History of Computers

History of Computers

The Earliest Computing Devices:

1. Abacaus

It is the first manual data processing device w/c was developed in China in 12th century A.D. The deivce has a frame with beads strung on wires or rods and arithmetic calculations are performed by manipulating the beads. The abacus is simple, and it is effective.

2. Napier’s Bones

John Napier was Scottish mathematicians who become famous for his invention of logarithms. The us of ‘logs” enabled him to reduce any multiplication problem to a problem of addition. It is an abacus created by John Napier for calculation of products and quotients of numbers that was based on Arab mathematics and lattice multiplication used byMatrakci Nasuh in the Umdet-ul Hisab and Fibonacci writing in the Liber Abaci.

3. Oughtred’s Slide Rule

This invention is attributed to the English mathematician William Oughtred. Basically, a slide rule consists of two movable rulers placed side by side. Each ruler is marked off in such a way that the actual distances from the beginning of the ruler are proportional to the logarithms of the numbers printed on the ruler.

4. Pascal’s Calculator (Pascaline)

The Pascaline, invented by Blaise Pascal in France in 1642[1], was a mechanical calculator that could add and subtract directly. Its introduction in 1645 launched the development of mechanical calculators, first in Europe and then all over the world, development which culminated three centuries later by the invention of the first microprocessor developed for a Busicom calculator in 1971.

5. Leibniz’s Calculator

This machine could do mathematical calculations and save labor. It utilized the same techniques for addition and subtraction also multiplication, division and also extracting square roots. Can multiply, devide, add and substract. Mechanical device made of copper and steel. Carriage is performed with a stepped wheel, which mechanism is still in use today. Chronologically the speed of calculation for multiplication or division was acceptable. But like the Pascaline, this calculator required that the operator using the device had to understand how to turn the wheels and know the way of performing calculations with the calculator.

6. Babbage’s Analytical Engine

Diffenrnce Engine Analytical Engine

A special-purpose calculator designed to tabulate logarithms and trigonometric functions by evaluating finite differences to create approximating polynomials. Babbage's first attempt at a mechanical computing device was the difference engine, a special-purpose calculator designed to tabulate logarithms and trigonometric functions by evaluating finite differences to create approximating polynomials. During this project he realized that a much more general design was possible and started work designing the analytical engine.

7. Hollerith’s Punched-card Machine

It is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Now almost an obsolete recording medium, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and early 20th century for operating fairground organs and related instruments. They were

used through the 20th century in unit record machines for input, processing, anddata storage. Early digital computers used punched cards, often prepared using keypunch machines, as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data. Some voting machines use punched cards.

Five Generations of Computers:

1. First generation 1941-1958 (Vacuum Tube Years)

World War gave rise to numerous developments and started off the computer age. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was produced by a partnershp between University of Pennsylvannia and the US government. It consisted of 18,000 vacuum tubes and 7000 resistors. It was developed by John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly and was a general purpose computer. "Von Neumann designed the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) in 1945 with a memory to hold both a stored program as well as data." Von Neumann's computer allowed for all the computer functions to be controlled by a single source.

Then in 1951 came the Universal Automatic Computer(UNIVAC I), designed by Remington rand and collectively owned by US census bureau and General Electric. UNIVAC amazingly predicted the winner of 1952, presidential elections, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In first generation computers, the operating instructions or programs were specifically built for the task for which computer was manufactured. The Machine language was the only way to tell these machines to perform the operations. There was great difficulty to program these computers ,and more when there were some malfunctions. First Generation computers used Vacuum tubes and magnetic drums(for data storage).

UNIVAC (UNIversal Automatic Computer) 1951

Eckert and Mauchly completed the first commercial computer in the USA – the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)

First computer built for business

Short Code - A set of instructions called Short Code is developed for the UNIVAC. Programmers

The most famous UNIVAC product was the UNIVAC I mainframe computer of 1951, which became known for predicting the outcome of the U.S. presidential election the following year. This incident is particularly infamous because the computer predicted an Eisenhower landslide when traditional pollsters all called it for Adlai Stevenson. The numbers were so skewed that CBS's news boss in New York, Mickelson, decided the computer was in error and refused to allow the prediction to be read. Instead they showed some staged theatrics that suggested the computer was not responsive, and announced it was predicting 8-7 odds for an Eisenhower win (the actual prediction was 100-1). When the predictions proved true and Eisenhower won a landslide within 1% of the initial prediction, Charles Collingwood, the on-air announcer, embarrassingly announced that they had covered up the earlier prediction.[1]

In 1955 Remington Rand merged with Sperry Corporation to become Sperry Rand. The UNIVAC division of Remington Rand was renamed the Univac division of Sperry Rand. General Douglas MacArthur was chosen to head the company. In the 1960s, UNIVAC was one of the eight major American computer companies in an industry then referred to as "IBM and the seven dwarfs" - a play on Snow White and

the seven dwarfs, with IBM, by far the largest, being cast as Snow White and the other seven as being dwarfs: Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, GE, RCA and Honeywell.[2] In the 1970s, after GE sold its computer business to Honeywell and RCA sold its to Univac, the analogy to the seven dwarfs became less apt and the remaining small firms became known as the "BUNCH" (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell).Around 1975, to assist "corporate identity" the name was changed to Sperry Univac, along with Sperry Remington, Sperry New Holland, etc. In 1978 Sperry Rand, an old fashioned conglomerate of disharmonious divisions (computers, typewriters, office furniture, hay balers, manure spreaders, gyroscopes, avionics, radar, electric razors), decided to concentrate on its computing interests and unrelated divisions were sold. The company dropped the Rand from its title and reverted back to Sperry Corporation. In 1986, Sperry Corporation merged with Burroughs Corporation to become Unisys.Since the 1986 marriage of Burroughs and Sperry, Unisys has metamorphosed from a computer manufacturer to a computer services and outsourcing firm, competing in the same marketplace as IBM, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), and Computer Sciences Corporation. Unisys continues to design and manufacture enterprise class computers with the ClearPath and ES7000 server lines.

EDVAC (Electronic Discreet Variable Computer) 1952

John Von Neumann, designed with a central control unit which would calculate and output all mathematical and logical problems and a memory which could be written to and read. (RAM in modern terms) which would store programs and data. The EDVAC was a binary serial computer with automatic addition, subtraction, multiplication, programmed division and automatic checking with an ultrasonic serial memory [1] capacity of 1,000 44-bit words (later set to 1,024 words, thus giving a memory, in modern terms, of 5.5 kilobytes).

Physically, the computer comprised the following components:

a magnetic tape reader-recorder (Wilkes 1956:36[1] describes this as a wire recorder.) a control unit with an oscilloscope a dispatcher unit to receive instructions from the control and memory and direct them to other

units a computational unit to perform arithmetic operations on a pair of numbers at a time and send

the result to memory after checking on a duplicate unit a timer a dual memory unit consisting of two sets of 64 mercury acoustic delay lines of eight words

capacity on each line three temporary tanks each holding a single wordEDVAC's addition time was 864 microseconds and its multiplication time was 2900 microseconds (2.9 milliseconds).The computer had almost 6,000 vacuum tubes and 12,000 diodes, and consumed 56 kW of power. It covered 490 ft² (45.5 m²) of floor space and weighed 17,300 lb (7,850 kg). The full complement of operating personnel was thirty people for each eight-hour shift.

ENIAC ( Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) 1946

ENIAC (pronounced /ˈɛni.æk/), short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was the first general-purpose, electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, but its first use was in calculations for thehydrogen bomb.[4][5] When ENIAC was announced

in 1946 it was heralded in the press as a "Giant Brain". It boasted speeds one thousand times faster than electro-mechanical machines, a leap in computing power that no single machine has since matched. This mathematical power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists. The inventors promoted the spread of these new ideas by teaching a series of lectures on computer architecture.The ENIAC's design and construction was financed by the United States Army during World War II. The construction contract was signed on June 5, 1943, and work on the computer began in secret by the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering starting the following month under the code name "Project PX". The completed machine was unveiled on February 14, 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania, having cost almost $500,000 (nearly $6 million in 2008, adjusted for inflation). It was formally accepted by the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in July 1946. ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a refurbishment and a memory upgrade, and was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947. There, on July 29, 1947, it was turned on and was in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955. ENIAC was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania. The team of design engineers assisting the development included Robert F. Shaw (function tables), Chuan Chu (divider/square-rooter), Thomas Kite Sharpless (master programmer), Arthur Burks (multiplier),Harry Huskey (reader/printer), Jack Davis (accumulators) and Iredell Eachus Jr.

2. Second Generation 1956-1964 (The Era of the Transistor)

The invention of Transistors marked the start of the second generation. These transistors took place of the vacuum tubes used in the first generation computers. First large scale machines were made using these technologies to meet the requirements of atomic energy laboratories. One of the other benefits to the programming group was that the second generation replaced Machine language with the assembly language. Even though complex in itself Assemly language was much easier than the binary code.

Second generation computers also started showing the characteristics of modern day computers with utilities such as printers, disk storage and operating systems. Many financial information was processed using these computers.

In Second Generation computers, the instructions(program) could be stored inside the computer's memory. High-level languages such as COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) and FORTRAN (Formula Translator) were used, and they are still used for some applications nowdays.

3. Third Generation 1964-1971 (Integrated Circuits – Miniaturizing the Computers)

Although transistors were great deal of improvement over the vacuum tubes, they generated heat and damaged the sensitive areas of the computer. The Intergreated Circuit(IC) was invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby. It combined electronic components onto a small silicon disc, made from quartz. More advancement made possible the fitings of even more components on a small chip or a semi conductor. Also in third generation computers, the operating systems allowed the machines to run many different applications. These applications were monitored and coordinated by the computer's memory.

Although transistors were great deal of improvement over the vacuum tubes, they generated heat and damaged the sensitive areas of the computer. The Intergreated Circuit(IC) was

invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby. It combined electronic components onto a small silicon disc, made from quartz. More advancement made possible the fitings of even more components on a small chip or a semi conductor. Also in third generation computers, the operating systems allowed the machines to run many different applications. These applications were monitored and coordinated by the computer's memory.

4. Fourth Generation 1971-Present (The Microprocessor)

This generation can be characterized by both the jump to monolithic integrated circuits(millions of transistors put onto one integrated circuit chip) and the invention of the microprocessor (a single chip that could do all the processing of a full-scale computer). By putting millions of transistors onto one single chip more calculation and faster speeds could be reached by computers. Because electricity travels about a foot in a billionth of a second, the smaller the distance the greater the speed of computers.

However what really triggered the tremendous growth of computers and its significant impact on our lives is the invention of the microprocessor. Ted Hoff, employed by Intel(Robert Noyce's new company) invented a chip the size of a pencil eraser that could do all the computing and logic work of a computer. The microprocessor was made to be used in calculators, not computers. It led, however, to the invention of personal computers, or microcomputers.

It wasn't until the 1970's that people began buying computer for personal use. One of the earliest personal computers was the Altair 8800 computer kit. In 1975 you could purchase this kit and put it together to make your own personal computer. In 1977 the Apple II was sold to the public and in 1981 IBM entered the PC (personal computer) market.

Today we have all heard of Intel and its Pentium® Processors and now we know how it all got started. The computers of the next generation will have millions upon millions of transistors on one chip and will perform over a billion calculations in a single second. There is no end in sight for the computer movement.

5. Fifth Generation Present and Beyond (Artificial Intelligence)

Fifth generations computers are only in the minds of advance research scientiets and being tested out in the laboratories. These computers will be under Artifical Intelligence(AI), They will be able to take commands in a audio visual way and carry out instructions. Many of the operations which requires low human intelligence will be perfomed by these computers.

Parallel Processing is coming and showing the possibiliy that the power of many CPU's can be used side by side, and computers will be more powerful than thoes under central processing. Advances in Super Conductor technology will greatly improve the speed of information traffic. Future looks bright for the computers.

Applications for 5th Gen computers

Intelligent robots that could ‘see’ their environment (visual input - e.g. a video camera) and could be programmed to carry out certain tasks and should be able to decide for itself how the task should be accomplished, based on the observations it made of its environment.

Intelligent systems that could control the route of a missile and defence-systems that could fend off attacks.

Word processors that could be controlled by means of speech recognition.

Programs that could translate documents from one language to another.

Some technological developments that could make the development of fifth-generation computers possible, include:

a. Parallel-processing - many processors are grouped to function as one large group processor.

b. Superconductors - a superconductor is a conductor through which electricity can travel without any resistance resulting in faster transfer of information between the components of a computer.

c. Expert Systems helps doctors to reach a diagnosis by following the logical steps of problem solving just as if the doctor would have done it himself.

d. Speech recognition systems, capable of recognising dictation and entering the text into a word processor, are already available.