Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

Figure 12.2 Jacquard Loom
by Ad Meskens.
is licensed under the Attribution 3.0
Unported license.
of a group of African American computers
who created the calculations to land the first
Astronaut on the Moon. 1
The first mechanical ancestor of the
computer we have today was created in
1801 by a Frenchman named Joseph Marie
Jacquard, who created a loom that used
punched wooden cards to weave fabric (Figure
12.2). The idea of “punch cards” would be
the basis of many generations of computers
up to the 1960s. Of course, the punch cards
went from being wood cards to cardboard
or cardstock over the course of their history.
Some of the earliest statistical research in the
field of communication was conducted using
punchcards. As you can imagine, between
1801 and the 1960s, many people worked to
advance early computer technology. Many
wonderful books can introduce you to the
full history of how we came to the modern
personal computer. 2
The 1970s saw the start of the explosion of
the personal computer (e.g., the release of the
Apple II line in 1977). In 1981, IBM released
the IBM PC, also known as the Acorn, which
ran on Microsoft DOS, which was followed up
by Apple’s Lisa in 1983, which had a graphic
user interface. From that point until now,
Microsoft and Apple (Macintosh) have cornered
the market on personal computers.
One thing that we have seen is that with each new computer development is new technologies emerging
that have helped us communicate and interact. One significant development in 1969 changed the
direction of human communication forever. Starting in 1965, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology were able to get two computers to “talk” to each other. Of course, it’s one thing to get two
computers side-by-side to talk to each other, but could they get computers at a distance to talk to each
other (in a manner similar to how people use telephones to communicate at a distance)?
Researchers at both UCLA and Stanford, with grant funding from the U.S. Department of Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), set out to get computers at a distance to talk to each other.
In 1969, UCLA student Charley Kline attempted the first computer-to-computer communication over a
distance from his terminal in Los Angeles to a terminal at Stanford using a computer network. Although
it had been possible for remote computers to interact with one another, scientists had to have separate
computers for each remote computer they were connecting with. The 1969 breakthrough, was the
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