Misplaced Pages

#282717

159-407: Work schedules in the airlines industry must cover not just a shift or a day, as workers in other industries might. Airlines work schedules consist of assignments called "crew pairings" or simply "pairings", which is a sequence of flights or legs that starts and then ends at the same domicile. Pairings are usually created by another computer program called pairing optimizer. The process of requesting

318-580: A " Special Relationship " with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Canada , Australia , New Zealand , the Philippines , Japan , South Korea , Israel , and several European Union countries ( France , Italy , Germany , Spain , and Poland ). The U.S. works closely with its NATO allies on military and national security issues, and with countries in the Americas through

477-478: A 1974 book, MITS co-founder Ed Roberts ' usage in 1975, and Byte magazine 's May 1976 usage of "[in] the personal computing field" in its first edition. In 1975, Creative Computing defined the personal computer as a "non-(time)shared system containing sufficient processing power and storage capabilities to satisfy the needs of an individual user." The history of the personal computer as mass-market consumer electronic devices effectively began in 1977 with

636-580: A 4096-word drum memory . Standard inputs were the Flexowriter keyboard and paper tape . The standard output was the Flexowriter typewriter. Up to 493 units were produced. The IBM 610 was a vacuum-tube computer designed by John Lentz at the Watson Lab of Columbia University . It was announced by IBM as the 610 Auto-Point in 1957. The machine consisted of a large cabinet but could fit in

795-436: A Q1 model with an enclosure, printer, and display identical to that of the second-generation Lite/MicroLite, but lacking both floppy drives; and yet another, with a slightly modified case, which lacked both the integrated printer and floppy drives entirely. (The former of these two was incorrectly labeled as a first-generation 1972 Q1 when a unit of this model was found in early 2024.) The third generation Q1/Lite system removed

954-706: A bit-mapped display, a windows-based graphical user interface , icons , folders, mouse , Ethernet networking, file servers , print servers and e-mail . While its use was limited to the engineers at Xerox PARC, the Alto had features years ahead of its time. Both the Xerox Alto and the Xerox Star would inspire the Apple Lisa and the Apple Macintosh . In 1972–1973, a team led by Dr. Paul Friedl at

1113-518: A certain schedule is called "bidding". Generally this is done on a monthly basis. The monthly schedule called "line" which a crew member gets will consist of a series of "pairings". Each month the airlines crew planning sets the new pairings due to new locations being added or removed, new times, or changes in aircraft. These new pairings are then made available for assignment or bidding. In the United States , crew members are often working under

1272-493: A commercial or university computing center. In addition, minicomputers were relatively interactive and soon had their own operating systems . The minicomputer Xerox Alto (1973) was a landmark step in the development of personal computers because of its graphical user interface , bit-mapped high resolution screen, large internal and external memory storage, mouse , and special software. In 1945, Vannevar Bush published an essay called " As We May Think " in which he outlined

1431-459: A conventional office and required no specialist arrangements for air conditioning or power. It was intended to be used by only one operator and was symbolically programmable using a keyboard. With a price tag of $ 55,000, only 180 units were produced and it was quickly displaced by the transistorized IBM 1620 . The LINC ( L aboratory IN strument C omputer) was an early minicomputer first produced in 1962 at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. The machine

1590-542: A coordinated, continent-wide military effort. Finally, deteriorating relations between the British military establishment and the colonists, relations that were already less than positive, set the stage for further distrust and dislike of British troops. Following their victory in the French and Indian War, Britain began to assert greater control over local colonial affairs, resulting in colonial political resistance ; one of

1749-534: A decentralized government that operated until 1789. After the British surrender at the siege of Yorktown in 1781 American sovereignty was internationally recognized by the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which the U.S. gained territory stretching west to the Mississippi River, north to present-day Canada, and south to Spanish Florida . The Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which

SECTION 10

#1732782498283

1908-407: A few prominent industrialists , largely by their formation of trusts and monopolies to prevent competition. Tycoons led the nation's expansion in the railroad , petroleum , and steel industries. The United States emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry . These changes were accompanied by significant increases in economic inequality , slum conditions , and social unrest , creating

2067-401: A general purpose microcomputer, this was not Intel's intent. A front panel , consisting of LEDs and toggle switches, was a distinctive feature of many 1970s personal computers that is not usually seen on modern machines. The panel could be used to enter programs into the machine, but the process is particularly laborious. A memory address can be set on the toggle switches in binary , then this

2226-666: A global reach. The U.S. is a founding member of the World Bank , Organization of American States , NATO , and the United Nations , as well as a permanent member of the UN Security Council . The first documented use of the phrase "United States of America" is a letter from January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan , a Continental Army aide to General George Washington , wrote to Joseph Reed , Washington's aide-de-camp , seeking to go "with full and ample powers from

2385-486: A higher-level language. The alternative was to hand-assemble machine code that could be directly loaded into the microcomputer's memory using a front panel of toggle switches, pushbuttons and LED displays. While the hardware front panel emulated those used by early mainframe and minicomputers, after a very short time I/O through a terminal was the preferred human/machine interface, and front panels became extinct. The "brain" [computer] may one day come down to our level [of

2544-404: A leftover line will be awarded. By the bidding process, the preferred line may not be awarded completely, because the line was created without reference to specific crew member constraints, it may conflict with crew members' predetermined activities. The conflicting pairings must then be reassigned to other crew members resulting in a wide range of inefficiencies. Clearly this post-award reallocation

2703-465: A minimum-cost of operation by matching specific aircraft, the routes they fly and crew pairings in a manner that each leg is covered by one crew that is capable of flying that aircraft at that time and in that place. The factors that must be respected when assigning a crew member line are called "constraints" which include: These include: There are three general approaches to solving this complex crewing challenge: Assigned Lines, Bid lines and PBS. In

2862-598: A period of heightened, overt racism following Reconstruction, a time often called the nadir of American race relations . A series of Supreme Court decisions, including Plessy v. Ferguson , emptied the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of their force, allowing Jim Crow laws in the South to remain unchecked, sundown towns in the Midwest, and segregation in communities across the country , which would be reinforced by

3021-588: A platform to support software development for their newly released series of microprocessors from the 4004 to the 8080. The machines were not openly marketed to the public and were aimed mainly at developers. The Intellec featured a ZIF socket on the front panel for programming EPROM chips. The intent was the EPROM chips would be used in embedded devices. The Intellec bore a resemblance to the Altair 8800 which would be released about two years later. While it could be used as

3180-650: A possible solution to the growing problem of information storage and retrieval. In 1968, SRI researcher Douglas Engelbart gave what was later called " The Mother of All Demos ", in which he offered a preview of things that have become the staples of daily working life in the 21st century: e-mail , hypertext , word processing , video conferencing , and the mouse . The demo was the culmination of research in Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center laboratory, which concentrated on applying computer technology to facilitate creative human thought. The minicomputer ancestors of

3339-511: A program written in 1961, and an ancestor of today's computer games was found in Spacewar! in 1962. Some of the first computers that might be called "personal" were early minicomputers such as the LINC and PDP-8 , and later on VAX and larger minicomputers from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Data General , Prime Computer , and others. By today's standards, they were very large (about

SECTION 20

#1732782498283

3498-488: A prominent leader in the early 1960s. The Great Society plan of President Lyndon Johnson 's administration resulted in groundbreaking and broad-reaching laws, policies and a constitutional amendment to counteract some of the worst effects of lingering institutional racism . The counterculture movement in the U.S. brought significant social changes, including the liberalization of attitudes toward recreational drug use and sexuality . It also encouraged open defiance of

3657-466: A request to reduce the chip count in one of their Datapoint terminal range, resulting in a similar single-chip CPU design. CTC ultimately declined the device leaving Intel with the intellectual property. This resulted in the Intel 8008 , released in 1972, that would eventually become the foundation of Intel's personal computer CPU range. It was followed by the Intel 8080 in 1974, the Intel 8086 in 1978 and

3816-526: A sense of manifest destiny . The Missouri Compromise attempted to balance the desire of northern states to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories with that of southern states to extend it, admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It further prohibited slavery in all other lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel . As Americans expanded further into land inhabited by Native Americans,

3975-614: A sense of American identity as well. Men who otherwise never left their own colony now traveled across the continent to fight alongside men from decidedly different backgrounds but who were no less "American". British officers trained American officers for battle, most notably George Washington ; these officers would lend their skills and expertise to the colonists' cause during the American Revolutionary War to come. In addition, colonial legislatures and officials found it necessary to cooperate intensively in pursuit of

4134-406: A set of several separate chips to implement a CPU for their calculator products. They had the idea of building the calculator from a standardised general purpose computer that they could re-program to implement different models for use in different markets. According to Tadashi Sasaki of Busicom, the concept for what would be the 4004 architecture came from a woman he could not recall the name of who

4293-412: A single user as opposed to being a shared resource. Machines of the day were most usually extremely large fixed installations. The LINC was (just barely) portable to another location by a single person. It was possible to disassemble and fit all of the apparatus into a car and assemble it in a reasonable time for use elsewhere without the support of a computer lab. The Programma 101 , released in 1965 by

4452-475: A single-chip solution with similar functionality. In the end, the chip did not meet CTC's requirements and was not used. A deal was made that in return for not charging CTC for the development work, Intel could instead sell the processor as their own product (along with the supporting ICs they had developed). This became the Intel 8008 . Although the design of the Datapoint 2200's TTL based bit serial CPU and

4611-446: A union's collective bargaining agreement, and sometimes including non-union workplaces, seniority is used to give senior crew member the right to override junior crew member requests. A line itself must also satisfy legal and contractual constraints. Ideally it should also satisfy the crew members choices and preferences. Each month, airlines crew planning must generate legal crewing solutions. These crewing solutions strive to achieve

4770-464: A year). Juvenile correctional facilities are operated by local or state governments and serve as longer-term placements for any minor adjudicated as delinquent and ordered by a judge to be confined. As of January 2023, the United States has the sixth-highest per capita incarceration rate in the world—531 people per 100,000 inhabitants—and the largest prison and jail population in

4929-591: Is believed to be the first widespread culture in the Americas. Over time, indigenous North American cultures grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the Mississippian culture , developed agriculture , architecture , and complex societies . In the post-archaic period , the Mississippian cultures were located in the midwestern , eastern , and southern regions, and the Algonquian in

Preferential bidding system - Misplaced Pages Continue

5088-429: Is complicated which may take many hours and multiple runs to achieve the optimal solution. A rejected preference happens when the pairing is awarded to senior, or overall coverage issue, or legality violation, and the reason for rejection will be provided. Computerized Bidding was first First introduced in 1986 by SBS . The application was developed by SBS founder Christian Boegner who later founded Crewing Solutions, and

5247-412: Is costly to the airlines. These inefficiencies also force airlines to hire more crew members. However, bid line does offer a transparent and easy process to bid and to award, and in many cases the conflict itself actually benefits the crew members that being paid without the work according to the contracts. Though management is eager to streamline operations, crew members may still prefer the bid lines. In

5406-412: Is followed by the data to be stored at that memory location, also set in binary via the switches. The rows of LEDs can be used to display the contents of a specific memory address. In some respects the front panel was simply a continuation of a common feature supplied on minicomputers of the time, but it did have some practical uses. Keyboards, displays and terminals were very expensive peripherals and

5565-498: Is known as the presidential system , in contrast to the parliamentary system , where the executive is part of the legislative body. Many countries around the world imitated this aspect of the 1789 Constitution of the United States , especially in the Americas. The Constitution is silent on political parties. However, they developed independently in the 18th century with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties. Since then,

5724-467: Is not a new concept and the products have been available in the market and used in many airlines for many years. The algorithms used may be very different and usually lead to very different results and satisfactions. In addition, the user interfaces that provided for crew members to enter the preferences are also very different from vendor to vendor. The evaluation of the PBS products and the negotiation between

5883-438: Is now the United States experienced conflicts with Native Americans, they also engaged in trade, exchanging European tools for food and animal pelts. Relations ranged from close cooperation to warfare and massacres. The colonial authorities often pursued policies that forced Native Americans to adopt European lifestyles, including conversion to Christianity. Along the eastern seaboard, settlers trafficked African slaves through

6042-412: Is that it tries to solve two innately conflicted goals, honoring preferences without violating seniority and awarding all pairings. In a conventional PBS, crew members make their bids and chooses their preferences based upon their own best interests. Once all the bids are made and the bid period ends, the program attempts to create the solution by an "optimization" process. Each crew member will be awarded

6201-552: Is the federal agency charged with addressing most environmental-related issues . The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act . The Endangered Species Act of 1973 provides a way to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service implements and enforces the Act. In 2024, the U.S. ranked 34th among 180 countries in

6360-603: The Allies of World War I , helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers . In 1920, a constitutional amendment granted nationwide women's suffrage . During the 1920s and '30s, radio for mass communication and the invention of early television transformed communications nationwide. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression , which President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to with

6519-553: The Atlantic slave trade . The original Thirteen Colonies that would later found the United States were administered as possessions of Great Britain , and had local governments with elections open to most white male property owners . The colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations; by the 1770s, the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain allowed for

Preferential bidding system - Misplaced Pages Continue

6678-817: The Bering land bridge more than 12,000 years ago, and formed various civilizations and societies . British colonization led to the first settlement of the Thirteen Colonies in Virginia in 1607. Clashes with the British Crown over taxation and political representation sparked the American Revolution , with the Second Continental Congress formally declaring independence on July 4, 1776. Following its victory in

6837-627: The COSMAC in 1974 and several experimental machines using it were built in 1975, but RCA declined to market any of these until introducing the COSMAC ELF in 1976, in kit form. By this time a number of other machines had entered the market. After the introduction of the Intel 4004 in 1972, microprocessor costs declined rapidly. In 1974 the American electronics magazine Radio-Electronics described

6996-549: The Environmental Performance Index . The country joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2016 and has many other environmental commitments. The United States is a federal republic of 50 states and a separate federal capital district, Washington, D.C. It also asserts sovereignty over five unincorporated territories and several uninhabited island possessions . The U.S. is

7155-500: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have national jurisdiction and specialized duties, such as protecting civil rights , national security and enforcing U.S. federal courts ' rulings and federal laws. State courts conduct most civil and criminal trials, and federal courts handle designated crimes and appeals of state court decisions . There is no unified "criminal justice system" in

7314-664: The Great Lakes , Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico . British colonization of the East Coast began with the Virginia Colony (1607) and Plymouth Colony (1620). The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-governance and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies. While European settlers in what

7473-719: The Great Lakes region and along the Eastern Seaboard , while the Hohokam culture and Ancestral Puebloans inhabited the southwest . Native population estimates of what is now the United States before the arrival of European immigrants range from around 500,000 to nearly 10 million. Christopher Columbus began exploring the Caribbean for Spain in 1492, leading to Spanish-speaking settlements and missions from Puerto Rico and Florida to New Mexico and California . France established its own settlements along

7632-524: The House of Representatives , a lower house based on population; and the Senate , an upper house based on equal representation for each state. Federalism provides substantial autonomy to the 50 states, while the country's political culture promotes liberty , equality , individualism , personal autonomy , and limited government . One of the world's most developed countries , the United States has had

7791-402: The Intel 4004 , in 1971. A few researchers at places such as SRI and Xerox PARC were working on computers that a single person could use and that could be connected by fast, versatile networks: not home computers, but personal ones. At RCA , Joseph Weisbecker designed and built a true home computer known as FRED, but this saw mixed interest from management. The CPU design was released as

7950-527: The Intel Intellec and established his company, Digital Research , in the same year. CP/M originally stood for "Control Program/Monitor" but later became "Control Program for Microcomputers". It was first licensed to a small manufacturer called Gnat Computers in 1977. By that year the number of computer vendors was increasing and demand for a standardised operating system grew. CP/M 2.0 was developed in 1978. By 1981, over 250,000 copies had been sold and

8109-573: The Intertechnique company to sell their microcomputer designs based around the Intel 8008 , beginning with the Micral N in 1973. The system was originally developed for the Institut national de la recherche agronomique to automate crop hygrometric measurements. The Micral N is credited as being the first commercially available microcomputer to feature a single chip CPU. It was possible to use

SECTION 50

#1732782498283

8268-453: The Mark-8 computer kit, based on the Intel 8008 processor. In January of the following year, Popular Electronics magazine published an article describing a kit based on the Intel 8080 , a somewhat more powerful and easier to use processor. The Altair 8800 sold remarkably well even though initial memory size was limited to a few hundred bytes and there was no software available. However,

8427-596: The Midwest . At the same time, about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England . During the Great Migration , millions of African Americans left the rural South for urban areas in the North. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. The Compromise of 1877 effectively ended Reconstruction and white supremacists took local control of Southern politics . African Americans endured

8586-688: The National Park Service and other agencies. About 28% of the country's land is publicly owned and federally managed, primarily in the Western States . Most of this land is protected , though some is leased for commercial use, and less than one percent is used for military purposes. Environmental issues in the United States include debates on non-renewable resources and nuclear energy , air and water pollution , biodiversity , logging and deforestation , and climate change . The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

8745-674: The National Semiconductor SC/MP (1976). Federico Faggin would go on to co-found Zilog which would produce the Z80 in 1976. Some of these CPUs would be widely used in early personal computers and other applications. On December 11th, 1972, Q1 Corporation sold the first Q1 microcomputer , based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor. The first generation 8008-based Q1 and Q1/c had a QWERTY keyboard, one-line 80-character display, built-in printer, and capability to interface with an under-desk floppy drive . (From this point on,

8904-652: The New Deal , a series of sweeping programs and public works projects combined with financial reforms and regulations . All were intended to protect against future economic depressions. Initially neutral during World War II , the U.S. began supplying war materiel to the Allies of World War II in March 1941 and entered the war in December after the Empire of Japan 's attack on Pearl Harbor . The U.S. developed

9063-778: The Organization of American States and the United States–Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement . In South America, Colombia is traditionally considered to be the closest ally of the United States. The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia , the Marshall Islands , and Palau through the Compact of Free Association . It has increasingly conducted strategic cooperation with India , but its ties with China have steadily deteriorated. Since 2014,

9222-648: The Pentium microprocessor in accordance with Moore's law , rechargeable lithium-ion batteries , the first gene therapy trial, and cloning either emerged in the U.S. or were improved upon there. The Human Genome Project was formally launched in 1990, while Nasdaq became the first stock market in the United States to trade online in 1998. In the Gulf War of 1991, an American-led international coalition of states expelled an Iraqi invasion force that had occupied neighboring Kuwait . The September 11 attacks on

9381-534: The Soviet Union's collapse and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the U.S. emerged as the world's sole superpower , wielding significant geopolitical influence globally . The U.S. national government is a presidential constitutional federal republic and liberal democracy with three separate branches : legislative , executive , and judicial . It has a bicameral national legislature composed of

9540-591: The Spanish–American War . (The Philippines was granted full independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946, following World War II. Puerto Rico and Guam have remained U.S. territories.) American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the Second Samoan Civil War . The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917. The United States entered World War I alongside

9699-530: The Wang 2200 or HP 9800 offered only BASIC . Because it was the first to emulate APL\1130 performance on a portable, single-user computer, PC Magazine in 1983 designated SCAMP a "revolutionary concept" and "the world's first personal computer". The prototype is in the Smithsonian Institution . Into the late 1970s, an operating system (O/S) was an optional extra for personal computers. It

SECTION 60

#1732782498283

9858-700: The cotton gin made the institution increasingly profitable for Southern elites . This sectional conflict regarding slavery culminated in the American Civil War (1861–1865). Eleven slave states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America , while the other states remained in the Union . War broke out in April 1861 after the Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter . After

10017-537: The fall of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union , which marked the end of the Cold War and left the United States as the world's sole superpower . The 1990s saw the longest recorded economic expansion in American history , a dramatic decline in U.S. crime rates , and advances in technology . Throughout this decade, technological innovations such as the World Wide Web , the evolution of

10176-445: The largest nominal GDP since about 1890 and accounted for over 15% of the global economy in 2023. It possesses by far the largest amount of wealth of any country and has the highest disposable household income per capita among OECD countries. The U.S. ranks among the world's highest in economic competitiveness , productivity , innovation , human rights , and higher education . Its hard power and cultural influence have

10335-442: The microprocessor in the early 1970s, computers were generally large, costly systems owned by large corporations, universities, government agencies, and similar-sized institutions. End users generally did not directly interact with the machine, but instead would prepare tasks for the computer on off-line equipment, such as card punches . A number of assignments for the computer would be gathered up and processed in batch mode . After

10494-406: The 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord , igniting the American Revolutionary War . At the Second Continental Congress , the colonies appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army , and created a committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence . Two days after passing the Lee Resolution to create an independent nation the Declaration

10653-408: The 1775–1783 Revolutionary War , the country continued to expand westward across North America , resulting in the dispossession of native inhabitants . As more states were admitted , a North–South division over slavery led to the secession of the Confederate States of America , which fought states remaining in the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War . With the victory and preservation of

10812-466: The 2010s, political polarization in the country increased between liberal and conservative factions. This polarization was capitalized upon in the January 2021 Capitol attack , when a mob of insurrectionists entered the U.S. Capitol and sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in an attempted self-coup d'état . The United States is the world's third-largest country by total area behind Russia and Canada. The 48 contiguous states and

10971-445: The Altair kit was much less costly than an Intel development system of the time and so was purchased by companies interested in developing microprocessor control for their own products. Expansion memory boards and peripherals were soon listed by the original manufacturer, and later by plug compatible manufacturers. The very first Microsoft product was a 4 kilobyte paper tape BASIC interpreter, which allowed users to develop programs in

11130-426: The American West have an alpine climate . The climate is arid in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California , and oceanic in coastal Oregon , Washington , and southern Alaska . Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar . Hawaii , the southern tip of Florida and U.S. territories in the Caribbean and Pacific are tropical . States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of

11289-459: The Assigned Lines approach, the properties of the line, and days off are simply managed via the use of constraints to build "legal" lines. The optimizer finds the most efficient use of the pairings and reserve assignments. A crew member will have no bidding or preferences. In the bid lines approach, pairings are placed within pre-built lines by line optimizer, a computer program that puts the pairings into "legal" lines, and does not take into account

11448-535: The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The term "United States" and the initialism "U.S.", used as nouns or as adjectives in English, are common short names for the country. The initialism "USA", a noun, is also common. "United States" and "U.S." are the established terms throughout the U.S. federal government , with prescribed rules. In English, the term "America" rarely refers to topics unrelated to

11607-573: The District of Columbia occupy a combined area of 3,119,885 square miles (8,080,470 km ). The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way to inland forests and rolling hills in the Piedmont plateau region. The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack massif separate the East Coast from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest . The Mississippi River System ,

11766-573: The Elder concluded that major military resources needed to be devoted to North America to win the war against France. For the first time, the continent became one of the main theaters of what could be termed a " world war ". The British colonies' position as an integral part of the British Empire became more apparent during the war, with British military and civilian officials becoming a more significant presence in American life. The war increased

11925-571: The IBM Los Gatos Scientific Center developed a portable computer prototype called SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) based on the IBM PALM processor with a Philips compact cassette drive, small CRT and full function keyboard. SCAMP emulated an IBM 1130 minicomputer in order to run APL\1130. In 1973 APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as

12084-474: The Intel 8008 were technically very different, they were largely software-compatible. From a software perspective, the Datapoint 2200 therefore functioned as if it were using an 8008. The Kenbak-1, released in early 1971, is considered by the Computer History Museum to be the world's first personal computer. It was designed and invented by John Blankenbaker of Kenbak Corporation in 1970, and

12243-485: The Italian company Olivetti , was one of the first printing programmable calculators. The desktop sized device included the capability for conditional jumps with a 240 byte delay-line memory which enabled software to be written. Some of the design was based on a preceding experimental computer produced by a young Federico Faggin who would later design the first commercial microprocessor at Intel. The Programma 101

12402-683: The January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation , many freed slaves joined the Union army . The war began to turn in the Union's favor following the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and Battle of Gettysburg , and the Confederacy surrendered in 1865 after the Union's victory in the Battle of Appomattox Court House . The Reconstruction era followed the war. After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln , Reconstruction Amendments were passed to protect

12561-519: The Kenbak-1 only sold 44, and influenced mostly no one. If the Kenbak-1 were advertised better, and the machine had at least one serial port to make it more useful, it may have done very well at its price-point of $ 750 in 1971, which no other Turing-complete computer on the market came close to. However, it would not be very long before personal computers based on the much more capable Intel 8008 would come to market, followed shortly after once again by

12720-550: The Kenbak-1 was only really useful for educational use. 256 bytes of memory, 8 bit word size, and I/O limited to switches and lights on the front panel are also characteristics of the 1975 Altair 8800 , whose fate was diametrically opposed to that of the Kenbak. However, there were three major differentiating factors between the Altair and the Kenbak which led to the later Altair 8800 selling over 25000 units and influencing many, while

12879-410: The Micral as a personal computer but most were sold for use as controllers in automation applications. The Micral N ran at 500 kHz, included 16 KB of memory and sold for 8500 Francs. A bus, called Pluribus, was introduced that allowed connection of up to 14 boards. Boards for digital I/O, analog I/O, memory, floppy disk were available from R2E. The Micral operating system was initially called Sysmic, and

13038-459: The PBS approach, the lines have not been created at the bidding, and the crew members have the ability to designate what kind of pairings, the properties of the line, and days off they prefer, thereby building a line themselves. PBS also allows crew members to bid reserve duties mixed with the pairings biddings. PBS provides a one-step process from the pairings to the lines that each crew member prefers and can legally cover. The real challenge for PBS

13197-552: The Programma 101 had features found in modern personal computers, such as memory, keyboard, printing unit, magnetic card reader/recorder, control and arithmetic unit. Hewlett-Packard was later ordered to pay Olivetti $ 900,000 for patent infringement of this design in its HP 9100 series . Released in June 1970, the programmable terminal called the Datapoint 2200 is among the earliest known devices that bears significant resemblance to

13356-611: The Rocky Mountains, the Yellowstone Caldera , is the continent's largest volcanic feature. In 2021, the United States had 8% of global permanent meadows and pastures and 10% of cropland. With its large size and geographic variety, the United States includes most climate types. East of the 100th meridian , the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The western Great Plains are semi-arid . Many mountainous areas of

13515-647: The U.S. has become a key ally of Ukraine ; it has also provided the country with significant military equipment and other support in response to Russia's 2022 invasion . The president is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff . The Department of Defense , which is headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., administers five of

13674-661: The U.S. territories." Despite disparate systems of confinement, four main institutions dominate: federal prisons , state prisons , local jails, and juvenile correctional facilities . Federal prisons are run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and hold people who have been convicted of federal crimes, including pretrial detainees. State prisons, run by the official department of correction of each state, hold sentenced people serving prison time (usually longer than one year) for felony offenses. Local jails are county or municipal facilities that incarcerate defendants prior to trial; they also hold those serving short sentences (typically under

13833-464: The United States and the peaceful transfer of power , respectively. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 from France nearly doubled the territory of the United States. Lingering issues with Britain remained , leading to the War of 1812 , which was fought to a draw. Spain ceded Florida and its Gulf Coast territory in 1819. In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward , many with

13992-714: The United States entered the Cold War, where geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union led the two countries to dominate world affairs . The U.S. utilized the policy of containment to limit the USSR's sphere of influence, and prevailed in the Space Race , which culminated with the first crewed Moon landing in 1969. Domestically, the U.S. experienced economic growth , urbanization , and population growth following World War II . The civil rights movement emerged, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming

14151-666: The United States has operated as a de facto two-party system , though the parties in that system have been different at different times. The two main national parties are presently the Democratic and the Republican . The former is perceived as relatively liberal in its political platform while the latter is perceived as relatively conservative . In the American federal system , sovereign powers are shared between two levels of elected government: national and state. People in

14310-593: The United States in 2001 by the pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda led to the war on terror , and subsequent military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq . The cultural impact of the attacks was profound and long-lasting. The U.S. housing bubble culminated in 2007 with the Great Recession , the largest economic contraction since the Great Depression. Coming to a head in

14469-656: The United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort. The first known public usage is an anonymous essay published in the Williamsburg newspaper, The Virginia Gazette , on April 6, 1776. By June 1776, the "United States of America" appeared in the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence . The Second Continental Congress adopted

14628-601: The United States, slavery was abolished nationally . By 1900, the country had established itself as a great power , a status solidified after its involvement in World War I . After Japan 's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II . Its aftermath left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the world's two superpowers and led to the Cold War , during which both countries struggled for ideological dominance and international influence . Following

14787-541: The United States, despite the usage of "the Americas " as the totality of North and South America. "The States" is an established colloquial shortening of the name, used particularly from abroad; "stateside" is the corresponding adjective or adverb. The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia across the Bering land bridge about 12,000 years ago; the Clovis culture , which appeared around 11,000 BC,

14946-624: The United States, except Iran , North Korea , and Bhutan . Though Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., it maintains close unofficial relations. The United States regularly supplies Taiwan with military equipment to deter potential Chinese aggression. Its geopolitical attention also turned to the Indo-Pacific when the United States joined the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan. The United States has

15105-509: The United States. The American prison system is largely heterogenous, with thousands of relatively independent systems operating across federal, state, local, and tribal levels. In 2023, "these systems [held] almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 181 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons , civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in

15264-462: The best line of his own definitions from available pairings at his seniority. For each crew member, when there are many best lines, the one with the least interest conflict to the junior crew members will be awarded, which is an advantage that interactive PBS cannot achieve. By the optimization, system finds a way to satisfy both senior and junior crew members while still honoring seniority and operation coverage requirement. The optimization process itself

15423-483: The common people] and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far. Simon was a small electro-mechanical computer project developed by Edmund Berkeley and presented in a thirteen articles series issued in Radio-Electronics magazine from October 1950. The Simon was in some sense a personal computer although was not of much practical use,

15582-457: The contiguous United States are in the State of California, about 84 miles (135 km) apart. At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali is the highest peak in the country and continent. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands , and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in

15741-589: The cost-reduced 8088 in 1979 used in the original IBM PC. The single-chip CPU went on to significantly reduce the costs (and size) of computers and place the devices within the purchasing power of individuals. In only a few years, a number of other manufacturers were producing competing single-chip CPUs including the Motorola 6800 (1974), the Fairchild F8 (1974), the MOS Technology 6502 (1975) and

15900-556: The country's GDP. The U.S. has 42% of the world's nuclear weapons —the second-largest share after Russia. The United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces . The military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries. State defense forces (SDFs) are military units that operate under

16059-469: The country's territory would expand with the admission of new states , rather than the expansion of existing states. The U.S. Constitution was drafted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to overcome the limitations of the Articles. It went into effect in 1789, creating a federal republic governed by three separate branches that together ensured a system of checks and balances . George Washington

16218-448: The development of solid-state memory eliminated the bulky, costly, and power-hungry magnetic-core memory used in prior generations of computers. The single-chip microprocessor was made possible by an improvement in MOS technology, the silicon-gate MOS chip, developed in 1968 by Federico Faggin , who later used silicon-gate MOS technology to develop the first single-chip microprocessor,

16377-713: The development of self-governance, and the First Great Awakening , a series of Christian revivals , fueled colonial interest in religious liberty . For a century, the American colonists had been providing their own troops and materiel in conflicts with indigenous peoples allied with Britain's colonial rivals , especially France, and the Americans had begun to develop a sense of self-defense and self-reliance separate from Britain. The French and Indian War (1754–1763) took on new significance for all North American colonists after Parliament under William Pitt

16536-580: The environment for labor unions to begin to flourish . This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era , which was characterized by significant reforms. Pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy ; the islands were annexed in 1898. That same year, Puerto Rico , the Philippines , and Guam were ceded to the U.S. by Spain after the latter's defeat in

16695-541: The federal government often applied policies of Indian removal or assimilation . The Trail of Tears (1830–1850) was a U.S. government policy that forcibly removed and displaced most Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River to lands far to the west. These and earlier organized displacements prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi. The Republic of Texas

16854-606: The first nuclear weapons and used them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, ending the war. The United States was one of the " Four Policemen " who met to plan the post-war world , alongside the United Kingdom , Soviet Union , and China . The U.S. emerged relatively unscathed from the war, with even greater economic power and international political influence . After World War II,

17013-482: The four-function ALU was only 2 bits wide meaning that it was not capable of operating on any number greater than 3. There were far more sophisticated and practical computers available at the time (such as EDSAC ) and the kit was intended only as an educational machine for hobbyists to learn about the operation and design of a digital computer. The value in Simon was that the digital principles learnt could be scaled up to

17172-449: The front panel represented a cheap way to interact with the computer that could be supplied with the machine as standard. A hobbyist could then immediately make some use of their new purchase out of the box. Additionally, the front panel would often be used for bootstrapping . When initially switched on, a computer needs to understand how to read its initial program (such as an operating system) from disk. The earliest machines did not contain

17331-424: The individual crew members' preferences, nor the constraints imposed by crew members. The generic set of lines are then published for bidding. A crew member is free to choose any line and it will be awarded as long as no other senior crew member who also wants this same line. Unless the most senior in the bid package, crew member needs to submit multiple preferred lines in order to guarantee a preferred line; otherwise,

17490-401: The integrated printer and floppy drives, kept the plasma display, and introduced a Zilog Z80 CPU and 16 KB of memory. At some point, a Q1 "Basic Office Machine" was also introduced, bearing resemblance to the third-generation Q1/Lite, but re-integrating a printer. Several Q1s were ordered for use in various NASA bases in 1979. The French company R2E was formed by two former engineers of

17649-463: The integration of Army National Guard units and personnel into the U.S. Army and (since 1947) the U.S. Air Force. There are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies from local to national level in the United States. Law in the United States is mainly enforced by local police departments and sheriff departments in their municipal or county jurisdictions. The state police departments have authority in their respective state , and federal agencies such as

17808-412: The introduction of microcomputers, although some mainframe and minicomputers had been applied as single-user systems much earlier. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals. After the development of

17967-491: The job had completed, users could collect the results. In some cases, it could take hours or days between submitting a job to the computing center and receiving the output. A more interactive form of computer use developed commercially by the middle 1960s. In a time-sharing system, multiple computer terminals let many people share the use of one mainframe computer processor. This was common in business applications and in science and engineering. A different model of computer use

18126-495: The management and crew members are the most important and critical steps of a successful implementation of the PBS. United States The United States of America ( USA ), commonly known as the United States ( U.S. ) or America , is a country primarily located in North America . It is a federal union of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to

18285-690: The microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals. After the development of the microprocessor , individual personal computers were low enough in cost that they eventually became affordable consumer goods. Early personal computers – generally called microcomputers – were sold often in electronic kit form and in limited numbers, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians. There are several competing claims as to

18444-418: The microprocessor, individual personal computers were low enough in cost that they eventually became affordable consumer goods. Early personal computers – generally called microcomputers – were sold often in electronic kit form and in limited numbers, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians. Computer terminals were used for time sharing access to central computers. Before the introduction of

18603-482: The military draft (leading to the end of conscription in 1973) and wide opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam (with the U.S. totally withdrawing in 1975). A societal shift in the roles of women was significantly responsible for the large increase in female paid labor participation during the 1970s, and by 1985 the majority of American women aged 16 and older were employed. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw

18762-600: The modern personal computer used early integrated circuit (microchip) technology, which reduced size and cost, but they contained no microprocessor . This meant that they were still large and difficult to manufacture just like their mainframe predecessors. After the "computer-on-a-chip" was commercialized, the cost to manufacture a computer system dropped dramatically. The arithmetic, logic, and control functions that previously occupied several costly circuit boards were now available in one integrated circuit, making it possible to produce them in high volume. Concurrently, advances in

18921-470: The modern personal computer, with a CRT screen, keyboard, programmability, and program storage. It was made by CTC (later known as Datapoint after the success of this machine) and was a complete system in a case with the approximate footprint of an IBM Selectric typewriter . The system's CPU was constructed from roughly a hundred (mostly) TTL logic components, which are groups of gates, latches, counters, etc. The company had commissioned Intel to develop

19080-612: The most attractive to the population are the most vulnerable. The U.S. is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species : about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 birds, 311 reptiles, 295 amphibians , and around 91,000 insect species. There are 63 national parks , and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas , managed by

19239-662: The most violent, the California genocide of thousands of Native inhabitants, lasted into the early 1870s, just as additional western territories and states were created. During the colonial period, slavery had been legal in the American colonies , though the practice began to be significantly questioned during the American Revolution. States in the North enacted abolition laws , though support for slavery strengthened in Southern states , as inventions such as

19398-547: The names "Q1" and "Q1/Lite" seem to be used interchangeably on the computer's enclosure and in its marketing.) The second generation 1974 Q1/Lite ran on an Intel 8080 , integrated two floppy drives into the computer's enclosure, and included an updated multi-line flat-panel plasma display . Around this time, a Q1 MicroLite was also introduced, incorporating the Lite's plasma display and printer but only one of its two floppy drives into an identical case. There also seems to have been

19557-404: The nascent personal computer space, little was available other than a monitor . While this term now most commonly refers to display hardware, it referred at the time to a small program specific to each computer that was capable of starting other software, some debugging, and maybe saving memory contents at specified locations to a storage device. Gary Kildall developed CP/M in 1974 as an O/S for

19716-660: The north and Mexico to the south, with the states of Alaska to the northwest and the archipelagic Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean . The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands . The country has the world's third-largest land area , largest exclusive economic zone , and third-largest population , exceeding 334 million. Its three largest metropolitan areas are New York , Los Angeles , and Chicago , and its three most populous states are California , Texas , and Florida . Paleo-Indians migrated across

19875-427: The origins of the term "personal computer". Yale Law School librarian Fred Shapiro notes an early published use of the phrase in a 1968 Hewlett-Packard advertisement for a programmable calculator, which they called "The new Hewlett-Packard 9100A personal computer." Other claims include computer pioneer Alan Kay 's purported use of the term in a 1972 paper, Whole Earth Catalog publisher Stewart Brand 's usage in

20034-408: The policy of redlining later adopted by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation . An explosion of technological advancement accompanied by the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor led to rapid economic expansion during the late 19th and early 20th centuries , allowing the United States to outpace the economies of England, France, and Germany combined. This fostered the amassing of power by

20193-631: The possibility that more crew members get a schedule that fulfills their wishes. In this scheme, bidding can be a continuous process lasting several days or weeks, and can offer interactivity, where crew members can see the status of other crew member bids reflected as they bid. A crew member can change preferences in the midst of the process after seeing how others are bidding. It is this live awareness which some PBS applications can provide which allows crew members to bid realistically because they see and can bid only for trips and days off that are available to them at their seniority at any given time throughout

20352-574: The primary colonial grievances was a denial of their rights as Englishmen , particularly the right to representation in the British government that taxed them . To demonstrate their dissatisfaction and resolve, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and passed the Continental Association , a colonial boycott of British goods that proved effective. The British attempt to then disarm the colonists resulted in

20511-462: The relevant software to do this and the machine would do nothing at all when initially powered on. A simple program informing the machine how to read a larger program from attached storage could be entered on the front panel. The Xerox Alto , developed at Xerox PARC in 1973, was the first computer to use a mouse , the desktop metaphor , and a graphical user interface (GUI), concepts first introduced by Douglas Engelbart while at International. It

20670-489: The reliability of MOS transistors and assisted with the commercial viability of the process. He also developed important technologies that improved circuit density of chips such as the "buried contact" technique. Fairchild were not using Faggin's work and in 1970 he moved to the recently founded Intel . There he joined a team developing the first commercially available microprocessor, the 4-bit Intel 4004 . Japanese electronics company Busicom had approached Intel in 1969 for

20829-408: The remaining bidding window. Without a live, interactive PBS's interactive recalculation during the bid period, if crew members bid for certain pairings and/or days off heavily over others, at the end of the bid period either a secondary, time-consuming algorithm needs to be implemented to solve the resultant conflicts, or manual manipulation is used to fill the "open time" (unassigned pairings). PBS

20988-515: The rights of African Americans . National infrastructure, including transcontinental telegraph and railroads , spurred growth in the American frontier . From 1865 through 1917 an unprecedented stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, including 24.4 million from Europe. Most came through the port of New York City , and New York City and other large cities on the East Coast became home to large Jewish , Irish , and Italian populations, while many Germans and Central Europeans moved to

21147-614: The rocky Great Basin and Chihuahua , Sonoran , and Mojave deserts. In the northwest corner of Arizona , carved by the Colorado River over millions of years, is the Grand Canyon , a steep-sided canyon and popular tourist destination known for its overwhelming visual size and intricate, colorful landscape. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast . The lowest and highest points in

21306-571: The same way by each piece of software. The user would also need a suite of tools to copy, rename and move files between disks. A large number of entirely different personal computers would emerge with incompatible hardware and it was helpful to have a unified platform where software could be written once and would run across all of them. As the cost of memory fell, demand would increase to have more than one program loaded simultaneously. An operating system would help solve these problems. Operating systems were common on mainframes and minicomputers but in

21465-547: The silicon design expertise to the team and using his latest techniques that improved device density, managed to squeeze it all into a single chip. Busicom was in financial trouble and Intel arranged a deal that enabled them to sell the CPU as a product in exchange for lowering costs to Busicom. This was then marketed as the Intel 4004 in 1971 and was the first commercial single chip microprocessor. Coincidentally, Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) had approached Intel also in 1969 with

21624-573: The six service branches, which are made up of the U.S. Army , Marine Corps , Navy , Air Force , and Space Force . The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime. The United States spent $ 916 billion on its military in 2023, which is by far the largest amount of any country , making up 37% of global military spending and accounting for 3.4% of

21783-403: The size of a refrigerator) and cost prohibitive (typically tens of thousands of US dollars). However, they were much smaller, less expensive, and generally simpler to operate than many of the mainframe computers of the time. Therefore, they were accessible for individual laboratories and research projects. Minicomputers largely freed these organizations from the batch processing and bureaucracy of

21942-545: The sole authority of a state government. SDFs are authorized by state and federal law but are under the command of the state's governor . They are distinct from the state's National Guard units in that they cannot become federalized entities. A state's National Guard personnel, however, may be federalized under the National Defense Act Amendments of 1933 , which created the Guard and provides for

22101-543: The states are also represented by local elected governments , which are administrative divisions of the states. States are subdivided into counties or county equivalents , and further divided into municipalities . The District of Columbia is a federal district containing the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C. . The federal district is an administrative division of the federal government. Federally recognized tribes govern 326 Indian reservations . The United States has an established structure of foreign relations, and it has

22260-510: The structure and responsibilities of the national federal government and its relationship with the individual states. The U.S. Constitution is the world's oldest national constitution still in effect (from March 4, 1789). Composed of three branches, all headquartered in Washington, D.C., the federal government is the national government of the United States. It is regulated by a strong system of checks and balances . The three-branch system

22419-478: The task of building a larger and more useful machine. The LGP-30 was an off-the-shelf vacuum-tube computer manufactured by the Librascope company of Glendale, California. The LGP-30 was first manufactured in 1956, at a retail price of $ 47,000. The LGP-30 was commonly referred to as a desk computer, as it was the size of a desk. It weighed about 800 pounds (360 kg). It was a binary, 31-bit word computer with

22578-459: The ten-times-as-fast Intel 8080 , in the highly-expandable Altair 8800. In 1967, Italian engineer Federico Faggin joined SGS-Fairchild of Italy where he worked on Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuits which had higher switching speeds and lower power consumption than alternatives. He was later sent to a California division. There he developed self-aligned silicon gate technology (from an original idea by Bell labs ) which improved

22737-582: The world's fourth-longest river system , runs predominantly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat and fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains , west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado . Farther west are

22896-583: The world's second-largest diplomatic corps as of 2024 . It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council , and home to the United Nations headquarters . The United States is a member of the G7 , G20 , and OECD intergovernmental organizations. Almost all countries have embassies and many have consulates (official representatives) in the country. Likewise, nearly all countries host formal diplomatic missions with

23055-444: The world's oldest surviving federation, and its presidential system of national government has been adopted, in whole or in part, by many newly independent states worldwide following their decolonization . It is a liberal representative democracy "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law ". The Constitution of the United States serves as the country's supreme legal document , also establishing

23214-553: The world's tornadoes occur in the country , mainly in Tornado Alley . Overall, the United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country. Extreme weather became more frequent in the U.S. in the 21st century, with three times the number of reported heat waves as in the 1960s. In the American Southwest , droughts became more persistent and more severe. The regions considered as

23373-524: The world, with almost 2 million people incarcerated . An analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed U.S. homicide rates "were 7 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25 times higher". History of personal computers The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with

23532-575: Was annexed in 1845, and the 1846 Oregon Treaty led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest . Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California, Nevada, Utah, and much of present-day Colorado and the American Southwest . The California gold rush of 1848–1849 spurred a huge migration of white settlers to the Pacific coast, leading to even more confrontations with Native populations. One of

23691-445: Was a graduate of Japan's Nara Women's University . Intel employee, Marcian Hoff , realised the design would be too expensive. He suggested combining the multiple CPU chips requested by Busicom into a single chip (a technique which generally reduces product cost because there are fixed costs associated with producing each individual device) and also reducing the complexity. This design was later improved by Stanley Mazor . Faggin brought

23850-759: Was adopted on July 4, 1776. The political values of the American Revolution included liberty , inalienable individual rights ; and the sovereignty of the people ; supporting republicanism and rejecting monarchy , aristocracy , and all hereditary political power; civic virtue ; and vilification of political corruption . The Founding Fathers of the United States , who included Washington, Jefferson, John Adams , Benjamin Franklin , Alexander Hamilton , John Jay , James Madison , Thomas Paine , and many others, were inspired by Greco-Roman , Renaissance , and Enlightenment philosophies and ideas. The Articles of Confederation were ratified in 1781 and established

24009-532: Was common to run software directly on the machine with no O/S loaded at all. An application would load from disk or tape and then when a different application was required, the machine would be reset and a different disk inserted. Particularly, games software would operate in this way to reclaim the memory that the O/S used. Disk drives were relatively complicated to control and it was helpful for cross-compatibility between business software for files to always be written in

24168-583: Was elected the country's first president under the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 to allay skeptics' concerns about the power of the more centralized government. His resignation as commander-in-chief after the Revolutionary War and his later refusal to run for a third term as the country's first president established a precedent for the supremacy of civil authority in

24327-502: Was first sold in early 1971. Unlike a modern personal computer, the Kenbak-1 was built of small-scale integrated circuits , and did not use a microprocessor. The system first sold for US$ 750. Only 44 machines were ever sold, though it's said 50 to 52 were built. In 1973, production of the Kenbak-1 stopped as Kenbak Corporation folded. With a fixed 256 bytes of memory, input and output restricted to lights and switches (no ports or serial output), and no possible way to extend its capabilities,

24486-418: Was foreshadowed by the way in which early, pre-commercial, experimental computers were used, where one user had exclusive use of a processor. In places such as Carnegie Mellon University and MIT , students with access to some of the first computers experimented with applications that would today be typical of a personal computer; for example, computer-aided design and drafting was foreshadowed by T-square ,

24645-713: Was in use on powerful internal computers at TWA among other airlines. By 1992 using such services as CompuServe and the newly introduced home PCs , SBS allowed Pilots to Bid using the internet to connect to the SBS bidding and scheduling programs running within the airlines networks. With the advent of increasingly more powerful airline and home computers as well as high speed internet connectivity having become ubiquitous and mainstream, those original computerized programs have evolved into today's web-based, with crew members using laptop computers or even mobile devices to bid. The conventional PBS process can now be fully interactive, affording

24804-493: Was intended for use in biomedical research applications. The LINC consisted of a large unit that could fit on a desk with keyboard input and a monitor screen constructed from an oscilloscope, although it required a second chassis about the size of a wardrobe that contained the CPU and memory. Despite its size, the LINC had the nascent characteristics of a personal computer, being one of the first machines specifically intended to serve

24963-404: Was later renamed Prologue. R2E was absorbed by Groupe Bull in 1978. Although Groupe Bull continued the production of Micral computers, it was not interested in the personal computer market, and Micral computers were mostly confined to highway toll gates (where they remained in service until 1992) and similar niche markets. The Intellec was a microcomputer released by Intel in 1973 intended as

25122-515: Was presented at the 1965 New York World's Fair after two years work (1962- 1964) and was a commercial success with over 44,000 units sold worldwide; in the US its cost at launch was $ 3,200. It was targeted to offices and scientific entities for their daily work because of its capable computing capabilities in a small space with a relatively low cost; NASA was amongst its first owners. Built without integrated circuits or microprocessors, it used only transistors, resistors and condensers for its processing,

25281-458: Was the first example of what would today be recognized as a complete personal computer. The first machines were introduced on 1 March 1973. In 1981, Xerox Corporation introduced the Xerox Star workstation , officially known as the "8010 Star Information System". Drawing upon its predecessor, the Xerox Alto, it was the first commercial system to incorporate various technologies that today have become commonplace in personal computers, including

#282717