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Mainframes

Before the advent and widespread use of the personal computer (PC) in the early 1980s, businesses and government relied on mainframe computers for information technology. The mainframes had the capacity to compute but were slow and could handle only a limited number of users. Mainframe users were tied to small "dumb terminals," essentially keyboards and monitors with no capacity to compute or process information. Information was entered and received at the dumb terminals but processed on the mainframe machine. Figure 4.1 illustrates mainframes and dumb terminals.

Figure 4.1: The mainframe computer processed information, and the dumb terminal served merely to enter and receive data.

These early mainframes were large machines, often taking up an entire room. They looked nothing like today's sleek PCs or compact laptop computers, which conveniently fit into briefcases. In fact, technology has come so far in such a short time, it's likely that the operator, who in the 1960s and 1970s conducted his or her work holed up in a room with a mainframe, now performs similar work on a laptop-capable of handling and processing at least as much information-while he or she travels around the country, or even the world!

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