist "for hundreds of years". The closest we ever had to that was the pneumatic tube transport system, but those were fixed path, not programmable. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:36, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Or jukeboxes? Dicklyon (talk) 03:52, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Good catch! I hadn't though of jukeboxes, but they certainly "fetched" something. Not a computer, of course, but modern jukeboxes have replaced the pure mechanical system with one controlled by a computer.
I find it fascinating that Rock-ola[20] is still making and selling jukeboxes 30 years after the introduction of the MP3 player made them obsolete. You just wait; slide rules (also not computers) are sure to make a comeback Real Soon Now. (Get off my lawn, you damn kids!) --Guy Macon (talk) 15:46, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

RECOMP - early computer?

The 1962 book Computers: the machines we think with, by D. S. Halacy, Jr, pg. 49, says that the ENIAC was followed by BINAC, MANIAC, JOHNNIAC, UNIVAC, RECOMP, STRETCH, and LARC. I couldn't find anything about RECOMP, but there is Autonetics Recomp II. Was there a computer named RECOMP, before the RECOMP II? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:02, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

" Vintage Computer 1958 Transistor Logic - Autonetics Recomp
"Recently I was working in our computer museum warehouse and brought out a computer made in 1958 with transistor logic. It is an Autonetics Recomp 501 digital computer. This looks like an attempt by Autonetics to make a commercial computer from the cards and designs used in the Minuteman 1 ICBM guidance computer. Not many of these computers were made and this one is serial number 003. I located one additional Recomp computer in a California museum. These computers had a very limited success commercially however it sure is an interesting piece of hardware - they called it a portable office computer. You will enjoy the photos. Update 10-26-14 I think the Recomp 501 was first then the Minuteman 1 computer."[21]
Also listed at http://ucan.us/doyetech/word.htm --Guy Macon (talk) 04:32, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the photos - it looks like a mini Bendix G-15. (I got a plug board from a G-15 a week or two ago!) But that description matches our article on the Recomp II. Was there an earlier Recomp? Or is the II in the article wrong? And the advertisement for the 1958 computer doesn't have the "II". Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:56, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Photo linked to on that page: http://www.ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-0820.jpg --Guy Macon (talk) 08:31, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Did some more searching: April 1, 1957 "Recomp I, a new portable, high-speed, completely transistorized digital computer" https://www.americanradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Site-Technical/Engineering-General/Archive-Electronics-IDX/IDX/50s/57/Electronics-1957-04-OCR-Page-0138.pdf

Theory #1: The Recomp I was introduced in 1957, the Recomp II was introduced in 1958, and they were sill selling Recomp Is in 1958.

Theory #2: They called the Recomp I "Recomp" until they decided to build a Recomp II, and at that point started calling the first Recomp a Recomp I.

--Guy Macon (talk) 06:12, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Moving beyond microprocessors

The scope of computing has moved beyond microprocessors; multiple governments beyond the US government are seeking quantum computing as a matter of national security, including Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Singapore, Russia, North Korea and Japan.[1] What this means for the article is a change to the post 1960 section name, beyond the microprocessor.[1] --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 07:02, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

@Ancheta Wis: Its not clear why this history is bifurcated at 1960, but given Quantum computing is still in its infancy it probably doesn't deserve creating another break in the history of computing harware. I suggest at most it currently deserves is a section in History_of_computing_hardware_(1960s–present) Why don't u do it? Tom94022 (talk) 18:57, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
That article describes devices that got stuck in the von Neumann bottleneck after 50 years (2010). Those kinds of computers have ceased to get faster. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 02:18, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b A report from the cutting edge of physics, in layman's terms
In February 2021, photonic techniques have generated "ultrafast generation of hundreds of random bit streams in parallel with a single laser diode". Kyungduk Kim, Stefan Bittner, Yongquan Zeng, Stefano Guazzotti, Ortwin Hess, Qi Jie Wang, Hui Cao. "Massively parallel ultrafast random bit generation with a chip-scale laser" Science (26 Feb 2021) 371, (6532), pp. 948-952 DOI: 10.1126/science.abc2666 . The 250 terabyte-per-second rate is hundreds of times faster than microprocessor-based methods of pseudo-random number generation (repeatable data), while laser-based random (non-repeatable data) number generation uses spontaneous emission, a physical process for random number generation.
The device can already generate blocks of random (nonrepeatable) data that exceeds the size of the largest library in the world (Library of Congress in 12 seconds.[1]

References

  1. ^ Nanyang Technological University (25 Feb 2021) Scientists develop laser system that generates random numbers at ultrafast speeds
It should be noted that the laser (Light Amplification by Spontaneous Emission of Radiation) was first built in 1960 (Sixty years ago, when the integrated circuit was itself demonstrated). This shift to photonic techniques that already eclipse electronic devices can only increase in the future. The technique has immediate practical and financial applications (e.g. blockchain). --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 02:08, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
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