Transcript Computer history

COMPUTER HISTORY
PREMECHANICAL PERIOD
• ABACUS
Slide rule
In 1617 an eccentric (some say mad) Scotsman named John Napier
invented logarithms, which are a technology that allows multiplication
to be performed via addition.
Nepier bones
Nepier bonesnewer version
MECHANICAL PERIOD
In 1642 Blaise Pascal,
at age 19, invented
the Pascaline as an
aid for his father who
was a tax collector.
Pascaline – 6 digit model
Pascaline
By 1822 the English mathematician
Charles Babbage was proposing a
steam driven calculating machine
the size of a room, which he called
the Difference Engine. This
machine would be able to
compute tables of numbers, such
as logarithm tables.
He obtained government funding for this project due to
the importance of numeric tables in ocean navigation.
By promoting their commercial and military navies, the
British government had managed to become the earth's
greatest empire. But in that time frame the British
government was publishing a seven volume set of
navigation tables which came with a companion
volume of corrections which showed that the set had
over 1000 numerical errors. It was hoped that Babbage's
machine could eliminate errors in these types of tables.
But construction of Babbage's Difference Engine proved
exceedingly difficult and the project soon became the
most expensive government funded project up to that
point in English history. Ten years later the device was still
nowhere near complete, acrimony abounded between
all involved, and funding dried up. The device was never
finished.
Just a few years after Pascal, the German
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (co-inventor with
Newton of calculus) managed to build a
four-function
(addition,
subtraction,
multiplication, and division) calculator .
In 1801 the Frenchman Joseph Marie
Jacquard invented a power loom that
could base its weave (and hence the
design on the fabric) upon a pattern
automatically
read
from
punched
wooden cards, held together in a long
row by rope. Descendents of these
punched cards have been in use ever
since (remember the "hanging chad"
from the Florida presidential ballots of the
year 2000?).
Jacquard's Loom
showing the threads and
the punched cards
ELECTOMECHANICAL PERIOD
Hollerith's invention, known as the Hollerith
desk, consisted of a card reader which
sensed the holes in the cards, a gear
driven mechanism which could count
(using Pascal's mechanism which we still
see in car odometers), and a large wall of
dial indicators (a car speedometer is a
dial indicator) to display the results of the
count.
ELECTRICAL PERIOD
One early success was the
Harvard Mark I computer
which was built as a
partnership between Harvard
and IBM in 1944. This was the
first programmable digital
computer made in the U.S.
But it was not a purely electronic
computer. Instead the Mark I was
constructed out of switches, relays,
rotating shafts, and clutches. The
machine weighed 5 tons, incorporated
500 miles of wire, was 8 feet tall and 51
feet long, and had a 50 ft rotating
shaft running its length, turned by a 5
horsepower electric motor. The Mark I
ran non-stop for 15 years, sounding like
a roomful of ladies knitting.
One of the primary
programmers for the Mark I
was a woman, Grace Hopper.
Hopper found the first
computer "bug": a dead moth
that had gotten into the Mark I
and whose wings were
blocking the reading of the
holes in the paper tape. The
word "bug" had been used to
describe a defect since at
least 1889 but Hopper is
credited with coining the word
"debugging" to describe the
work to eliminate program
faults.
ENIAC, 1946.
IBM´s Selective
Sequence Electronic
Calculator computed
scientific data in public
display near the
company´s Manhattan
headquarters.
Before its
decommissioning in
1952, the SSEC
produced the moonposition tables used for
plotting the course of
the 1969 Apollo flight to
the moon.
UNIVAC, 1950.
1959. BM´s 7000 series
mainframes were the
company´s first transistorized
computers. At the top of the line
of computers — all of which
emerged significantly faster and
more dependable than vacuum
tube machines — sat the 7030,
also known as the "Stretch." Nine
of the computers, which
featured a 64-bit word and
other innovations, were sold to
national laboratories and other
scientific users. L. R. Johnson first
used the term "architecture" in
describing the Stretch.
Mini-computers such as the following
PDP-12 computer of 1969:
Home computer of
1976 such as this
Apple I which sold for
only $600:
The microelectronics
revolution is what
allowed the amount of
hand-crafted wiring
seen in the prior photo
to be mass-produced
as an integrated circuit
which is a small sliver of
silicon the size of your
thumbnail .
If you learned computer
programming in the
1970's, you dealt with
what today are called
mainframe computers,
such as the IBM 7090
(shown below), IBM 360,
or IBM 370.
By the 1990's a
university
student would
typically own
his own
computer and
have exclusive
use of it in his
dorm room:
The original
IBM Personal
Computer (PC)
This transformation was a result of the invention of the microprocessor. A
microprocessor (uP) is a computer that is fabricated on an integrated
circuit (IC). Computers had been around for 20 years before the first
microprocessor was developed at Intel in 1971.
New Intel employee (Ted Hoff) convinced Busicom to instead accept a
general purpose computer chip which, like all computers, could be
reprogrammed for many different tasks (like controlling a keyboard, a
display, a printer, etc.)
Thus became the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor (uP). The 4004
consisted of 2300 transistors and was clocked at 108 kHz (i.e., 108,000
times per second). Compare this to the 42 million transistors and the 2
GHz clock rate (i.e., 2,000,000,000 times per second) used in a
Pentium 4.
COMPUTER - FIRST
GENERATION 1946-1959.
The main features of first generation
are:
• Vacuum tube technology
• Unreliable
• Supported machine language only
• Very costly
• Generated lot of heat
• Slow input and output devices
• Huge size
• Need of A.C.
• Non-portable
• Consumed lot of electricity
Some computers of this
generation were:
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ENIAC
EDVAC
UNIVAC
IBM-701
IBM-650
COMPUTER – SECOND GENERATION
1959-1965.
The main features of second generation
are:
• Use of transistors
• Reliable in comparison to first generation
computers
• Smaller size as compared to first
generation computers
• Generated less heat as compared to
first generation computers
• Consumed less electricity as compared
to first generation computers
• Faster than first generation computers
• Still very costly
• A.C. needed
• Supported machine and assembly
languages
Some computers of this
generation were:
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IBM 1620
IBM 7094
CDC 1604
CDC 3600
UNIVAC 1108
COMPUTER – THIRD
GENERATION 1965-1971.
The main features of third generation are:
• integrated circuits used
• More reliable in comparison to previous
two generations
• Smaller size
• Generated less heat
• Faster
• Lesser maintenance
• Still costly
• A.C needed
• Consumed lesser electricity
• Supported high-level language
Some computers of this generation
were:
• IBM-360 series
• Honeywell-6000 series
• PDP(Personal Data Processor)
• IBM-370/168
• TDC-316
COMPUTER – FOURTH
GENERATION 1971-1980.
The main features of fourth generation
are:
• VLSI technology used
• Very cheap
• Portable and reliable
• Use of PC's
• Very small size
• Pipeline processing
• No A.C. needed
• Concept of internet was introduced
• Great developments in the fields of
networks
• Computers became easily available
Some computers of this generation
were:
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DEC 10
STAR 1000
PDP 11
CRAY-1(Super Computer)
CRAY-X-MP(Super Computer)
COMPUER – FIFTH GENERATION
1980 - NOWADAYS
The main features of fifth generation
are:
• ULSI technology
• Development of true artificial
intelligence
• Development of Natural language
processing
• Advancement in Parallel Processing
• Advancement in Superconductor
technology
• More user friendly interfaces with
multimedia features
• Availability of very powerful and
compact computers at cheaper
rates
Some computer types of this
generation are:
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Desktop
Laptop
NoteBook
UltraBook
ChromeBook
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Source:
• www.computerhistory.org
• www.computersciencelab.com
• www.tutorialspoint.com