1966-1967 Chronology of Events Project Main Menu Introduction to the 1970's

1968 - 1969

1968

In 1955, during the development of the programming language FORTRAN, Harlan Herrick had introduced the high level language equivalent of a "jump" instruction in the form of a "GO TO" statement. In 1968 Edsger Dijkstra laid the foundation stone in the march towards creating structure in the domain of programming by writing, a letter to the editor entitled "GO TO Statement Considered Harmful". <- Comm. ACM, August, 1968 -> The movement to develop reliable software was underway.

For the future, Arthur C. Clark introduced HAL, the computer of the future in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", basing the design on the artificial intelligence proposals of I.J. Good and Marvin Minsky.

1969

road networks in rome

Work on ARPAnet begins. During the Napoleonic and American Civil Wars there were various schemes developed to distribute messages over a network of communication lines, primarily along lines of sight between prominent locations.

Disillusioned by the work on Multics and continuing problems with the GE 600 series machines, Bell Telephone Laboratories withdrew from Project MAC. Messrs. Ritchie and Thompson began work on their own operating system, which concentrated on the single user and thus was named UNIX. In 1994 Ritchie and Thompson each received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award.
 
 
 

1966-1967 Chronology of Events Project Main Menu Introduction to the 1970's