© Mark Ollig
Reading through the archives, I found a surprising amount of computing news from 40 years ago.
It was 1982. Although it doesn’t seem so long ago, once I stop to think about it being four decades, it is.
In February of 1982, Intel Corporation released the 80286 microprocessor computing chip containing 134,000 transistors and processed coded instructions at a clocking speed or cycles per second rate of 4 to 12 MHz.
Looking back nearly 51 years, Nov. 15, 1971, the world’s first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, was released. This chip used 2,300 transistors and had a clock speed of 740 kHz.
Later this year, Intel will release its 13th Generation Intel Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake processor, which is said to have a clock speed of up to 5.8 GHz; however, Intel has not revealed the total number of transistors used.
Oct. 1, 1982, the Sony CDP-1-1 became the world’s first commercially-released CD (compact disc) player and sold for $1,000, which today has the same buying power, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, of $3,013.
Billy Joel’s 1978 “52nd Street” music album recording is considered the first to be pressed onto a CD by Sony Music in 1982 with the catalog number 35DP-1.
In the early 1980s, it looked like the start of the compact disc era would replace our vinyl records – which they did for over 20 years.
Cassette tapes were still prevalent during the 1980s and ’90s, while CDs delivered satisfactory digital audio reproduction and provided an easier way to skip (fast track access) to your favorite song. Also, a CD has no tape to break.
Nostalgia for vinyl records began their resurgence in popularity and sales around 2007.
US vinyl LP record sales in 2021 were 41.7 million, an increase of 51 percent from 2020, according to MRC Data, an industry-recognized provider of music sales information.
I feel the music sounds better – more faithful to its original recording – listening to it from an analog vinyl record rather than a digitized formatted medium.
In 1982, Microsoft’s MS-DOS version 1.25 operating system became available.
Forty years ago, the Hayes Smartmodem 1200 was released. It transmitted data at 1,200 bits per second over standard copper telephone lines. This modem sold for $699, which equals today’s buying power of $2,106.
In 1982, the Commodore 64 (C64) home computer using 8-bit data blocks and 64 KB of memory, went on sale. A total of 17 million C64s were sold.
Approximately 150 new or updated computer models were released in 1982, including:
DEC Rainbow 100,
Sinclair ZX-Spectrum,
Panasonic Quasar HHC,
Franklin Ace 100,
Hewlett-Packard HP-75C,
Heathkit H-100/Zenith Z-100,
Commodore 64,
Toshiba T100,
Epson HX-20, and
GRiD Compass 1101.
You may not have heard of the GriD Compass 1101 computer, but it was one of the first laptops on the market. Grid Systems Corp. manufactured it, and in June 1985, astronaut John Creighton used one aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery during mission STS-51-G.
The lowercase “i” is used in “GriD” because Grid Systems Corp. originally obtained assistance from Intel Corp.
Nov. 1, 1982, Minneapolis Star Tribune featured a full page of columns and articles devoted to home computing in its Marketplace section. One photo shows a person sitting at a desk using the Apple II Plus personal home computer.
The Apple II Plus was manufactured until the end of 1982.
The first 5ESS (class 5 electronic switching system) telephone central office platform was placed into service March 25, 1982, in Seneca, IL. It contains over 100 million lines of computer code. Many of today’s telephone calls are still processed by the 5ESS.
Oct. 21, 1982, The Federal Communications Commission approved AT&T’s plans to construct a “revolutionary portable telephone system.”
By Oct. 1983, Illinois Bell (AT&T’s subsidiary) subscribers in Chicago, IL, had access to the first modern commercial cellular mobile radio system in the United States.
Coincidently, The 2-pound Motorola DynaTAC 8000X portable cellular mobile phone became commercially available in 1983.
There are debates regarding the date of the first use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in movies; many attest to its start in 1958.
In 1958, Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Vertigo” used computer-generated imagery patterns placed onto plastic transparent cellulose (cel) acetate sheets called “animation cels.” The CGI special effect was created using a WWII M5 anti-aircraft guidance and control mechanical analog computer constructed in 1944.
The mechanical analog computer weighed 850 lbs. and contained 11,000 components.
The M5 computer interfaced with a rotating platform with a pendulum hanging above it. The computer-generated effect was created by spinning the pendulum, creating spirograph elements, including the spiral seen inside the person’s eye during the movie’s opening sequence. You can watch it here: https://bit.ly/3ySQFBI.
June 4, 1982, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” was one of the first theatrical movie films featuring all-CGI and fractal-generated motion-picture filming sequences. These sequences were accomplished using two Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 32-bit architecture Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) superminicomputers.
Although it was four decades ago, 1982 was a productive and busy year for computing technology and devices.
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| 1982: The personal computer is selected as Time magazine's Man (or in this case, Machine) of the Year. |