CEDu581 Computer Architecture: Week 1

I found it fascinating to realize that, at age 47, I actually have quite a personal history with computers. As a business education teacher, I tend to always look to where we are going with computers in the future. It was fun and fascinating to look back on my background with computers, going back to Marquette U in the early 1980's to my family and retail use of computers over the years to my current use of computers as an educator. The Computer History Forum that we all participated in was interesting in that many of us share similar experiences, whether that be frustration with the early days of programing to the middle year issues of computer speed and capability to our modern-day issues of more power and applications.

I particularly enjoyed the "Triumph of the Nerds" videos as they really brought home how far we have come with personal computer hardware and software. Again, as a business teacher who works with students on stocks and investing, I now look at companies such as Apple, Intel, and Microsoft through different lenses. It is truly amazing how those companies are so young and yet have come to so far in terms of market penetration and market capitalization. As of the end of today, Apple has a market cap of $109.68 billion and Microsoft is at $178.53 billion. Not bad for companies started by "Nerds" in garages in the 1970s! I certainly intend on sharing some of this information with my future Computer Applications and Financial Life Skills students.

Finally, I found the list of companies from the Computer History Museum to be much broader than I expected. I guess I never thought of Timex and Seiko to be in that category, but it makes perfect sense that they are. Secondly, as a student of retailing, I was interested to learn that Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 and Atari was done by 1996. Sharp was the creator of Ever-Sharp pencils, the first all-transistor desktop calculator, and made microwaves that I have sold and used. At the family hardware store, we sold AT & T phones, GE light bulbs and toaster ovens, Hitachi breadmakers, Mitsubishi portable generators, Philips, Sylvania, and Westinghouse light bulbs, Rockwell drills, and utilized a Siemens point-of-sale system for 7 years. Wow! What diversification for these corporations.