1973年，法国工程师François Gernelle和André Truong发明了最早的个人电脑Micral。
个人简历编辑本段回目录
André Truong (1936-2005) was a Vietnamese-French engineer. He is considered to be the "father of the personal computer" for creating the Micral microcomputer based on an Intel 8008 processor in 1973.
André TruongAndré Truong was born in 1936 in Cholon (Saigon). When he was 14 years old, he arrived in France to study, and later studied at the École Française de Radioélectricité (now EFREI). After working for Schlumberger and Intertechnique for some time, he formed the company R2E (Réalisation d'Études Électroniques).
In 1973, with François Gernelle and a team of engineers he created the Micral, the first non-kit, microprocessor based personal computer in the world. It was created two years before the MITS Altair of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems arrived on the market. In 1981, R2E was absorbed by Groupe Bull. The Micral computers were turned into a line of PC-compatibles in 1983. André Truong Trong Thi resigned from Bull, and joined the company Normerel formed by J. R. Tissot, a former member of R2E management. He developed the Oplite personal computer for Normerel. Normerel was in 1988 the third french computer maker after Groupe Bull and SMT Goupil.
In 1995, he formed APCT, a software company specializing in cryptography.
In 1999, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.
He died on April 4, 2005 in Paris after being hospitalized for two and a half years.
1973年Micral-N编辑本段回目录
Micral-N采用Intel的8008处理器，是第一台基于微处理器的商用计算机。微机这个名词第一次出现，就是在Micral-N的说明文件中。
Micral型号: MICRAL-N
制造商: R2E
产地: France
TYPE: Home Computer
BUILT IN LANGUAGE: 无
CPU: Intel 8008
SPEED: 500 KHz
RAM: 不详
ROM: 不详
TEXT MODES: Depends on the connected video terminal
GRAPHIC MODES: 无
COLORS: 无
I/O PORTS: Parallel, Serial
POWER SUPPLY: Built-in power supply unit
当时售价: 8,500 French Francs (about $1300)
法国对于电脑的贡献编辑本段回目录
法国在计算机领域享有国际性的声誉。1972 年，André Truong 和Fran.ois Gernelle 两位法国工程师设计了世界上第一台微电脑，取名为“le Micral”；1979 年，法国人Jean Ichbiah 发明了高级ADA 编译语言，该语言后被美国国防部门所采用。法国学校培养的工程师都拥有良好的技术能力。法国大学同样也在本科生和硕士研究生等层次开设高质量的培训课程。最后，法国的各专门学校也有权授予各种信息工程、软件设计、网络建设、信息管理等方面的文凭。此外，尽管一些培训课程尚未得到官方承认，但却受到企业的青睐，因为后者需要的是能直接操作的专门人才。无论是大学、工程师学校、还是专门学校，无论是通才的培训（这类培训有助于学生日后的发展，对他们不断适应计算机领域的快速变化有利）、还是专才的培养，总之，学生能有机会作最广泛的选择。
谁是计算机之父编辑本段回目录
1967年，霍尼韦尔公司起诉称，雷明顿-兰德公司的电子数字积分器(ENIAC)侵犯了霍尼韦尔的计算机技术专利。拥有阿坦那索夫-贝利计算机专利的霍尼韦尔公司胜诉，美国艾奥瓦州大学的数学和物理学教授约翰·阿坦那索夫于是成为计算机之父。
Micral 其实，这一技术是建立在数十年的小
成就之上的。例如，早在19世纪30年代，伦敦的查尔斯·巴里奇就发明了一种可以进行算术和代数运算的“分析机”。1936年，英国人艾伦·图灵发现，机器可以运用运算法则来记录程序。
另一个历史性的转折是美国海军在二战时让麻省理工学院研制一台能模拟战争的计算机。
第一台商用计算机叫做“通用自动计算机I”（UNIVACI），发明者是发明ENIAC的那位宾夕法尼亚大学教授。
1975年，美国新墨西哥州的爱德华·罗伯茨开始出售他制造的装有微处理器的“牵牛星”电脑，个人电脑就此横空出世。其实，在此之前18个月，就有一个从越南移民到法国的人制造出了装有微处理器的电脑“MICRAL”，但这些产品几乎都卖给了企业用户。
像长长的计算机之父名单一样，第一代计算机也是庞大繁杂。
个人电脑发展简史 编辑本段回目录
1971年--英特尔公司生产出它的第一个微处理器--4004。
1974年--英特尔公司生产出8080型微型集成电路芯片，随之出现了以该芯片为CPU的"Altair"电脑。这个名称因电影"星际旅行"片段中的一个星系而得名，它成为业余爱好者用一套价值400美元的工具成功制造个人电脑的标志。
1975年--比尔·盖茨和保罗·艾伦建立微软公司，并开发出Altair计算机使用的BASIC语言。
André Truong
1975年--IBM公司宣布以8975美元的价格启动50磅5100型便携计算机市场。1976年--史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克和史蒂夫·乔布斯工作室推出苹果I型电脑，这种电脑前面倾斜、放在木箱中、用螺栓连接，并以666.66美元的价格出售。
1977年--乔布斯的苹果公司推出苹果II型计算机，它以彩色图形为特色并用盒式录音磁带存储信息。
1981年8月12日--IBM推出在Intel 8088 信息处理器上运行的个人电脑。这种5150型计算机是现代PC的原形，并在MS-DOS（微软磁盘操作系统）上运行。
1983年11月--苹果公司的乔布斯在Comdex大展上首次展示了令人激动不已的Macintosh计算机，从此，个人电脑千篇一律的字符界面逐渐被生动、极富个性的图形界面所取代，多媒体技术广泛应用的春天即将来临。
1985年--Intel386型芯片可进行多任务处理。微软首次发布Windows操作系统。
1986年，微软公司以每股21.00美元的价格向公众发售股票。
1990年--微软公司推出Windows 3.0
1993年--Intel推出奔腾处理器
1995年--Windows 95面市，并在4天内售出100多万个拷贝。此外，微软公司提出，将把因特网功能加入其所有产品。
1997年--世界国际象棋冠军加里·卡斯帕罗夫被IBM公司的"深蓝"超级计算机击败。
2000年--英特尔公司推出带4200万只晶体管的奔腾4处理器，运行速度达1.5GHz，与1971年第一个英特尔芯片108千赫的速度不可同日而语。
A Talk with the Father of Computing编辑本段回目录
Roderick Simpson 09.15.97
Andre Thi Truong is not often confused for the father of the personal computer - at least in the US, heartland of digital tech. But, as it turns out, the 61-year-old French Vietnamese entrepreneur is exactly that.
In 1973, two years before the debut of the famed Altair, his two-year-old company, R2E, created the Micral microcomputer based on an Intel 8008 processor - the genetic ancestor from which all PC generations have followed.
And last year, Truong's France-based Advanced PC Technologies spawned another paradigm-breaking variation by creating the first network PC - the NPC 97. Soon after, the "group of five" - Microsoft, Intel, Compaq, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard - conjured up specs for network PCs that they felt would drive an immediately emerging industry shift - one marked by more centralized administration and data locale.
André TruongStepping far ahead of the crowd is not Truong's only hallmark. In 1988, he was awarded the French government's Technical Education Gold Medal for bringing PC technology into French schools. Wired News spoke with Truong about the yesterdays and tomorrows of computing.
Wired News: Describe the emergence of the Micral.
Truong: The Micral in the beginning of 1973 was very rudimentary. It had only 2 Kbytes of RAM, could only be programmed in binary, and that year we sold 500 of them only in France. In 1974 we wrote the first assembler, so I could demonstrate the first complete microcomputer using an Intel 8080 at the National Computer Conference [since replaced by Comdex] in Chicago.
Does anyone have a beef with you claiming to have created the first personal computer?
Nobody has really contested that the Micral was the first microcomputer. In 1986, The Boston Computer Museum held a contest to elucidate the pioneers of microcomputers. Its examiners, including Steve Wozniak, gave the title of the first microcomputer to the Kenbak, which was designed in 1971 with discrete logic and not with a microprocessor. The Micral was nevertheless recognized as the first microprocessor-based personal computer, and the first microcomputer largely and commercially distributed, and it's now displayed at the museum.
How did you begin thinking about the network computer and your NPC?
The idea of the NPC has several origins. As the architect of an information system in France in 1979, I completed the world's first downsizing by replacing mainframes with a system of PC terminals in a client/server relationship. I think that was the first large realization of downsizing in a client/server environment based only on PCs.
This architecture has been adopted universally, but with the increased power of the PC, clients have become more and more fat and at the same time, PC servers have become more and more powerful. And the client/server architecture has concurrently become increasingly difficult to administrate.
What this has done is raise the total cost of ownership of networked desktop machines from several thousands of dollars to what is now some tens of thousands of dollars. Three years ago, the Gartner Group signaled in their surveys that the cost of administration had become the biggest cost in a client/server system. It made sense to me to go back to a more centralized client/server architecture. This was the first idea when we began to think about the NPC. The other idea was to replace our old Minitel [France's proprietary network] that had become obsolete.
These are the reasons that led us to Windows NT as an operating system, and that led us to boot NT from CD-ROM on the NPC 97, which is destined first for the intranet market.
I have to admit that Larry Ellison's idea was a very good one, yet the concept of the Oracle NC was nevertheless based on an obsolete microprocessor (ARM). And I have to say, it is unthinkable to even think, as did Oracle beginning in 1996, about creating a new operating system. The installed base of Microsoft's operating systems is so huge that nobody can realistically think they're going to write a new operating system themselves. We have based all of our development on the bet that Windows NT will be the only dominant operating system.
MicralSo you'd say that Larry Ellison was a bit premature when he claimed a few years ago that the PC was dead?
I'm positive the concept of the general-purpose PC is not a dying one. But if you look at the PC industry right now - it is a mature industry. By this I mean an industry that has reached a plateau and is definitely ripe for change. We certainly are today at a turning point, and this industry needs to now find new niches in order to grow again.
The momentum of the PC, however, will only accelerate thanks to the NPC fulfilling the low-end promise of its market. Taking this further, one can imagine that Windows CE incorporated in mobile devices will wire the entire the world thanks to Iridium or Teledesic. On the other end of the spectrum, the arrival of the Pentium II is going to make the PC very competitive against traditional workstations like those made by Sun or Silicon Graphics.
For me, all these machines have to cohabitate to solve different problems with the same architecture, like cars: You have small cars, big cars, trucks, but they all have the same engine architecture and they all use gasoline. Same as the PC with different motors like the Pentium and quite the same gasoline - Windows X, Y, etc.
How do you see the prospects for Sun and Oracle's NC models?
The Wintel model has already beaten the Oracle model, which is naively opposed to Microsoft. And the Sun model that has been created with native Java running on a Sun NC with a Sun chip, is obviously proprietary as well. Sun will be the only company to support this product and I don't think that Sun, as the lone hardware company, can support the software. In the past we have seen the similar failures of IBM with OS/2 and Apple with the Mac OS.
Furthermore, I have never considered the concept of multi-platform as a huge advantage. It was the case with Unix, which was profitable for short period of time for limited manufacturers - not for the end user. I really think the Wintel domination will be so thorough that being multi-platform won't be necessary.
If you only had one choice out of the following, who would you pick to forge the next millennium of computing and why? Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs, a monkey named Bobo.
I think I'll choose your monkey named Bobo because I know what the five others have done and are going to do each in their respective areas. And, with all technologies that they have created, perhaps Bobo could imagine a utilization of these technologies which none of them have.
And if Bobo had prior commitments?
In this case, I'd choose both Bill Gates and Andy Grove, simply because, tied together, they are indomitable.
If the terminals we use become dumber and dumber - say, to where Bobo can use them - and the network gets smarter, what effect will this have on users of both machines?
I do not think that the NPC transforms human beings into extensions of a dumb terminal. But people have thought the same thing about every new invention. Take television. There are of course a lot of idiots watching televisions, but televisions have also transported knowledge to the most distant corners of the world.
The terminals that we use, instead of becoming increasingly stupid, are going to become increasingly intelligent ... because these machines are not dumb terminals if we use them ... in a client/server architecture. Users are going to become more intelligent because they will access more rapidly and easily the bulk of multimedia data that is increasingly complex in the voluminous Internet. This move is profound, because in one generation we're moving from the ASCII terminal to an interactive TV terminal.
Near term, PC technology will increasingly penetrate the TV industry, and we're working on the next NPC with this in mind. As the first step, the NPC 98 will replace all the boxes that have approached the TV from a computing standpoint - the set-top box, WebTV, and so on. I'll have a prototype at next years' Comdex.
