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Fasttrack
to America's Past Teacher Key |
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Fasttrack
to America's Past Teacher Key |
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 Page 228  Page 229 |
Pages 228
& 229 - Charting the Computer Revolution Making the chart, page 228 You will need a color pencil for the line graph on this page. Red is a good choice. Study the table, then neatly place dots for the data and connect the dots with straight lines. Notice that the lines on the graph have been arranged to show the years in which the Census Bureau data is available for households with computers. What the chart shows, page 228 The graph shows a very rapid growth in the percent of households with a home computer. In a span of just twenty years, the rate rises from about one percent to over fifty percent. Keep in mind that the earliest computers sold for use by electronics hobbyists were developed in the mid-1970s. By today's standards, they had very low computing power, and often came as kits requiring assembly. The personal computer industry was soaring by the mid-1980s as computing power grew and prices fell. This growth is certainly a good example of the American economic system at its best. People with ideas and people with capital to invest poured their knowledge and resources into creating new businesses. The result was an incredible burst of creativity that is still growing. Making the chart, page 229 You will need a color pencil to complete the bar graph on this page. Green is a good choice. Study the data shown in the table, then place light marks on the graph to indicate the top of each bar. Then draw the bars neatly. Notice that the first bar is very short. For 1980, the table shows that the best commonly available microprocessor chip had 29,000 transistor circuits. The first mark on the vertical axis represents 100,000 transistor circuits. What the chart shows, page 229 The graph shows an incredible spurt in the technology of microprocessor chips during the 1980s. These chips are the heart of desktop computers, and do the actual computing tasks according to the directions carried by the software program. The transistor circuits are etched onto the surface of small silicon wafers, using a photographic process. The rapid improvements in this microprocessor technology allowed the creation of computers that were much more powerful and much cheaper. The increased power of microprocessors also allowed computers to use color and display graphics, rather than just lines of text on a one color screen. Background for the chart question, page 228 There were many
reasons families were eager to buy computers in this time period.
It was a new technology, and many parents and children found it
fascinating to work with. Many adults were working in businesses
that were using the new "PCs" (personal computers) and they hoped to
improve their job opportunities by becoming more "computer literate." Many parents also hoped to encourage their children to become familiar with computer technology. Schools were beginning to use computers in classrooms in the mid-1980s. Educational computer games with simple graphics were being developed for schools, and many students were eager to try the new games at home. |
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Copyright Notice
Copyright 2018 by David Burns. All rights reserved. Illustrations and reading selections appearing in this work are taken from sources in the public domain and from private collections used by permission. Sources include: the Dover Pictorial Archive, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, The Hart Publishing Co., Corel Corporation and its licensors, Nova Development Corporation and its licensors, and others. Maps were created or adapted by the author using reference maps from the United States Geological Survey and Cartesia Software. Please see the home page for this title for more information. |