Dannelly's Very Short History of Computing CSCI 101
Jan 05, 2016
Dannelly's Very Short History of Computing
CSCI 101
In the beginning…
Pascal created a calculator in 1652 able to add and subtract
photos from en.wikipedia.org
Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
Math Tables Problem Difference Engine and Analytical Engines
Abilities add subtract loop (repeat instructions over and over) compare two numbers etc…
instructions and data wereon punched cards
Harvard Mark 1 Mechanical, not electrical completed in 1943 used to compute artillery tables instructions on paper tape storage = 72 numbers
Digital Electronics 101
Transistors can perform AND, OR, NOT, etc Example - Half Adder:
AND
XOR
Apple's iPad uses theA4 system chip with
177 million transistors
First Generation
based on vacuum tubes
ENIAC 1946 - Univ of Pennsylvania programmed via wires
EDVAC based on ENIAC program stored
in memory
UNIVAC 1951 first commercial machine
Second Generation
1955-1964
based on transistors
1947 - Bell LabsBardeen, Brattain, Shockley
Noble Prize in 1956
This IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unitheld 2.8 MB of data.
Lease = $2100 per month
Third Generation
based on Integrated Circuits mainframes and minicomputers
IBM 360 First offered in 1964 equally suited for business or science from 8K to 8M of memory
Fourth Generation based on VLSI
VLSI = Very Large Scale Integration thousands of transistors per chip
microcomputers IBM PC released in 1981
photo from www.cs.indiana.edu
Microsoft in 1978
Fifth Generation
massively parallel computers supercomputers
still not in everyone's home
Possible Revision of "5th Generation" maybe it was the internet-ization of every device maybe it was mobile-ization of every device, thanks to
Lithium-Ion batteries allowing smaller devices
Moore's Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transistor_Count_and_Moore%27s_Law_-_2008.svg
computing power doubles every two years
Computers Sold Annually
Units = 1000
graph from www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html
The FutureThe Future
The CloudThe Cloud
Even more Even more Ubiquitous ComputingUbiquitous Computing
??
Next Class…
Computer Guts Components of a modern computer What to look for when buying a computer
Operating Systems Differences in Windows and Linux