1955

Felker and Harris program TRADIC, AT&T Bell Laboratories announced the first fully transistorized computer, TRADIC. It contained nearly 800 transistors instead of vacuum tubes. Transistors — completely cold, highly efficient amplifying devices invented at Bell Labs — enabled the machine to operate on fewer than 100 watts, or one-twentieth the power required by comparable vacuum tube computers.

In this photograph, J. H. Felker (left) gives instructions to the TRADIC computer by means of a plug-in unit while J. R. Harris places numbers into the machine by flipping simple switches. The computer occupied only 3 cubic feet.

First meeting of SHARE, the IBM users group, convened. User groups became a significant educational force allowing companies to communicate innovations and users to trade information.

Herbert Simon and Allen Newell unveiled Logic Theorist software that supplied rules of reasoning and proved symbolic logic theorems. The release of Logic Theorist marked a milestone in establishing the field of artificial intelligence.