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24 MacDirectory CONTENTS DEPARTMENT 24 MacDirectory DEPARTMENT 1965 1515 50 Years Ago: 1965 DEC LAUNCHES THE NEW MINI- COMPUTER Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) launched the first commercial 12-bit PDP-8 minicomputer, which sold more than 50,000 systems. The earliest PDP-8 model (known as a "Straight-8") used a diode-transistor logic that was packaged in flip chip cards, and roughly the size of a refrigerator. Digital improved the PDP-8 by making it available in a smaller, desktop and rack-mount model, however it was slower with only a DF32 disk storage capacity. The minicomputer, or commonly known as the "mini" , was a class of smaller computers that sold for much less than the mainframe and mid-sized computers from IBM (and other direct competitors). They generally cost less than $25,000, came with an input-output device (teleprinter), and could hold about 4,000 words of memory. These computers also contained transistors, core memory technology, and were also capable of running programs in a higher level language, like Fortran or Basic. Minis were also designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching as distinct from calculation and record keeping. Digital's 12-bit PDP-8 mini-computer sold from $16,000, and later versions took advantage of small-scale integrated circuits. 500 Years Ago: 1515 @ INVENTED AND FIRST USED BY FLORENCE MERCHANTS Email messages seem to travel at lightning-fast speeds, but not so 500 years ago with Florence merchants. Messages traveled across land by horseback, or by sea on merchant ships subject to the whims of nature. The @ sign is actually a 500 year old invention from Italian merchants. Giorgio Stabile, a professor of the history of science at La Sapienza University, claims to have stumbled on the earliest known example of this symbol, used as a measure of weight or volume. Stabile states the @ sign represents an amphora, a measure of capacity based on the terracotta jars used to transport grain and liquid in the ancient Mediterranean world. The first known instance of its use occurred in a letter written by a Florentine merchant on May 4, 1536. Sent from Seville to Rome by a trader called Francesco Lapi, the document describes the arrival of three ships to Spain bearing treasure from Latin America. "There, an amphora of wine, which is one thirtieth of a barrel, is worth 70 or 80 ducats," Mr Lapi informs his correspondent, representing the amphora with the now familiar symbol of an "a" wrapped in its own tail. The Spanish word for the @ sign, arroba , indicates a weight or measure, which at the end of the 16th century, equaled 11.3kg (25 lb) or 22.7 litres (six gallons).