History of CALL

By fifinur

  • First Communication of Data

    On January 8th, the first demonstration of a communication of data at a distance between New York and Hanover is achieved by Stibitz and Williams at the American Mathematical Society in the presence of Norbert Wiener and John Von Neuman.

  • Behavior Purpose and Teleology Publication

    • Norbert Wiener, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Julian Bigelow publish "Behavior Purpose and Teleology" in Philosophy of Science.
    • In June, construction begins at the Moore School by Goldstine, Eckert and Mauchly of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the greatest and fastest calculator ever produced by that time.

  • SABRE

    First commercial network and first database SABRE (Semi Automatic Business Related Environment) by IBM.

  • COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) is born

    COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) is born. First language for Artificial Intelligence: LISP (LISt Processing), invented by John McCarthy of MIT. It is also apparently in the late 50s that the first CALL program appeared.

  • PLATO, (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations)

    PLATO, (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations), a five million dollar project was apparently started by Don Bitzer, a Professor of Electrical Engineering. The mainframe system was designed to deliver learning packages to a large number of students.

  • IBM Develop a Network

    IBM develops another network : Token Ring, the ancestor of IEEE 802.05. Crocker manage the «Network Working Group», this group will develop some norms for ARPANET and after that for the Internet.

  • The development of a computer-assisted instructional system

    The development of a computer-assisted instructional system combining the recently developed "mini-computer" with television technology is begun by the MITRE corporation.

  • MITRE submits a proposal to the National Science Foundation

    MITRE submits a proposal to the National Science Foundation to develop the TICCIT system into a complete instructional authoring and delivery system using resources at the University of Texas at Austin and Brigham Young University.

  • Development of TICCIT project

    Development of hardware, software, courseware and ancillary materials for the TICCIT project involving hundreds of people and millions of dollars.
    Initial testing of TICCIT courseware begins at Northern Virginia Community College and Phoenix College.

  • Dvelopment of an English as a Second Language course

    Dr. Frank Otto begins development of an English as a Second Language course. In his search for federal funding, he establishes contacts which eventually lead to the creation of CALICO.

  • Creation of foreign language courseware using the TICCIT and TRANSPAC

    • Creation of foreign language courseware using the TICCIT rule-example-practice model begins. Eventually courseware for Danish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish is created.
    • TRANSPAC (Transmission par Paquets) by the DGT : first high speed communication network in France. MicroPro announce the first word processor on a microcomputer, WordMaster, precursor to Wordstar.

  • Utah State University ties Apple to videodisc for CAI

    Utah State University ties Apple to videodisc for CAI. It was actually in the 80s that videodisc technology was going to play an essential role in CALL.

  • IBM Development

    • Release of the BBC Micro.
    • Might well be regarded as the year of Seymour Papert, Logo and Mindstorms.
    • IBM introduces the first PC or Personal Computer.

  • First computer-based education

    Digital Equipment Corporation publishes a history of computer-based education. TESOL Steering Committee approves the creation of a CALL SIG with Vance Stevens as its first Chair.

  • Collins Publised

    John Higgins and Tim Johns publish Computers in Language Learning (Collins). Mary-Ann Lyman produces one of her first programs: «Computerized Lessons: Rendez-Vous»

  • INTERMEDIA Development

    Development of INTERMEDIA by a team of Brown University, managed by Norman Meyrowitz and Nicole Yankelovitch, conceived as a learning and research tool. To counter the success of the Apple Macintosh, IBM asks Microsoft to make.

  • Publications in Language Learning

    • Legenhausen, L. & Wolff, D. (eds.) publish Computer Assisted Language Learning and Innovative EFL Methodology. Universität Augsburg: Augsburger I & I-Schriften.
    • The NIALL Journal changed its name to JETT (Journal of Educational Techniques and technologies) and then changed its name to the IALL Journal in 1990.
    • Agreement between publishers and the French Ministry for Education : 'les licences mixtes" provide substantial discounts on educational software for secondary schools.

  • Internet Development

    • Internet Relay Chat is designed by Jarkko Oikarinen at the University of Oulu in Finland.
    • The company Autodesk buys and attempts to develop the project Xanadu, brainchild of Ted Nelson.
    • The Internet's rate of growth increases more and more: it reaches 6,200 hosts before the WWW is even created.

  • ARPANET and CALICO

    • The end of ARPANET, which is now included within NSFNet : The network of the NSF becomes the core of Internet between 1990 and 1995.
    • In October : at CERN, the World Wide Web is born.
    • In November : Proposal for a Hypertext Project is published by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau : first prototype of the WWW.
    • Special CALICO issue on ICALI (Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Instruction) First issue of the journal, 'Computer Assisted Language Learning'

  • TES:, WWW, and JANET

    • The email discussion group, TESL-L is founded.
    • World-Wide Web (WWW) released by CERN.
    • Start of the JANET IP Service within the UK academic network.

  • Internet is Awesome

    • Internet hits 1million users.
    • First interesting tools on Internet : search tools, etc

  • First world wide web graphical browser

    Release of Mosaic, the first world wide web graphical browser, created by a government laboratory-the National Center for Supercomputing Applications-at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

  • Pentium P54C and Netscape Navigator

    • Pentium (P54C: 130 MHz) introduced.
    • Launch of Netscape Navigator (Netscape for short).

  • Computer is Awesome

    • Introduction of Windows '95 (September).
    • RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets users hear in real time.
    • Email for English Language Teaching (Warschauer).
    • CALL Chorus appears, a CALL magazine edited by Jim Duber in California.
    • DVD-ROM is announced (8,5Gb = 12 CDROM)

  • The Power of CALL

    • Pennington publishes "The power of CALL".
    • Start of the FDTL projects in the UK including the WELL, SMILE and CIEL projects.
    • Intel's P6 chip, the sixth-generation chip, anticipated in April and expected to be twice as fast as the Pentium.

  • On-line journal ALSIC

    • First issue of the on-line journal ALSIC in France. Computer-Assisted Language Learning: Context and contextualization.
    • Release of OSCAR by Language Publications Interactive.
    • First issue of the e-journal, 'Language Learning & Technology'. It should be noted that this is just one of the many achievements of the University of Hawaii in this field.

  • ICT4LT starts.

    • The ICT4LT starts. This stands for ICT for Language Teachers.
    • The Hot Potatoes development is revealed at the EUROCALL Conference in Leuven.
    • The MALTED project starts. DISSEMINATE is first presented at WorldCALL and EUROCALL.

  • Technology is Amazing

    • The Year of Speech Technology, the year of maturity.
    • Release of the Pentium III processor (450, 550, 600 MHz).
    • Special Issue of CALICO, 'Tutors that Listen' focusing on automated speech recognition.

  • ReCALL published

    ReCALL published by Cambridge University Press. ReCALL is journal publisher issued by Cambrige University.