Transcript Week 6 – Brief Computer History

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• Abacus
• Roughly 4000 years ago
• Allowed you to do some rudimentary
arithmetic
2
• Came in the 1800’s
• Charles Babbage
• A very well learned person
• He has the same Lucasian Chair that
Steven Hawkings has at University and
Newton had too
3
• In 1812 he recognized the harmony
between math and machines
• Math involving repetition of simple
tasks over and over again
• He came up with the idea of the
difference engine
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• The machine would be capable of
storing a program, performing
calculations and printing the result
• In those days they didn’t have any
silicon. They had it in the form of sand
and they didn’t have computers.
• He wanted to build a mechanical
device powered with steam and do
automatic calculations.
5
• After abandoning the idea of DF
• This machine was intended to be more
powerful then the difference engine
• It was designed to make conditional
decisions
• Based on one calculation it would
generate more calculations
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What about his inventions?
• Funny thing is that neither of those
devices was ever built during his life
time.
• Later the difference engine was built
from a bunch of rotors and motors
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• Ada Byron
• She was the daughter of Lord Byron
who was the famous English poet
• She was really taken by the designs of
Charles Babbage's design
• She devised programs for a computer
that doesn’t exist 100 years before it
was invented
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• Write programs for computers that
don’t exist
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• 1930’s – 40’s prototypes
• 1946 ENIAC (Electronic Numerical
Integrator and Calculator
• Big ware house and few tons
• First large scale electromagnetic
processing device
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• First Gen – 1943 -1946
• ENIAC was one of the first machines.
• It was used to calculate ballistic
trajectories
• Weighed 30 tones
• Used vacuum tubes that would light up
just like a bulb
12
Second Generation
• 1956
• Used transistors which replaced vacuum
tubes
• Computer size was reduced massively
13
Third generation
• 1950
• IC (Integrated Circuit) was developed by
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce
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Fourth Genration
• 1971
• First affordable microprocessor came out
• Intel 4004
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What is exciting?
• Its just been 42 year since the first MC
came out
• You to be alive in this accelerating phase.
• With all the technologies coming around.
• You’re going to be doing this in the next 42
years
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