The 1940’s was quite a decade, the topics spanning the Second World War, science discoveries such as the game theory, technology innovations like the radar and the microwave, and the most influential piece of the century: the computer. In 1939 Hewlett-Packard took shape as a company in California and released their first device, the HP 200A Audio Oscillator created as a sound effect generator for Walt Disney Pictures movie Fantasia. In 1948 IBM’s Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator produced the moon-position tables that were used for plotting the course of the famous 1969 Apollo flight to the moon.
In the 1950’s IBM started manufacturing and releasing on the market the 701s, the first electronic computer and the 7000 series mainframes. The 1960’s brought various improvements, the most notable being microprocessors. In this period, HP addressed the business niche of the market introducing HP-2115. During the 1970’s Apple steps in with its Apple I and Apple II devices.
The 1980’s featured a boom in the computer domain as the aforementioned companies made important improvements and came up with innovativeness in new devices and other newbies joined in such as Compaq. Sony made its way through in the 1990’s with its 100 million selling Playstation, joining Toshiba on their way to specialization. As well, 1997 was the year in which IBM’s Deep Blue system ‘linked-up’ science technology and technical-savvy members of the audience for the Jeopardy program via the Watson machine. Mobile devices firstly appeared in the 2000’s, the most popular items being the Blackberry, Macbook Pro, the iPhone and the iPad.
Project Inspire by Nvidia is an appropriate example of fitting technological expertise into social programs that are aimed at involving community members and Nvidia employees and volunteers from other Silicon Valley organization in a local program in San Jose. By rebuilding old computers using Nvidia’s expertise, the lives of the local citizens were completely improved and Nvidia followed its strategic CSR plan, again emphasizing the role of computers in our lives.
