Setting the scene: Science and computing - a potted history...

50s and 60s

Birth of Unix, which leads to workstations
Multitude of platforms, operating systems, languages
FORTRAN still dominates mathematical & scientific computing
circa 1975: Arrival of microcomputers
Computers becoming cheaper = greater access to scientists
Embedded control in science & engineering becomes more commonplace
The birth of the Internet (ARPA)
The first microcomputer applications for laboratory control appear towards the end of the decade

The IBM-compatible PC and Macintosh are introduced and by the end of the decade dominate the microcomputer world and begin to impinge on the workstation market
PC-based Unix variants such as Xenix, Coherent and Minix are released
The OOP paradigm becomes popular
FORTRAN begins to lose ground to C and C++ for numerical & scientific programming
The economics of computing have reached a low-enough point for scientists and engineers to begin exploring new applications for computers in science: new disciplines such as chemometrics and biometrics are created
Computerised lab equipment becomes commonplace

Standard PCs offer workstation performance at a fraction of the cost
Linux and the free BSDs are written, offering high-quality Unix operating systems, with source, to the world
The extensive collections of scientific software that was once the domain of the high-end Unix workstation can now be easily ported to cheap Intel hardware
Computers are ubiquitous: CPU time is no longer a hurdle for many significant scientific problems - previously infeasible projects become feasible with the help of modern computers, including the Human Genome Project, nuclear weaponry modelling and SETI
The Internet becomes a invaluable tool to the scientific community
OOP languages such as C++ & Python make serious inroads into the scientific community
"Virtual instrumentation" becomes a standard paradigm for data acquisition software
Surface mount technology dramatically reduces the size of embedded computers

Updated: 20 June 1999