Julian Knight's Potted IT History

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Julian Knight's IT History

I occasionally find the need to try and work out what technology I used when, this page is a rather belated effort at capturing some of that information. It may not be correct and it certainly will not be complete!

Timeline

1964		Introduction of IBM mainframe computers
1978	Left school and did summer jobs for the next 3 years in a mainframe operations department using IBM mainframes
1979		Commodore PET released
		Sinclair ZX80 released
1981	Left Uni having been exposed to the joys of Fortran Programming via punched cards, a 72 step programmable Commadore calculator, analogue computing (!) and a PDP-11
1981	IBM Mainframe operations, also learned to programme in IBM's APL mathematical language December: Launch of the BBC Microcomputer. Purchased a "Model A" and waited several months for it to arrive!	BBC Micro launched, Sinclair ZX81 launched, Commodore Vic-20 launched
1982+	BBC Micro arrives, upgraded it myself to a "Model B". Taught myself to programme in a variety of languages including BASIC, FORTH, PASCAL, LISP and 6502 Assembler	BBC Micro arrives, Sinclair ZX Spectrum launched, TCP/IP comes into being
1983		Acorn Electron launched, FidoNet starts up
1984	Became an Analyst/Programmer learning COBOL and structured analysis and design	DNS services start, JANET starts, Moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET, Apple Mac introduced
??	Replaced the BBC Micro with an Amstrad 6128 running CP/M, big mistake, a very boring machine
1986		Commodore Amiga A500 launched, NNTP created
1987		Acorn Archimedes launched
1988		FidoNet is connected to the Internet
??	Moved from COBOL programming to "Personal Computing", mainframe style using ISPF, APL, FOCUS (a 4GL reporting tool), a mainframe spreadsheet called Dynaplan (AFAIK the first spreadsheet to use 3 dimensions) and and 4th generation tool called Acumen (which would now be called an OLAP tool). Also taught myself PL/1 to do some utility programs. Document processing was done using a mainframe SGML based tool - a good early grounding for later HTML. Later on started to work with PC's as well, OS/2 and IBM LAN Manager. Word processing using IBM Displaywrite then Lotus Ami Pro.
??	Replaced the Amstrad with a Commodore Amiga 500, a fantastic and imaginative personal computer.
1998		Acorn leaves the personal computing market
??	Got myself an Amiga 3000 under Commodore's developer program. Great for 3D modelling (Imagine, Real-3D and Lightwave) and experiments with video.
1990		ARPANET ceases to exist, Archie released, first commercial dial-up Internet provider
1991	Moved from Mainframes to PC's full time, Introduced to Lotus Notes (release 2) and loved it	WAIS, Gopher and WWW started, PGP created
1992		Demon Internet Services started up in June, 1st low cost (Ł10 per month) service in the UK
??	The Amiga's got stolen along with all my disks and backups!! Replaced them with an Amiga 4000
1993
??	Got my first palmtop, a Psion 3
1994		"Official" start of SPAM (US law firm Canter & Siegel spam Internet newsgroups)
1995	Moved from using FIDOnet to the Internet thanks to Demon Internet Services.
??	Got my second palmtop, a Psion 3a
1996	Finally got my first PC at home after holding out for so many years!	Demon Internet offers ISDN access for Ł10 per month
1997	Got my 3rd palmtop, a PalmPilot Professional
1998
1999
2000	Got PC number 2, an AMD 1200MHz based one with 512MB of RAM
2001	Got my 4th palmtop, a Sony Clie PEG-T625 (Palm OS 4.1)
2004	March - Finally got broadband! Say bye-bye to Demon Internet, hello to PlusNet

To Do

Psion 3a and 3c
Newer work stuff: Directories (LDAP, X.500), PKI, etc.

Links

http://www.myers66.freeserve.co.uk/history.htm

http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/EXT/science-week/history/history.htm

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Page: Updated 2008-07-10 08:50:09, Author Julian Knight