The history of computing hardware covers the history of computer hardware, its architecture, and its impact on software. Originally calculations were computed by humans, who were called computers,[1] as a job title. See the history of computing article for methods intended for pen and paper, with or without the aid of tables. For a detailed timeline of events, see the computing timeline article.
The von Neumann architecture unifies our current computing hardware implementations.[2] The major elements of computing hardware are input,[3] output,[4] control[5] and datapath (which together make a processor),[6] and memory.[7] They have undergone successive refinement or improvement over the history of computing hardware. Beginning with mechanical mechanisms, the hardware then started using analogs for a computation, including water and even air as the analog quantities: analog computers have used lengths, pressures, voltages, and currents to represent the results of calculations.[8] Eventually the voltages or currents were standardized and digital computers were developed over a period of evolution dating back centuries. Digital computing elements have ranged from mechanical gears, to electromechanical relays, to vacuum tubes, to transistors, and to integrated circuits, all of which are currently implementing the von Neumann architecture.[9]
Since digital computers rely on digital storage, and tend to be limited by the size and speed of memory, the history of computer data storage is tied to the development of computers. The degree of improvement in computing hardware has triggered world-wide use of the technology. Even as performance has improved, the price has declined,[10] until computers have become commodities, accessible to ever-increasing sectors[11] of the world's population. Computing hardware thus became a platform for uses other than computation, such as automation, communication, control, entertainment, and education. Each field in turn has imposed its own requirements on the hardware, which has evolved in response to those requirements.[12]Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years; Georges Ifrah notes that humans learned to count on their hands.[13] The earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick. Later record keeping aids include phoenician clay shapes which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, in containers.[14] The abacus was used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money.[15]
A number of analog computers were constructed in ancient and medieval times to perform astronomical calculations. These include the Antikythera mechanism and the astrolabe from ancient Greece (c. 150-100 BC), and are generally regarded as the first mechanical computers.[16] Other early versions of mechanical devices used to perform some type of calculations include the planisphere; some of the inventions of Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (c. AD 1000); the Equatorium of Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (c. AD 1015); the astronomical analog computers of other medieval Muslim astronomers and engineers, and the Astronomical Clock Tower of Su Song during the Song Dynasty.
John Napier (1550–1617) noted that multiplication and division of numbers could be performed by addition and subtraction, respectively, of logarithms of those numbers. While producing the first logarithmic tables Napier needed to perform many multiplications, and it was at this point that he designed Napier's bones, an abacus-like device used for multiplication and division.[17] Since real numbers can be represented as distances or intervals on a line, the slide rule was invented in the 1620s to allow multiplication and division operations to be carried out significantly faster than was previously possible.[18] Slide rules were used by generations of engineers and other mathematically inclined professional workers, until the invention of the pocket calculator. The engineers in the Apollo program to send a man to the moon made many of their calculations on slide rules, which were accurate to three or four significant figures.
A mechanical calculator from 1914. Note the lever used to rotate the gears.
In 1623, Wilhelm Schickard built the first digital mechanical calculator and thus became the father of the computing era.[19] Since his machine used techniques such as cogs and gears first developed for clocks, it was also called a 'calculating clock'. It was put to practical use by his friend Johannes Kepler, who revolutionized astronomy. An original calculator by Pascal (1640) is preserved in the Zwinger Museum. Machines by Blaise Pascal (the Pascaline, 1642) and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1671) followed.
"It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used." —Leibniz
Around 1820, Charles Xavier Thomas created the first successful, mass-produced mechanical calculator, the Thomas Arithmometer, that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It was mainly based on Leibniz' work. Mechanical calculators, like the base-ten addiator, the comptometer, the Monroe, the Curta and the Addo-X remained in use until the 1970s. Leibniz also described the binary numeral system,[20] a central ingredient of all modern computers. However, up to the 1940s, many subsequent designs (including Charles Babbage's machines of the 1800s and even ENIAC of 1945) were based on the decimal system;[21] ENIAC's ring counters emulated the operation of the digit wheels of a mechanical adding machine.
[edit] 1801: punched card technology
Main article: analytical engine
See also: logic piano
As early as 1725 Basile Bouchon used a perforated paper loop in a loom to establish the pattern to be reproduced on cloth, and in 1726 his co-worker Jean-Baptiste Falcon improved on his design by using perforated paper cards attached to one another for efficiency in adapting and changing the program. The Bouchon-Falcon loom was semi-automatic and required manual feed of the program. In 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed a loom in which the pattern being woven was controlled by punched cards. The series of cards could be changed without changing the mechanical design of the loom. This was a landmark point in programmability.
Punched card system of a music machine. Also referred to as Book music, a one-stop European medium for organs
In 1833, Charles Babbage moved on from developing his difference engine to developing a more complete design, the analytical engine, which would draw directly on Jacquard's punched cards for its programming.[22] In 1835, Babbage described his analytical engine. It was the plan of a general-purpose programmable computer, employing punch cards for input and a steam engine for power. One crucial invention was to use gears for the function served by the beads of an abacus. In a real sense, computers all contain automatic abacuses (technically called the arithmetic logic unit or floating-point unit). His initial idea was to use punch-cards to control a machine that could calculate and print logarithmic tables with huge precision (a specific purpose machine). Babbage's idea soon developed into a general-purpose programmable computer, his analytical engine. While his design was sound and the plans were probably correct, or at least debuggable, the project was slowed by various problems. Babbage was a difficult man to work with and argued with anyone who didn't respect his ideas. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand. Small errors in each item can sometimes sum up to large discrepancies in a machine with thousands of parts, which required these parts to be much better than the usual tolerances needed at the time. The project dissolved in disputes with the artisan who built parts and was ended with the depletion of government funding. Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, translated and added notes to the "Sketch of the Analytical Engine" by Federico Luigi, Conte Menabrea.[23]
A reconstruction of the Difference Engine II, an earlier, more limited design, has been operational since 1991 at the London Science Museum. With a few trivial changes, it works as Babbage designed it and shows that Babbage was right in theory. The museum used computer-operated machine tools to construct the necessary parts, following tolerances which a machinist of the period would have been able to achieve. The failure of Babbage to complete the engine can be chiefly attributed to difficulties not only related to politics and financing, but also to his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer. [24] Following in the footsteps of Babbage, although unaware of his earlier work, was Percy Ludgate, an accountant from Dublin, Ireland. He independently designed a programmable mechanical computer, which he described in a work that was published in 1909.
IBM 407 tabulating machine, (1961).
Punched card with the extended alphabet.
In 1890, the United States Census Bureau used punched cards, sorting machines, and tabulating machines designed by Herman Hollerith to handle the flood of data from the decennial census mandated by the Constitution.[25] Hollerith's company eventually became the core of IBM. IBM developed punch card technology into a powerful tool for business data-processing and produced an extensive line of specialized unit record equipment. By 1950, the IBM card had become ubiquitous in industry and government. The warning printed on most cards intended for circulation as documents (checks, for example), "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate," became a motto for the post-World War II era.[26]
Leslie Comrie's articles on punched card methods and W.J. Eckert's publication of Punched Card Methods in Scientific Computation in 1940, described techniques which were sufficiently advanced to solve differential equations[27] or perform multiplication and division using floating point representations, all on punched cards and unit record machines. In the image of the tabulator (see left), note the patch panel, which is visible on the right side of the tabulator. A row of toggle switches is above the patch panel. The Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau, Columbia University performed astronomical calculations representing the state of the art in computing.[28]
Computer programming in the punch card era revolved around the computer center. The computer users, for example, science and engineering students at universities, would submit their programming assignments to their local computer center. in the form of a stack of cards, one card per program line. They then had to wait for the program to be queued for processing, compiled, and executed. In due course a printout of any results, marked with the submitter's identification, would be placed in an output tray outside the computer center. In many cases these results would comprise solely a printout of error messages regarding program syntax etc., necessitating another edit-compile-run cycle.[29] Punched cards are still used and manufactured to this day, and their distinctive dimensions[30] (and 80-column capacity) can still be recognized in forms, records, and programs around the world.
[edit] 1930s–1960s: desktop calculators
Main article: Post–Turing machine
Further information: category:computational models
The Curta calculator can also do multiplication and division
By the 1900s, earlier mechanical calculators, cash registers, accounting machines, and so on were redesigned to use electric motors, with gear position as the representation for the state of a variable. In the 1920s Lewis Fry Richardson's interest in weather prediction led him to study numerical analysis; to this day, the most powerful computers on Earth are needed to adequately model the Navier-Stokes equations, which are used to model the weather. Companies like Friden, Marchant Calculator and Monroe made desktop mechanical calculators from the 1930s that could add, subtract, multiply and divide. The word "computer" was a job title assigned to people who used these calculators to perform mathematical calculations. During the Manhattan project, future Nobel laureate Richard Feynman was the supervisor of the roomful of human computers, many of them women mathematicians, who understood the differential equations which were being solved for the war effort. Even the renowned Stanisław Ulam was pressed into service to translate the mathematics into computable approximations for the hydrogen bomb, after the war.
In 1948, the Curta was introduced. This was a small, portable, mechanical calculator that was about the size of a pepper grinder. Over time, during the 1950s and 1960s a variety of different brands of mechanical calculator appeared on the market. The first all-electronic desktop calculator was the British ANITA Mk.VII, which used a Nixie tube display and 177 subminiature thyratron tubes. In June 1963, Friden introduced the four-function EC-130. It had an all-transistor design, 13-digit capacity on a 5-inch (130 mm) CRT, and introduced reverse Polish notation (RPN) to the calculator market at a price of $2200. The model EC-132 added square root and reciprocal functions. In 1965, Wang Laboratories produced the LOCI-2, a 10-digit transistorized desktop calculator that used a Nixie tube display and could compute logarithms.
[edit] Advanced analog computers
Main article: analogy
Cambridge differential analyzer, 1938
Before World War II, mechanical and electrical analog computers were considered the "state of the art", and many thought they were the future of computing. Analog computers take advantage of the strong similarities between the mathematics of small-scale properties — the position and motion of wheels or the voltage and current of electronic components — and the mathematics of other physical phenomena, e.g. ballistic trajectories, inertia, resonance, energy transfer, momentum, etc.[31]
Modeling physical phenomena with electrical voltages and currents[32][33][34] as the analog quantities, yields great advantage over using mechanical models:
1) Electrical components are smaller and cheaper; they're more easily constructed and exercised.
2) Though otherwise similar, electrical phenomena can be made to occur in conveniently short time frames.
Centrally, these analog systems work by creating electrical analogs of other systems, allowing users to predict behavior of the systems of interest by observing the electrical analogs. The most useful of the analogies was the way the small-scale behavior could be represented with integral and differential equations, and could be thus used to solve those equations. An ingenious example of such a machine, using water as the analog quantity, was the water integrator built in 1928; an electrical example is the Mallock machine built in 1941. A planimeter is a device which does integrals, using distance as the analog quantity. Until the 1980s, HVAC systems used air both as the analog quantity and the controlling element. Unlike modern digital computers, analog computers are not very flexible, and need to be reconfigured (i.e., reprogrammed) manually to switch them from working on one problem to another. Analog computers had an advantage over early digital computers in that they could be used to solve complex problems using behavioral analogues while the earliest attempts at digital computers were quite limited.
A Smith Chart is a well-known nomogram.
Since computers were rare in this era, the solutions were often hard-coded into paper forms such as graphs and nomograms,[35] which could then produce analog solutions to these problems, such as the distribution of pressures and temperatures in a heating system. Some of the most widely deployed analog computers included devices for aiming weapons, such as the Norden bombsight[36] and the fire-control systems, [37] such as Arthur Pollen's Argo system for naval vessels. Some stayed in use for decades after WWII; the Mark I Fire Control Computer was deployed by the United States Navy on a variety of ships from destroyers to battleships. Other analog computers included the Heathkit EC-1, and the hydraulic MONIAC Computer which modeled econometric flows.[38]
The art of analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer,[39] invented in 1876 by James Thomson and built by H. W. Nieman and Vannevar Bush at MIT starting in 1927. Fewer than a dozen of these devices were ever built; the most powerful was constructed at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, where the ENIAC was built. Digital electronic computers like the ENIAC spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but hybrid analog computers, controlled by digital electronics, remained in substantial use into the 1950s and 1960s, and later in some specialized applications. But like all digital devices, the decimal precision of a digital device is a limitation,[40] as compared to an analog device, in which the accuracy is a limitation.[41] As electronics progressed during the twentieth century, its problems of operation at low voltages while maintaining high signal-to-noise ratios[42] were steadily addressed, as shown below, for a digital circuit is a specialized form of analog circuit, intended to operate at standardized settings (continuing in the same vein, logic gates can be realized as forms of digital circuits). But as digital computers have become faster and use larger memory (e.g., RAM or internal storage), they have almost entirely displaced analog computers. Computer programming, or coding, has arisen as another human profession.
[edit] Early digital computers
See also: computer science
Punched tape programs would be much longer than the short fragment shown.
The era of modern computing began with a flurry of development before and during World War II, as electronic circuit elements [43] replaced mechanical equivalents and digital calculations replaced analog calculations. Machines such as the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, the Z3, the Colossus, and the ENIAC were built by hand using circuits containing relays or valves (vacuum tubes), and often used punched cards or punched paper tape for input and as the main (non-volatile) storage medium.
In this era, a number of different machines were produced with steadily advancing capabilities. At the beginning of this period, nothing remotely resembling a modern computer existed, except in the long-lost plans of Charles Babbage and the mathematical musings of Alan Turing and others. At the end of the era, devices like the EDSAC had been built, and are universally agreed to be digital computers. Defining a single point in the series as the "first computer" misses many subtleties (see the table "Defining characteristics of some early digital computers of the 1940s" below).
Alan Turing's 1936 paper[44] proved enormously influential in computing and computer science in two ways. Its main purpose was to prove that there were problems (namely the halting problem) that could not be solved by any sequential process. In doing so, Turing provided a definition of a universal computer which executes a program stored on tape. This construct came to be called a Turing machine; it replaces Kurt Gödel's more cumbersome universal language based on arithmetics. Except for the limitations imposed by their finite memory stores, modern computers are said to be Turing-complete, which is to say, they have algorithm execution capability equivalent to a universal Turing machine. This limited type of Turing completeness is sometimes viewed as a threshold capability separating general-purpose computers from their special-purpose predecessors.
Design of the von Neumann architecture (1947)
For a computing machine to be a practical general-purpose computer, there must be some convenient read-write mechanism, punched tape, for example. With a knowledge of Alan Turing's theoretical 'universal computing machine' John von Neumann defined an architecture which uses the same memory both to store programs and data: virtually all contemporary computers use this architecture (or some variant). While it is theoretically possible to implement a full computer entirely mechanically (as Babbage's design showed), electronics made possible the speed and later the miniaturization that characterize modern computers.
There were three parallel streams of computer development in the World War II era; the first stream largely ignored, and the second stream deliberately kept secret. The first was the German work of Konrad Zuse. The second was the secret development of the Colossus computer in the UK. Neither of these had much influence on the various computing projects in the United States. The third stream of computer development, Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC and EDVAC, was widely publicized.[45][46]
[edit] Program-controlled computers
Main articles: Konrad Zuse, Z1, Z2, Z3, and Z4
A reproduction of Zuse's Z1 computer.
Working in isolation in Germany, Konrad Zuse started construction in 1936 of his first Z-series calculators featuring memory and (initially limited) programmability. Zuse's purely mechanical, but already binary Z1, finished in 1938, never worked reliably due to problems with the precision of parts.
Zuse's subsequent machine, the Z3[47], was finished in 1941. It was based on telephone relays and did work satisfactorily. The Z3 thus became the first functional program-controlled, all-purpose, digital computer. In many ways it was quite similar to modern machines, pioneering numerous advances, such as floating point numbers. Replacement of the hard-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design) by the simpler binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. This is sometimes viewed as the main reason why Zuse succeeded where Babbage failed.
Programs were fed into Z3 on punched films. Conditional jumps were missing, but since the 1990s it has been proved theoretically that Z3 was still a universal computer (ignoring its physical storage size limitations). In two 1936 patent applications, Konrad Zuse also anticipated that machine instructions could be stored in the same storage used for data – the key insight of what became known as the von Neumann architecture and was first implemented in the later British EDSAC design (1949). Zuse also claimed to have designed the first higher-level programming language, (Plankalkül), in 1945 (which was published in 1948) although it was implemented for the first time in 2000 by a team around Raúl Rojas at the Free University of Berlin – five years after Zuse died.
Zuse suffered setbacks during World War II when some of his machines were destroyed in the course of Allied bombing campaigns. Apparently his work remained largely unknown to engineers in the UK and US until much later, although at least IBM was aware of it as it financed his post-war startup company in 1946 in return for an option on Zuse's patents.
[edit] Colossus
Main article: Colossus computer
Colossus was used to break German ciphers during World War II.
During World War II, the British at Bletchley Park (40 miles north of London) achieved a number of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma, was attacked with the help of electro-mechanical machines called bombes. The bombe, designed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, after the Polish cryptographic bomba by Marian Rejewski (1938) came into use in 1941.[48] They ruled out possible Enigma settings by performing chains of logical deductions implemented electrically. Most possibilities led to a contradiction, and the few remaining could be tested by hand.
The Germans also developed a series of teleprinter encryption systems, quite different from Enigma. The Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine was used for high-level Army communications, termed "Tunny" by the British. The first intercepts of Lorenz messages began in 1941. As part of an attack on Tunny, Professor Max Newman and his colleagues helped specify the Colossus[49]. The Mk I Colossus was built between March and December 1943 by Tommy Flowers and his colleagues at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill in London and then shipped to Bletchley Park.
Colossus was the first totally electronic computing device. The Colossus used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Details of their existence, design, and use were kept secret well into the 1970s. Winston Churchill personally issued an order for their destruction into pieces no larger than a man's hand. Due to this secrecy the Colossi were not included in many histories of computing. A reconstructed copy of one of the Colossus machines is now on display at Bletchley Park.
[edit] American developments
Further information: Claude Shannon, George Stibitz, John Vincent Atanasoff, Clifford E. Berry, John Mauchly, and Howard Aiken
In 1937, Shannon produced his master's thesis[50] at MIT that implemented Boolean algebra using electronic relays and switches for the first time in history. Entitled A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits, Shannon's thesis essentially founded practical digital circuit design. George Stibitz completed a relay-based computer he dubbed the "Model K" at Bell Labs in November 1937. Bell Labs authorized a full research program in late 1938 with Stibitz at the helm. Their Complex Number Calculator,[51] completed January 8, 1940, was able to calculate complex numbers. In a demonstration to the American Mathematical Society conference at Dartmouth College on September 11, 1940, Stibitz was able to send the Complex Number Calculator remote commands over telephone lines by a teletype. It was the first computing machine ever used remotely, in this case over a phone line. Some participants in the conference who witnessed the demonstration were John von Neumann, John Mauchly, and Norbert Wiener, who wrote about it in their memoirs.
Atanasoff–Berry Computer replica at 1st floor of Durham Center, Iowa State University
In 1939, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC),[52]a special purpose digital electronic calculator for solving systems of linear equations. (The original goal was to solve 29 simultaneous equations of 29 unknowns each. However the punch card mechanism has encountered some fatal errors during the process, the completed machine was only able to solve a few equations in its completed form.) The design used over 300 vacuum tubes for high speed and employed capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory. Though the ABC machine was not programmable, it was the first to use electronic circuits. ENIAC co-inventor John Mauchly examined the ABC in June 1941, and its influence on the design of the later ENIAC machine is a matter of contention among computer historians. The ABC was largely forgotten until it became the focus of the lawsuit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, the ruling of which invalidated the ENIAC patent (and several others) as, among many reasons, having been anticipated by Atanasoff's work.
In 1939, development began at IBM's Endicott laboratories on the Harvard Mark I. Known officially as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator,[53] the Mark I was a general purpose electro-mechanical computer built with IBM financing and with assistance from IBM personnel, under the direction of Harvard mathematician Howard Aiken. Its design was influenced by Babbage's Analytical Engine, using decimal arithmetic and storage wheels and rotary switches in addition to electromagnetic relays. It was programmable via punched paper tape, and contained several calculation units working in parallel. Later versions contained several paper tape readers and the machine could switch between readers based on a condition. Nevertheless, the machine was not quite Turing-complete. The Mark I was moved to Harvard University and began operation in May 1944.
[edit] ENIAC
Main article: ENIAC
ENIAC performed ballistics trajectory calculations with 160 kW of power.
The US-built ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer. Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, it was 1,000 times faster than the Harvard Mark I. ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full operation at the end of 1945.
When its design was proposed, many researchers believed that the thousands of delicate valves (i.e. vacuum tubes) would burn out often enough that the ENIAC would be so frequently down for repairs as to be useless. It was, however, capable of up to thousands of operations per second for hours at a time between valve failures. It proved to the potential consumers that electronics could be useful for large-scale computing. The support from the public proved to be very crucial in the future.
ENIAC was unambiguously a Turing-complete device. A "program" on the ENIAC, however, was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that evolved from it. To program it meant to rewire it.[54] (Improvements completed in 1948 made it possible to execute stored programs set in function table memory, which made programming less a "one-off" effort, and more systematic.) It was possible to run operations in parallel, as it could be wired to operate multiple accumulators simultaneously. Thus the sequential operation which is the hallmark of a von Neumann machine occurred after ENIAC.
[edit] First-generation von Neumann machines
Main article: algorithm
Further information: mainframe computer
Even before the ENIAC was finished, Eckert and Mauchly recognized its limitations and started the design of a stored-program computer, EDVAC. John von Neumann was credited with a widely-circulated report describing the EDVAC design in which both the programs and working data were stored in a single, unified store. This basic design, denoted the von Neumann architecture, would serve as the foundation for the world-wide development of ENIAC's successors.[55]
Nine-track magnetic tape.
Magnetic core memory. Each core is one bit.
In this generation of equipment, temporary or working storage was provided by acoustic delay lines, which used the propagation time of sound through a medium such as liquid mercury (or through a wire) to briefly store data. As series of acoustic pulses is sent along a tube; after a time, as the pulse reached the end of the tube, the circuitry detected whether the pulse represented a 1 or 0 and caused the oscillator to re-send the pulse. Others used Williams tubes, which use the ability of a television picture tube to store and retrieve data. By 1954, magnetic core memory[56] was rapidly displacing most other forms of temporary storage, and dominated the field through the mid-1970s.
The first working von Neumann machine was the Manchester "Baby" or Small-Scale Experimental Machine, developed by Frederic C. Williams and Tom Kilburn and built at the University of Manchester in 1948;[57] it was followed in 1949 by the Manchester Mark I computer which functioned as a complete system using the Williams tube and magnetic drum for memory, and also introduced index registers.[58] The other contender for the title "first digital stored program computer" had been EDSAC, designed and constructed at the University of Cambridge. Operational less than one year after the Manchester "Baby", it was also capable of tackling real problems. EDSAC was actually inspired by plans for EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), the successor to ENIAC; these plans were already in place by the time ENIAC was successfully operational. Unlike ENIAC, which used parallel processing, EDVAC used a single processing unit. This design was simpler and was the first to be implemented in each succeeding wave of miniaturization, and increased reliability. Some view Manchester Mark I / EDSAC / EDVAC as the "Eves" from which nearly all current computers derive their architecture. Manchester University's machine became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark I. The first Ferranti Mark I machine was delivered to the University in February, 1951 and at least nine others were sold between 1951 and 1957.
The first universal programmable computer in the Soviet Union was created by a team of scientists under direction of Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev from Kiev Institute of Electrotechnology, Soviet Union (now Ukraine). The computer MESM (МЭСМ, Small Electronic Calculating Machine) became operational in 1950. It had about 6,000 vacuum tubes and consumed 25 kW of power. It could perform approximately 3,000 operations per second. Another early machine was CSIRAC, an Australian design that ran its first test program in 1949. CSIRAC is the oldest computer still in existence and the first to have been used to play digital music.[59]
In October 1947, the directors of J. Lyons & Company, a British catering company famous for its teashops but with strong interests in new office management techniques, decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers. By 1951 the LEO I computer was operational and ran the world's first regular routine office computer job. In November 1951, the J. Lyons company began weekly operation of a bakery valuations job on the LEO (Lyons Electronic Office). This was the first business application to go live on a stored program computer.
Defining characteristics of some early digital computers of the 1940s (See History of computing hardware)
Name
First operational
Numeral system
Computing mechanism
Programming
Turing complete
Zuse Z3 (Germany)
May 1941
Binary
Electro-mechanical
Program-controlled by punched film stock
Yes (1998)
Atanasoff–Berry Computer (USA)
Summer 1941
Binary
Electronic
Not programmable
No
Colossus (UK)
December 1943
Binary
Electronic
Program-controlled by patch cables and switches
No
Harvard Mark I – IBM ASCC (USA)
1944
Decimal
Electro-mechanical
Program-controlled by 24-channel punched paper tape (but no conditional branch)
Yes (1998)
ENIAC (USA)
November 1945
Decimal
Electronic
Program-controlled by patch cables and switches
Yes
Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (UK)
June 1948
Binary
Electronic
Stored-program in Williams cathode ray tube memory
Yes
Modified ENIAC (USA)
September 1948
Decimal
Electronic
Program-controlled by patch cables and switches plus a primitive read-only stored programming mechanism using the Function Tables as program ROM
Yes
EDSAC (UK)
May 1949
Binary
Electronic
Stored-program in mercury delay line memory
Yes
Manchester Mark I (UK)
October 1949
Binary
Electronic
Williams cathode ray tube memory and magnetic drum memory
Yes
CSIRAC (Australia)
November 1949
Binary
Electronic
Stored-program in mercury delay line memory
Yes
In June 1951, the UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer) was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau. Remington Rand eventually sold 46 machines at more than $1 million each. UNIVAC was the first 'mass produced' computer; all predecessors had been 'one-off' units. It used 5,200 vacuum tubes and consumed 125 kW of power. It used a mercury delay line capable of storing 1,000 words of 11 decimal digits plus sign (72-bit words) for memory. Unlike IBM machines it was not equipped with a punch card reader but 1930s style metal magnetic tape input, making it incompatible with some existing commercial data stores. High speed punched paper tape and modern-style magnetic tapes were used for input/output by other computers of the era.[60]
In 1952, IBM publicly announced the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, the first in its successful 700/7000 series and its first IBM mainframe computer. The IBM 704, introduced in 1954, used magnetic core memory, which became the standard for large machines. The first implemented high-level general purpose programming language, Fortran, was also being developed at IBM for the 704 during 1955 and 1956 and released in early 1957. (Konrad Zuse's 1945 design of the high-level language Plankalkül was not implemented at that time.) A user group, was founded in 1955 to share their software and experiences with the IBM 701; this group, which exists to this day, was a progenitor of open source.
IBM 650 front panel wiring.
IBM introduced a smaller, more affordable computer in 1954 that proved very popular. The IBM 650 weighed over 900 kg, the attached power supply weighed around 1350 kg and both were held in separate cabinets of roughly 1.5 meters by 0.9 meters by 1.8 meters. It cost $500,000 or could be leased for $3,500 a month. Its drum memory was originally only 2000 ten-digit words, and required arcane programming for efficient computing. Memory limitations such as this were to dominate programming for decades afterward, until the evolution of hardware capabilities and a programming model that were more sympathetic to software development.
In 1955, Maurice Wilkes invented microprogramming,[61] which was later widely used in the CPUs and floating-point units of mainframe and other computers, such as the IBM 360 series. Microprogramming allows the base instruction set to be defined or extended by built-in programs (now called firmware or microcode).[62],[63]
In 1956, IBM sold its first magnetic disk system, RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control). It used 50 24-inch (610 mm) metal disks, with 100 tracks per side. It could store 5 megabytes of data and cost $10,000 per megabyte. (As of 2008, magnetic storage, in the form of hard disks, costs less than one 50th of a cent per megabyte).
Friday, June 6, 2008
for those who want to know about this famous site for children
Development on Club Penguin began in 2003 when Lane Merrifield and Lance Priebe, employees at New Horizon Productions (which became New Horizon Interactive in 2005) in Kelowna, British Columbia,[3] saw a need for "social networking for kids".[4] As Merrifield later described the situation, they decided to build Club Penguin when they were unsuccessful in finding "something that had some social components but was safe, and not just marketed as safe" for their own children.[5] Merrifield and Priebe approached their employer, David Krisko, with the idea of creating a spinoff company to develop the new product.[3]
Prior to starting work on Club Penguin, Lance Priebe had been developing Flash web-based games in his spare time.[6] As part of Rocketsnail Games, Priebe released Experimental Penguins in 2000, which featured gameplay similar to that which was incorporated into Club Penguin. Although Experimental Penguins went offline in 2001, it was used as the inspiration for Penguin Chat, which was first released by Rocketsnail Games in January, 2003. Therefore, when Priebe, Merrifield and Krisko decided to go ahead with Club Penguin in 2003, they had Penguin Chat to inform part of the design process. After two years of testing and development, the first version of Club Penguin went live on October 24, 2005.[1].
Growth was rapid. Club Penguin started with 15,000 users, and by March that number had reached 1.4 million—a figure which almost doubled by September, when it hit 2.6 million.[3] By the time Club Penguin was two years old, membership had reached 3.9 million users.[7] At the point when they were purchased by Disney, Club Penguin had 12 million accounts, of which 70,000 were paid subscribers, and were generating $40 million in revenue.[8]
Although the owners had turned down lucrative advertising offers and venture capital investments in the past,[3] in August 2007 they agreed to sell the company (both Club Penguin and the parent company) for the sum of $350 million.[8] In addition, the owners were promised bonuses of up to $350 million if they were able to meet growth targets by 2009.[9] In making the sale, Merrifield has stated that their main focus during negotiations was philosophical,[5] and that the intent was to provide themselves with the needed infrastructure in order to continue to grow.[4]
On March 11, 2008 Club Penguin released The Club Penguin Improvement Project (CPIP).[10] This project allowed players to be part of the testing of new servers put into use in Club Penguin on April 14, 2008.[11] Players had a "clone" of their penguin made, to test these new servers for bugs and glitches.[12] The testing was ended on April 4, 2008.[13]
Business model
Prior to being purchased by Disney, Club Penguin was almost entirely dependent on membership fees to produce a revenue stream.[14] Nevertheless, the vast majority of members (90% according to The Washington Post) chose not to pay, instead taking advantage of the free memberships on offer.[15] Those who choose to pay do so because full (paid) membership is required to access all of the services, such as the ability to purchase virtual clothes for the penguins and buy decorations for igloos;[16] and because peer pressure has created a "caste system" separating paid from unpaid members.[17] Advertising, both in-game and on-site, have not been incorporated into the system, although some competitors have chosen to employ it: for example Whyville, which uses corporate sponsorship,[18] and Neopets, which incorporates product placements.[19] After Club Penguin was purchased by Disney, concerns were raised that this lack of advertising may change,[20] but Disney insisted that they believe advertising to be "inappropriate" for a young audience.[19]
An alternative revenue stream has come through the development of an online merchandise shop, which opened on the Club Penguin website in August 2006,[21] selling stuffed Puffles and T-shirts. Key chains, gift cards, and more shirts were added on November 7, 2006.[22]
As with its rival, Webkinz, Club Penguin has traditionally relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth advertising to increase the membership.[23]
Child safety
One of the major concerns when designing Club Penguin was how to ensure the safety of participants. As Lane Merrifield stated, "the decision to build Club Penguin grew out of a desire to create a fun, virtual world that I and the site's other two founders would feel safe letting our own children visit."[24] As a result, Club Penguin has maintained a strong focus on child safety,[25] to the point whereby the security features have been described as almost "fastidious" and "reminiscent of an Orwellian dystopia".[26] At the same time, it is argued that this focus is likely to "reassure more parents than it alienates."[26]
The system uses a number of different approaches in order to maintain a high level of security. The key approaches include:
Preventing the use of inappropriate usernames.[27]
Providing an "Ultimate-Safe Chat" mode, which limits players to selecting phrases from a list.[25]
Using an automatic filter during "Open Chat" (which allows users to generate their own messages).[28] In particular, profanity is blocked, even when users employ "creative" methods to insert it into sentences.[27] In addition, even some seemingly innocuous terms are filtered, such as "mom", and both email addresses and telephone numbers are blocked.[25]
Employing paid moderators. Out of 100 staff employed in the company in May 2007, Merrifield estimated that approximately 70 staff were dedicated to policing the game.[23]
Promoting some veteran users to "secret agent" status, and encouraging them to report inappropriate behavior.[25]
Each game server offers a particular type of chat—the majority allowing either chat mode, but some servers allow only the "Ultimate-Safe Chat" mode. When using "Open Chat", all comments made by users are filtered. When a comment is blocked, the user who made the comment sees it, but other users are unaware that it was made—suggesting to the "speaker" that they are being ignored, rather than encouraging them to try and find a way around the restriction.[25]
Beyond these primary measures, systems are in place to limit the amount of time spent online, and the site does not feature any advertisements, for, as described by Merrifield, "within two or three clicks, a kid could be on a gambling site or an adult dating site".[23]
Players who use profanity are often punished by an automatic 24-hour ban, although not all vulgar language results in an immediate ban. After being caught using profane language on a second or third occasion, players may be banned for 72 hours. Players caught cheating Club Penguin are banned for a much longer time period. After 3 to 5 bans, a player is banned indefinitely from the game.[29]
Memberships
Subscribed memberships
A typical Club Penguin member player card.
Players may become subscribed members and doing so grants them additional in-game benefits. They may buy clothing and furniture, own up to fourteen Puffles (the pets of Club Penguin), enjoy early access to new parts of the game, buy furniture for their puffles, and have access to all puffle breeds. A brand new catalogue only for members contains hairstyles. Members also have access to Members-only parties hosted by Club Penguin.[30] Members may also open their igloo to visits by other players.
Club Penguin recently released game cards available for retail purchase, initially at Target stores in the United States, enabling players to buy their own membership.[31]
Non-memberships
Club Penguin provides a non-membership option. Although such play is free, it does not include all of the benefits of being a member. Non-members may still buy different colors for their penguins, buy player-card backgrounds, travel to any place in the Club Penguin world (except during members-only parties), and play games. Non-members may also receive and use items given out at parties that are held monthly for all players. Non-members are restricted to only two red or blue puffles. If a former member once owned puffles, they may be kept, although no new member-only puffles may be bought. Non-members can not purchase clothes, furniture, wigs, hats, or igloo upgrades. Non-Members also may collect 'pins' to put on their backgrounds, but may not buy them in a catalog.[citation needed]
Beta testers
During the beta stages of Club Penguin's development, anyone could sign up to be a beta tester. Beta testers received special benefits upon the official release of Club Penguin, such as a month of paid membership, coins, a pink and yellow party hat, and the option to have any letter of their name in uppercase/lowercase letters. This privilege is not extended to regular players, whose names can only contain one capital letter, and only at the beginning of their name. Beta testers are considered to be extremely rare.[citation needed]
Environment
The map of Club Penguin
Club Penguin is divided into various rooms and distinct areas. Each player is provided with an igloo for a home. Members have the option of opening their igloo so other penguins can access it via the map. Members may also purchase larger igloos and decorate their igloos with items bought with virtual coins earned by playing mini-games.
Many game locations can be accessed by clicking on the Club Penguin map. Some places are reached by clicking their general area on the map and then walking the penguin to the specific location. Other places are only available for access on certain days or at certain times.
Notable places within Club Penguin
Rooms
Games in Rooms
Other Rooms
The Town
Beans (Coffee Shop), Mancala (Book Room) Thin Ice (Dance Lounge), Astro Barrier (Dance Lounge)
Coffee Shop (Book Room), Night Club (Lounge), Gift Shop
The Plaza
Puffle Round-Up (Pet Shop), Pizzatron 3000 (Pizza Parlor)
Pet Shop, The Stage, Pizza Parlor
The Cove
Catchin' Waves
None
Forest
None
Treehouse (during Medieval Party of May 2008)
The Snow Forts
None
Ice Rink
The Dock
Hydro-Hopper
None
The Beach
Treasure Hunt (Captains Quarters) (only avaliable when Rockhopper visits), Jet Pack Adventure (Beacon)
Migrator (Not Always Avaliable)(Ship's Hold, Crow's Nest and Captain's Quarters), Lighthouse (Beacon)
Ski Village
Ice Fishing (Ski Lodge)
Ski Lodge, Sport Shop
Mountain
Sled Racing
None
The Dojo (Hidden)
None
None
Mine (Hidden)
Cart Surfer (Underground)
Cave (Pool)
Iceberg (Hidden)
Aqua Grabber
None
Rockhopper's ship (Not always avaliable)
Treasure Hunt (quarters)
Captain's Quarters, Ship Hold, Main Deck, Crow's Nest
Treehouse (during Medieval Party of May 2008)
None
None
The Stage
The Stage was released in November 2007, in the Plaza, between the Pet Shop and the Pizza Parlor. In the stage, penguins can act out plays. Subscribed members may buy costumes for the play, an option that non-members do not have. The script for the play is located at the bottom right corner of the screen. When clicked, a list of lines is brought up. Each month, a new play is released. The names of all of the plays are listed below.
Month
Play
November 2007
Space Adventure
December 2007
Twelth Fish
January 2008
Squidzoid vs. Shadow Guy and Gamma Gal
February 2008
Team Blue's Rally Debut
March 2008
Space Adventure (Encore)
April 2008
Quest for the Golden Puffle
May 2008
Twelfth Fish (Encore)
Game features
Emoticons
Players can express their feelings with emoticons. There are numerous emoticons, such as a happy face, a sad face, angry, winking, etc. The emoticons appear above the avatar's head in a speech bubble. There are also secret emoticons that may be unlocked by holding down letters on the keyboard (e.g. holding down E and I produces the igloo emoticon). On December 5, 2007, the heart and skull emoticons were removed because players found these offensive, and were replaced with the flower emoticon. On January 9, 2008 the heart emoticon was brought back as a result of popular demand by players.[citation needed]
Items
Players may use the virtual coins that they collect from playing mini games to purchase various items from a wide variety of shops. Shop types include clothing, wigs, stage costumes, igloos, furniture, and sports.
Players are allowed to change the color of their penguin at certain shops. Each color bought is saved into the penguin's card, allowing the player to access and change the color of their penguin as often as they wish. Backgrounds are also available for players to purchase. Backgrounds are placed behind the penguin's picture on their penguin card and can also be switched with other backgrounds freely. Every month, up to two to four backgrounds are released. Backgrounds and colors can be bought by non-members.
New pins appear within Club Penguin every two weeks and display in the top left-hand corner of a player's penguin card. Pins are free, but are hidden throughout the game. A special Christmas Tree Pin was made available during late 2006. On January 4, 2008, Club Penguin hid their 50th pin, a snow shovel. Flags are similar to pins; they also appear in the top left-hand corner of a player's lookup card. Flags can only be worn one at a time and can only be bought by Members.
Clothes are worn by penguins, which can either be bought or is given out during parties. Only members can buy clothes, but those given out at parties are wearable by all penguins.
Members' igloos can be upgraded into many different styles. Some igloo styles are themed for parties, such as the Bamboo Hut or Log Cabin. Furniture may be bought for the igloos of subscribed members and can be used to design and decorate an igloo. Flooring for an igloo (introduced January 19, 2007) is also only accessible by subscribed members.[citation needed]
Puffles
Puffles are small, fluffy creatures that players may have as pets. They are available from the Pet Shop in blue, green, pink, black, purple, red, and newly released yellow. Non-members have access to the blue and red puffles only, and may have no more than two; members may adopt up to fourteen puffles. Puffles have health, rest, and energy bar charts to indicate their status. Members whose membership has expired may still keep the puffles, unless they run away.
There are seven official breeds of puffles, each with a different personality.
Blue Puffles are mild tempered and content. Their favorite toy is a ball. Blue Puffles can be adopted by anyone in Club Penguin. Blue Puffles were the first puffle breed in Club Penguin and are loyal, making them very popular.
Green Puffles are very energetic and playful. They like to clown around on their unicycles or play with their propeller caps.
Purple Puffles are lots of fun to have around. They enjoy blowing bubbles and are terrific dancers, but they can be a bit fussy, especially at meal time.
Red Puffles are adventurous and enthusiastic. They are fearless when attempting daring tricks (except in the survival mode of Catchin' Waves) and spend a lot of their playful energy on a surf board. Rockhopper brought these puffles to Club Penguin on his ship from Rockhopper Island. These, like the Blue Puffles can be adopted by anyone on Club Penguin.
Pink Puffles are very active and cheery. They love to exercise by jumping rope or playing on their trampolines.
Black Puffles are known to be mischievous and short-tempered. However, they love to play and make a great pet for anyone who likes a little bit of personality. They sometimes catch on fire and will turn red for a short period of time.
Yellow Puffles were added November 30, 2007. They love art and are very active. When playing, Yellow Puffles either will choose between going to paint or film a movie.[citation needed]
The Penguin Times
Club Penguin has a free virtual weekly newspaper delivered every Thursday. It contains news about Club Penguin and features games, comics, polls, and more. It also has an advice column where a player can write to Aunt Arctic and ask questions about Club Penguin. Any penguin can submit questions, comics, jokes, and riddles to The Penguin Times, which will be chosen and displayed in the next issue. The Boiler Room under the Night Club contains an archive of newspapers from the last six weeks.[32]
Calendar dates
Each newspaper edition includes a list of dates that summarize when the next pin will be hidden, when upcoming parties or Club Penguin events will take place, or any other information on changes to games, rooms, the newspaper, or any other interesting information in general.[citation needed]
Submissions
Players are able to submit jokes, riddles, poems, comics, Fan Art, news articles, tips or secrets, and questions to Aunt Arctic. Each week, a few submissions are picked and displayed. As of the 3rd of April, 2008, Aunt Arctic announced that due to a promotion to Chief Editor, players were now able to submit articles, or tips to the Penguin Times, as well as the usual additions. These submissions now have their own unique place in the newspaper, rather than being in a separate pop-up, as they previously were. This new system also allows penguins to submit questions, which Aunt Arctic replies to every week.[citation needed]
courtesy of: wikipedia
Prior to starting work on Club Penguin, Lance Priebe had been developing Flash web-based games in his spare time.[6] As part of Rocketsnail Games, Priebe released Experimental Penguins in 2000, which featured gameplay similar to that which was incorporated into Club Penguin. Although Experimental Penguins went offline in 2001, it was used as the inspiration for Penguin Chat, which was first released by Rocketsnail Games in January, 2003. Therefore, when Priebe, Merrifield and Krisko decided to go ahead with Club Penguin in 2003, they had Penguin Chat to inform part of the design process. After two years of testing and development, the first version of Club Penguin went live on October 24, 2005.[1].
Growth was rapid. Club Penguin started with 15,000 users, and by March that number had reached 1.4 million—a figure which almost doubled by September, when it hit 2.6 million.[3] By the time Club Penguin was two years old, membership had reached 3.9 million users.[7] At the point when they were purchased by Disney, Club Penguin had 12 million accounts, of which 70,000 were paid subscribers, and were generating $40 million in revenue.[8]
Although the owners had turned down lucrative advertising offers and venture capital investments in the past,[3] in August 2007 they agreed to sell the company (both Club Penguin and the parent company) for the sum of $350 million.[8] In addition, the owners were promised bonuses of up to $350 million if they were able to meet growth targets by 2009.[9] In making the sale, Merrifield has stated that their main focus during negotiations was philosophical,[5] and that the intent was to provide themselves with the needed infrastructure in order to continue to grow.[4]
On March 11, 2008 Club Penguin released The Club Penguin Improvement Project (CPIP).[10] This project allowed players to be part of the testing of new servers put into use in Club Penguin on April 14, 2008.[11] Players had a "clone" of their penguin made, to test these new servers for bugs and glitches.[12] The testing was ended on April 4, 2008.[13]
Business model
Prior to being purchased by Disney, Club Penguin was almost entirely dependent on membership fees to produce a revenue stream.[14] Nevertheless, the vast majority of members (90% according to The Washington Post) chose not to pay, instead taking advantage of the free memberships on offer.[15] Those who choose to pay do so because full (paid) membership is required to access all of the services, such as the ability to purchase virtual clothes for the penguins and buy decorations for igloos;[16] and because peer pressure has created a "caste system" separating paid from unpaid members.[17] Advertising, both in-game and on-site, have not been incorporated into the system, although some competitors have chosen to employ it: for example Whyville, which uses corporate sponsorship,[18] and Neopets, which incorporates product placements.[19] After Club Penguin was purchased by Disney, concerns were raised that this lack of advertising may change,[20] but Disney insisted that they believe advertising to be "inappropriate" for a young audience.[19]
An alternative revenue stream has come through the development of an online merchandise shop, which opened on the Club Penguin website in August 2006,[21] selling stuffed Puffles and T-shirts. Key chains, gift cards, and more shirts were added on November 7, 2006.[22]
As with its rival, Webkinz, Club Penguin has traditionally relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth advertising to increase the membership.[23]
Child safety
One of the major concerns when designing Club Penguin was how to ensure the safety of participants. As Lane Merrifield stated, "the decision to build Club Penguin grew out of a desire to create a fun, virtual world that I and the site's other two founders would feel safe letting our own children visit."[24] As a result, Club Penguin has maintained a strong focus on child safety,[25] to the point whereby the security features have been described as almost "fastidious" and "reminiscent of an Orwellian dystopia".[26] At the same time, it is argued that this focus is likely to "reassure more parents than it alienates."[26]
The system uses a number of different approaches in order to maintain a high level of security. The key approaches include:
Preventing the use of inappropriate usernames.[27]
Providing an "Ultimate-Safe Chat" mode, which limits players to selecting phrases from a list.[25]
Using an automatic filter during "Open Chat" (which allows users to generate their own messages).[28] In particular, profanity is blocked, even when users employ "creative" methods to insert it into sentences.[27] In addition, even some seemingly innocuous terms are filtered, such as "mom", and both email addresses and telephone numbers are blocked.[25]
Employing paid moderators. Out of 100 staff employed in the company in May 2007, Merrifield estimated that approximately 70 staff were dedicated to policing the game.[23]
Promoting some veteran users to "secret agent" status, and encouraging them to report inappropriate behavior.[25]
Each game server offers a particular type of chat—the majority allowing either chat mode, but some servers allow only the "Ultimate-Safe Chat" mode. When using "Open Chat", all comments made by users are filtered. When a comment is blocked, the user who made the comment sees it, but other users are unaware that it was made—suggesting to the "speaker" that they are being ignored, rather than encouraging them to try and find a way around the restriction.[25]
Beyond these primary measures, systems are in place to limit the amount of time spent online, and the site does not feature any advertisements, for, as described by Merrifield, "within two or three clicks, a kid could be on a gambling site or an adult dating site".[23]
Players who use profanity are often punished by an automatic 24-hour ban, although not all vulgar language results in an immediate ban. After being caught using profane language on a second or third occasion, players may be banned for 72 hours. Players caught cheating Club Penguin are banned for a much longer time period. After 3 to 5 bans, a player is banned indefinitely from the game.[29]
Memberships
Subscribed memberships
A typical Club Penguin member player card.
Players may become subscribed members and doing so grants them additional in-game benefits. They may buy clothing and furniture, own up to fourteen Puffles (the pets of Club Penguin), enjoy early access to new parts of the game, buy furniture for their puffles, and have access to all puffle breeds. A brand new catalogue only for members contains hairstyles. Members also have access to Members-only parties hosted by Club Penguin.[30] Members may also open their igloo to visits by other players.
Club Penguin recently released game cards available for retail purchase, initially at Target stores in the United States, enabling players to buy their own membership.[31]
Non-memberships
Club Penguin provides a non-membership option. Although such play is free, it does not include all of the benefits of being a member. Non-members may still buy different colors for their penguins, buy player-card backgrounds, travel to any place in the Club Penguin world (except during members-only parties), and play games. Non-members may also receive and use items given out at parties that are held monthly for all players. Non-members are restricted to only two red or blue puffles. If a former member once owned puffles, they may be kept, although no new member-only puffles may be bought. Non-members can not purchase clothes, furniture, wigs, hats, or igloo upgrades. Non-Members also may collect 'pins' to put on their backgrounds, but may not buy them in a catalog.[citation needed]
Beta testers
During the beta stages of Club Penguin's development, anyone could sign up to be a beta tester. Beta testers received special benefits upon the official release of Club Penguin, such as a month of paid membership, coins, a pink and yellow party hat, and the option to have any letter of their name in uppercase/lowercase letters. This privilege is not extended to regular players, whose names can only contain one capital letter, and only at the beginning of their name. Beta testers are considered to be extremely rare.[citation needed]
Environment
The map of Club Penguin
Club Penguin is divided into various rooms and distinct areas. Each player is provided with an igloo for a home. Members have the option of opening their igloo so other penguins can access it via the map. Members may also purchase larger igloos and decorate their igloos with items bought with virtual coins earned by playing mini-games.
Many game locations can be accessed by clicking on the Club Penguin map. Some places are reached by clicking their general area on the map and then walking the penguin to the specific location. Other places are only available for access on certain days or at certain times.
Notable places within Club Penguin
Rooms
Games in Rooms
Other Rooms
The Town
Beans (Coffee Shop), Mancala (Book Room) Thin Ice (Dance Lounge), Astro Barrier (Dance Lounge)
Coffee Shop (Book Room), Night Club (Lounge), Gift Shop
The Plaza
Puffle Round-Up (Pet Shop), Pizzatron 3000 (Pizza Parlor)
Pet Shop, The Stage, Pizza Parlor
The Cove
Catchin' Waves
None
Forest
None
Treehouse (during Medieval Party of May 2008)
The Snow Forts
None
Ice Rink
The Dock
Hydro-Hopper
None
The Beach
Treasure Hunt (Captains Quarters) (only avaliable when Rockhopper visits), Jet Pack Adventure (Beacon)
Migrator (Not Always Avaliable)(Ship's Hold, Crow's Nest and Captain's Quarters), Lighthouse (Beacon)
Ski Village
Ice Fishing (Ski Lodge)
Ski Lodge, Sport Shop
Mountain
Sled Racing
None
The Dojo (Hidden)
None
None
Mine (Hidden)
Cart Surfer (Underground)
Cave (Pool)
Iceberg (Hidden)
Aqua Grabber
None
Rockhopper's ship (Not always avaliable)
Treasure Hunt (quarters)
Captain's Quarters, Ship Hold, Main Deck, Crow's Nest
Treehouse (during Medieval Party of May 2008)
None
None
The Stage
The Stage was released in November 2007, in the Plaza, between the Pet Shop and the Pizza Parlor. In the stage, penguins can act out plays. Subscribed members may buy costumes for the play, an option that non-members do not have. The script for the play is located at the bottom right corner of the screen. When clicked, a list of lines is brought up. Each month, a new play is released. The names of all of the plays are listed below.
Month
Play
November 2007
Space Adventure
December 2007
Twelth Fish
January 2008
Squidzoid vs. Shadow Guy and Gamma Gal
February 2008
Team Blue's Rally Debut
March 2008
Space Adventure (Encore)
April 2008
Quest for the Golden Puffle
May 2008
Twelfth Fish (Encore)
Game features
Emoticons
Players can express their feelings with emoticons. There are numerous emoticons, such as a happy face, a sad face, angry, winking, etc. The emoticons appear above the avatar's head in a speech bubble. There are also secret emoticons that may be unlocked by holding down letters on the keyboard (e.g. holding down E and I produces the igloo emoticon). On December 5, 2007, the heart and skull emoticons were removed because players found these offensive, and were replaced with the flower emoticon. On January 9, 2008 the heart emoticon was brought back as a result of popular demand by players.[citation needed]
Items
Players may use the virtual coins that they collect from playing mini games to purchase various items from a wide variety of shops. Shop types include clothing, wigs, stage costumes, igloos, furniture, and sports.
Players are allowed to change the color of their penguin at certain shops. Each color bought is saved into the penguin's card, allowing the player to access and change the color of their penguin as often as they wish. Backgrounds are also available for players to purchase. Backgrounds are placed behind the penguin's picture on their penguin card and can also be switched with other backgrounds freely. Every month, up to two to four backgrounds are released. Backgrounds and colors can be bought by non-members.
New pins appear within Club Penguin every two weeks and display in the top left-hand corner of a player's penguin card. Pins are free, but are hidden throughout the game. A special Christmas Tree Pin was made available during late 2006. On January 4, 2008, Club Penguin hid their 50th pin, a snow shovel. Flags are similar to pins; they also appear in the top left-hand corner of a player's lookup card. Flags can only be worn one at a time and can only be bought by Members.
Clothes are worn by penguins, which can either be bought or is given out during parties. Only members can buy clothes, but those given out at parties are wearable by all penguins.
Members' igloos can be upgraded into many different styles. Some igloo styles are themed for parties, such as the Bamboo Hut or Log Cabin. Furniture may be bought for the igloos of subscribed members and can be used to design and decorate an igloo. Flooring for an igloo (introduced January 19, 2007) is also only accessible by subscribed members.[citation needed]
Puffles
Puffles are small, fluffy creatures that players may have as pets. They are available from the Pet Shop in blue, green, pink, black, purple, red, and newly released yellow. Non-members have access to the blue and red puffles only, and may have no more than two; members may adopt up to fourteen puffles. Puffles have health, rest, and energy bar charts to indicate their status. Members whose membership has expired may still keep the puffles, unless they run away.
There are seven official breeds of puffles, each with a different personality.
Blue Puffles are mild tempered and content. Their favorite toy is a ball. Blue Puffles can be adopted by anyone in Club Penguin. Blue Puffles were the first puffle breed in Club Penguin and are loyal, making them very popular.
Green Puffles are very energetic and playful. They like to clown around on their unicycles or play with their propeller caps.
Purple Puffles are lots of fun to have around. They enjoy blowing bubbles and are terrific dancers, but they can be a bit fussy, especially at meal time.
Red Puffles are adventurous and enthusiastic. They are fearless when attempting daring tricks (except in the survival mode of Catchin' Waves) and spend a lot of their playful energy on a surf board. Rockhopper brought these puffles to Club Penguin on his ship from Rockhopper Island. These, like the Blue Puffles can be adopted by anyone on Club Penguin.
Pink Puffles are very active and cheery. They love to exercise by jumping rope or playing on their trampolines.
Black Puffles are known to be mischievous and short-tempered. However, they love to play and make a great pet for anyone who likes a little bit of personality. They sometimes catch on fire and will turn red for a short period of time.
Yellow Puffles were added November 30, 2007. They love art and are very active. When playing, Yellow Puffles either will choose between going to paint or film a movie.[citation needed]
The Penguin Times
Club Penguin has a free virtual weekly newspaper delivered every Thursday. It contains news about Club Penguin and features games, comics, polls, and more. It also has an advice column where a player can write to Aunt Arctic and ask questions about Club Penguin. Any penguin can submit questions, comics, jokes, and riddles to The Penguin Times, which will be chosen and displayed in the next issue. The Boiler Room under the Night Club contains an archive of newspapers from the last six weeks.[32]
Calendar dates
Each newspaper edition includes a list of dates that summarize when the next pin will be hidden, when upcoming parties or Club Penguin events will take place, or any other information on changes to games, rooms, the newspaper, or any other interesting information in general.[citation needed]
Submissions
Players are able to submit jokes, riddles, poems, comics, Fan Art, news articles, tips or secrets, and questions to Aunt Arctic. Each week, a few submissions are picked and displayed. As of the 3rd of April, 2008, Aunt Arctic announced that due to a promotion to Chief Editor, players were now able to submit articles, or tips to the Penguin Times, as well as the usual additions. These submissions now have their own unique place in the newspaper, rather than being in a separate pop-up, as they previously were. This new system also allows penguins to submit questions, which Aunt Arctic replies to every week.[citation needed]
courtesy of: wikipedia
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