Living Our Dream

Silicon Valley Part II: Computer History Museum

From the Intel Museum, we headed along Silicon Valley to Mountain View, CA to the Computer History Museum. The Computer History Museum is dedicated to preserving the artifacts and history of the Information Age. It has the largest collection of computer-related artifacts in the world. The collection includes hardware, software, photographs, movies and videos, and documents. Admission is free, but donations are accepted.

The Intel Museum traced the company history, which is closely linked to personal computers. The Computer History Museum, on the other hand, looks at the history of all computers from the earliest roots in mechanical devices such as the abacus, mechanical adding machines, and slide rules. The photo below shows a collection of slide rules.

 

Finding slide rules in the museum made Paul feel a little old because he started his engineering career using a slide rule. He remembers having one hanging from his belt as he went to engineering classes in college, and he used one for the first few years of work until electronic calculators became available.

The star of the museum was an early mechanical computer first proposed by British mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage in 1822. Logarithmic and trigonometric tables were used in many mathematical calculations, and Charles Babbage was dismayed at errors he found in mathematical tables of his day. He proposed a mechanical device that would calculate the numbers that appeared in the tables by solving polynomial equations using finite differences.

Although the British government originally funded building the machine, funding was withdrawn when Babbage asked for more money without having made any apparent progress. In reality, he did make some progress, but the real problem was the degree of machining accuracy he needed wasn't available at the time.

In the late 1840s, Babbage proposed a design for a simpler machine, which he called Difference Engine No. 2, but he could not obtain funding and nothing was ever built during his lifetime. In 1989, London Science Museum built a Difference Engine No. 2 to Babbage's design, and with a little debugging, the machine worked. In 2000, the printer section of the machine was completed.

The Computer History Museum has a duplicate Babbage Difference Engine No. 2 on temporary loan. This duplicate machine was built by the London Science Museum for a private collector in the United States. It was this private collector who funded completing the printer section for the machine at the London Science Museum in exchange for building a duplicate machine for him. The cost of the machine wasn't disclosed, but the museum had to insure it for $4 million when it was shipped to them. The Babbage Differential Engine No. 2 is shown in the photo below.

 

We were fortunate to be there for a demonstration of the machine. The Babbage Difference Engine No. 2 is made from steel, bronze and cast iron. It weighs an estimated five tons and has over 8,000 parts. The machine is powered by a hand crank, which turns a series of cams, gears, and levers. Paul was fascinated watching the gears turn and clank up and down as the machine went through its calculations. The results can be read from the last column of wheels. The machine can also print the results on a paper roll and can make an impression of the results into wet plaster. The purpose of the plaster impression was to make a mold to cast a lead printing plate to eliminate any transcription or typographical errors that Babbage was so concerned about.

Another computer-like device developed at the end of WWI was the Enigma machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. The Enigma was an electro-mechanical device that was used by the military in several countries, most notably the Nazis during WWII. Allied forces were able to capture a machine and decrypt a vast number of Nazi messages. An Enigma machine is shown below.

One of the first general purpose computers was the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer). It was designed to calculate firing tables for WWII artillery, but it wasn't completed until after the end of the war. The ENIAC had almost 18,000 vacuum tubes, occupied 680 square feet of space, and used enough power for 50 homes. The ENIAC could perform about 5,000 operations per second, but it had to be rewired for each new job. For comparison, the Intel 8088 microprocessor we saw at the Intel museum is capable of up to 1 million operations per second.

The SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) computer was developed by IBM for the Air Force during the Cold War. The SAGE had over 50,000 vacuum tubes, weighed 250 tons, and occupied an acre of floor space. There were 27 SAGE computer installations throughout North America. Because of the unreliability of a device with that many vacuum tubes, there were two complete SAGE computers at each installation. The computers were used to monitor radar, to track and report any possible enemy intrusion, and to direct defensive action. Fortunately, we never came under enemy attack because several experts doubt the SAGE would have really been that effective in tracking them. The photo below shows only a small part of a SAGE computer. The racks behind the console are filled with rows and rows of vacuum tubes.

 

Computers continued to grow in power, capability, and usefulness. Up until the mid-1960s, the problem with computers was they all used unique components. The components from one line of computers to another line, even by the same manufacturer, were not interchangeable. The IBM System/360 computer, announced in 1964, attempted to remedy all that. The System/360 consisted of a family of 6 mutually compatible computers and 40 peripherals that would all work together. This meant if a company wanted to upgrade, they wouldn't have to scrap everything and start over. A System/360 computer is shown in the next photo.

 

As all those high-powered mainframe computers were being developed, Digital Equipment Company introduced what was considered a mini-computer in 1965. Although it was called a mini-computer, it wasn't very small by today's standards. At $18,000, however, it was one fifth the cost of an IBM 360 mainframe. The relatively reasonable price allowed small businesses, manufacturing plants, and scientific labs to buy a computer.

The size and price of computers continued to fall. In 1971, what was considered by many to be the first commercial personal computer, the Kenbak-1, went on sale for $750. This was before the microprocessor was readily available, and the Kenbak-1 used a series of discrete chips. Input was by means of a series of switches and buttons and output was a series of lights. Only about 40 were sold.

Much of the early work with so-called personal computers like the Kenbak-1 was done by hobbyists, or geeks as they are called today. In 1976, Steve Wozniak showed his prototype Apple 1 computer to his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club. For $666.66, you got a kit, but you had to supply your own case, power supply, and display. Steve Wozniak and his high school friend, Steve Jobs, went into small-scale production when a local computer shop ordered 50 of the computers. An Apple 1 is shown in the photo below. It's hard to see in the photo, but Steve Wozniak has signed "Woz" at the top of the wooden case.

 

The Computer Museum also has a vast array of personal computers from the late 70s through the 80s and 90s on display. They also have examples of other devices such as the first computer mouse shown in the photo below. The first mouse was designed in 1964 and was encased in a block of wood. It only had only one button. The other mouse is a little later model by Logitech with the more-familiar three buttons.

 

As an example of how the size of computers has shrunk, the large metal disc in the photo below is about three feet in diameter and is a 10-megabyte hard disc platter from 1974. The white rectangle in the very center is a 1 gigabyte micro drive. One gigabyte equals 1,000 megabytes, so the micro drive holds 100 times as much data as the large, 10-megabyte disc.

 

While the Intel museum was fascinating because it related to more-familiar personal computers, the Computer History Museum was also interesting because we were able to learn more about the history of other forms of computing.

Since it was mid-afternoon by the time we had seen the Computer History Museum and we hadn't had anything for lunch, we decided to drive up toward the southern part of San Francisco to check out Joe's Cable Car Restaurant. We definitely wanted to visit San Francisco, but we were waiting until the weekend so we would have an easier time parking downtown and so we wouldn't have to battle traffic. But since Joe's is in the southern outskirts of town and since we weren't that far away, we thought it might be a good time to go. The photo below shows the outside of Joe's.

We had recently seen a story about Joe's on the Food Network program Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Joe's features hamburgers made from fresh (never Frozen) chuck that is ground on-site daily. The chuck is hand-trimmed to about 94 to 96% lean. The next photo shows the cook trimming chuck prior to grinding.

We both had 4 ounce burgers, and Paul had his with American cheese. It's amazing how big a 4 ounce burger is with honest weights and with the small amount of shrinkage you get with lean meat. The next photo shows Paul ready to enjoy his burger.

 

The hamburgers at Joe's aren't cheap. The starting price is $10 for a 4 ounce burger and it goes up from there with fancy toppings (including four or five types of cheese, mushrooms, bacon, avocado, etc.) and larger sizes of 6 and 8 ounces. It was the most we have ever spent for a hamburger meal, but they were probably the best burgers we have ever had. We always like the burgers at Red Robin - theirs have fabulous toppings; but at Joe's, it's all about the meat.

We managed to sneak around traffic and make it back to the motor home without too much delay. As we said, San Francisco was scheduled for the weekend, but our next excursion was to the north of the city.

Silicon Valley Part I: Intel Museum

While we were staying in Pleasanton, CA, we decided to pay a visit to Silicon Valley, which was only about 40 minutes away. Silicon Valley is the area of California around the southern end of San Francisco Bay. It includes cities like Stanford, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Santa Clara, and San Jose. It gets its name from the fact that many silicon chip manufacturing and computer-related companies are located in the area.

William Shockley was a co-inventor of the transistor while working at Bell Labs after WWII. The goal was to replace expensive, fragile vacuum tubes. Shockley broke away from Bell Labs in the early 1950s and returned to his native California, settled in Mountain View, and founded Shockley Semiconductors in an effort to commercialize the transistor. A history of Naval research in the San Francisco Bay area and the presence of universities such as Stanford and the University of California were also instrumental in the development of the semiconductor and high-tech industries in the area.

Many of the early semiconductor companies spawned new companies. For example, Robert Noyce worked at Shockley Semiconductor. In 1957, Noyce left Shockley and co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor. Gordon Moore also worked for Shockley, and left to join Noyce at Fairchild. In 1968, both Noyce and Moore left Fairchild and co-founded Intel.

Intel headquarters are located in Santa Clara, CA. The name comes from Integrated Electronics Co. Intel has a free museum at their headquarters, so we stopped for a visit. The photo below shows us in front of the main building on the Intel campus.



Intel is the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer. Intel microprocessors are found in many personal computers and other electronic devices. Intel also makes memory chips, graphic chips, network cards, and a variety of other embedded processors.

The girl behind the counter at the museum offered us a guided tour, so we took her up on it. This gave us a good overview, then we had time afterward to go back and look at some of the displays in more detail. One of the first displays gave information on Intel's founders, Robert Noyce (left) and Gordon Moore.



Gordon Moore is the author of Moore's Law, first published in 1965. Moore's Law states the number of semiconductors that could be economically placed on a chip would double every two years. This has held true since it was first published 44 years ago. In fact, they're doing a little better than that. The number of transistors on a chip is now doubling about every 15 to 18 months.

Intel's first microprocessor was the 4004. In 1969, a Japanese company originally hired Intel to design 12 custom chips for a calculator, but Intel ended up being able to combine everything into only four chips, one of which was the 4004 multi-purpose chip. Intel refunded the fee they were paid for the development of the chips and instead retained the rights to the design of the 4004 chip. The photo below shows an enlarged model of the 4004 chip and one of the calculators in which the chip was originally used.



Microprocessors eventually led to the development of the personal computer. Personal computers were initially built by hobbyists (people we call geeks today), but initially didn't have enough computing power to be of much practical use. Interest in personal computers, however, really began to grow with the introduction of the 8086/8088 microprocessor in 1979. In 1982, the more powerful i286 (officially known as the 80286) processor was introduced, followed by the i386 in 1985-6, and the i486 in 1989. The 8088 could perform up to 1 million instructions per second. The 486 had more than a million transistors and could perform up to 41 million instructions a second.

When the courts disallowed the trademarking of numerical names such as the i386 and 486, the microprocessor that would have been the 586 was introduced in 1993 with the name Pentuim (penta means five in Greek). The first Pentium microprocessors had 3.1 million transistors and provided much faster performance as well as speech recognition and video capability.

The Intel Museum had a section on how the chips are made. Intel purchases silicon wafers that are made by putting a seed crystal of silicon into a bath of high-purity, molten silicon. The seed is then slowly pulled out and the molten silicon forms a cylindrical ingot as it cools like the one shown below, except usually three to four times longer.

 

The ingot is then ground to a uniform diameter of 12 inches and sliced into discs. Polished discs like the one to the right in the photo above are then shipped to Intel. Intel produces numerous chips on each disc by depositing layers of oxide coatings on the disc. Each oxide layers is etched by using a photo resist to create the desired patterns and an acid etch to remove portions of the oxide coating. The multiple, etched layers of the chips include metal layers to conduct electricity between the oxide layers. All this processing takes place in an ultra-clean room. Technicians must wear "bunny suits" like those shown in the next photo.

 

The Intel museum also had demonstrations showing some of the basics of how computers work. Computers use binary code, which is made up of two electrical signals - on and off. Binary code is made up of series of ones to signify on and zeros to signify off. In the photo below, Margery has just successfully spelled her name in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange) code.

 

There are also demonstrations of some of the uses for Intel microprocessors. In the next photo, weather conditions for the entire world are being projected into the inside of a rotating globe.

 

And in the next photo, the robot is showing its capability of speech recognition as Margery asks it questions.

 

The Intel Museum has a lot of interesting displays about microprocessors. It is especially appealing for anyone who uses a personal computer either at work or at home.

We have more to see in Silicon Valley. We'll tell you about it in our next post.

Morro Bay, CA

From Coarsegold, we drove south back through Fresno, CA, then headed southeast to Morro Bay, CA, on the Pacific Coast. It was Memorial Day, and as we headed toward the coast, we passed dozens and dozens of RVs returning home after the long weekend. It was interesting to see that at least half the RVs were toy haulers - those RVs with a "garage" in back used to haul motorcycles and ATVs.

We pulled into Morro Bay State Park in the early afternoon. Morro Bay State Park has about 140 campsites, but only 30 of them have water and electric (30 amp only). We reserved a site with hookups. The roads and pads are paved, but the sites themselves are dirt. The photo below shows our site at Morro Bay State Park.

Morro Bay is a large estuary where fresh water from surrounding streams mixes with ocean water. The most notable feature of the bay is Morro Rock, which is a 576-foot high plug from an extinct volcano. A Spanish explorer named the rock El Morro - Spanish for "The Pebble." The rock has been an important landmark for sailors since that time. Morro Rock is also a nesting site for the locally-endangered peregrine falcon and several species of other birds. Although stone used to be quarried from Morro Rock, the site is now a protected bird nesting area and is closed to the public. The photo below shows Morro Rock from a location near the campground.

Our camping fees also entitled us to free admission to the nature center, which has a lot of great hands-on displays on ecology and the wildlife of the estuary. Kids would have a ball in this museum.  In the photo below, Margery is trying out the display that shows how dunes are formed by the wind.



There is an observation deck, and they even loaned us binoculars since we left ours in the car. We could see cormorants diving in the bay and some white pelicans sitting on a sandbar. Unfortunately, it was foggy the day we were at the nature museum, so we could barely see Morro Rock.




We saw a description of the weather along this region of the coast. It said the winters were mild and the summers were cool and foggy. Well, we can't vouch for winter, but the description of summer seems to be accurate, even though it's not officially summer yet. We had temperatures of 100+ in Needles and Bakersfield, CA, and it was 85 to 90 degrees in Coarsegold. The temperatures along the coast struggled to get to the 60s. It was foggy every morning. As soon as you go inland, the fog would be gone and the temperature would be at least ten degrees higher. On a couple of the afternoons, the fog burned off, but most days it didn't. We heard the locals call the late spring weather "Gray May" and "June Gloom."

One morning, we took a chance and drove up along legendary California Highway 1 hoping the fog would burn off by the time we got an hour or two up the coast and were ready to turn around to come back so we could enjoy the beautiful views Highway 1 is so famous for. The cliffs extend right down into the ocean and the waves break over the picturesque rocks. Unfortunately, the farther north we drove, the foggier it got. When fog got so thick we could barely see the edge of the road, much less the ocean several hundred feet below us, we gave up and turned around and headed back to the motor home.

We did stop for a few photos on our way back where it was a little less foggy. The photo below is Piedras Blancas Light Station. Piedras Blancas mean "white rocks" in Spanish. If you think the lighthouse (on the left) looks truncated, you're right. The original light enclosure, railing, and upper portion of the tower were removed in 1949 after a 1948 earth quake caused a crack to form in the tower. The light station is currently under the Bureau of Land Management, and stabilization and restoration have been initiated.



The beach a little to the south of Piedras Blancas Light Station is known for its elephant seals. Different groups of elephant seals come to beaches in this area at various times of the year to mate, to give birth, and to molt. The seals there at this time in late May are mostly females and juveniles that have come to molt. There are literally hundreds of them on the beaches.



When the seals molt, blood vessels reach through the blubber to regrow the new skin. During this time, the seals are susceptible to cold and must rest on land. The seals' old coats are brownish, and their new coats are gray. The seals lie on the beach and use their flippers to sweep sand over themselves.

The seal in the next photo has a brown coat, indicating it hasn't started to molt yet.

 

Elephant seals were hunted to near extinction in the 19th century for their oil-rich blubber, but their numbers have rebounded. Their range has expanded from more remote islands to mainland beaches like the one at Piedras Blancas.

There were volunteers at the beach from a group called Friends of the Elephant Seal to provide information, to answer questions, and to make sure the crowd stays on the bluff and that no one bothers the seals. The volunteers have a lot of good information, and we enjoyed talking with one of them.

The male seals (bulls) are the ones that have the large, trunk-like proboscis  from which the animals get their name. The proboscis acts as an echo chamber to help produce the loud roaring noises the bulls make during mating. You can see the proboscis of several young bulls in the next photo, but they aren't fully developed to adult size yet.

Adult bulls are much larger than the cows and can weigh up to 3,000 pounds. While spending the month on shore to molt, the seals live off their fat losing as much as 400 lbs.

The juvenile males, like the ones shown in the photo below, play-fight by bumping each other with their chests and necks. When they mature, this fighting will become more serious as the bulls gather females into their harems.

 

We had a great time watching the seals. It helped redeem our disappointment of having our drive up Highway 1 fogged out. We still had other plans while in the area, so stay tuned for our next post.