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Wikipedia:Featured article review/archive/July 2008

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  1. ^ Arthur W. Burks, Herman Goldstine, and John von Neumann, "Preliminary discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument," Datamation, September-October 1962.
  2. ^ Historically, the media for input have been sequences of events: punch card and paper tape hole punch, keyboard keystroke, or mouse click.
  3. ^ Historically, the media for output have been sequences of states: punch card and paper tape hole punch, print mark, or light bulb.
  4. ^ Memory is US usage; Storage is UK usage; the terms are not completely equivalent: Memory has the connotation of rapid access; Storage has the connotation of large capacity. (The use of the term Storage dates back to Ada Lovelace in the nineteenth century.) Magnetic core memory was much faster than disk; which was cheaper, with higher capacity. There is a hierarchy of storage, which trades capacity for speed of access. To this day, semiconductor memory is more expensive than disk or tape.
  5. ^ Historically, control has been implemented by processes, which have been sequences of manual interventions (the earliest versions), switch settings (nineteenth century), patch panel connections (twentieth century), and then stored programs, perhaps in microcode.
  6. ^ Wilkes 1986, pp. 115–126
  7. ^ Horowitz & Hill 1989, p. 743
  8. ^ Patterson & Hennessy 1998, p. 424: note that when IBM was preparing its transition from the 700/7000 series to S/360, they emulated the software of the older systems in microcode, so as to be able to run older programs on the new IBM 360.