History of computing

Introduction to

Computer

History of Computing

Abacus Before the 1500s, in Europe calculations were made with an

abacus. Abacus was invented around 500BC. It was available in many cultures like China, Mesopotamia, Japan Rome and Greece

The abacus (plural abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame.

It is a calculating tool that was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.

Today, abaci are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal. The user of an abacus is called an abacist

Abacus

Pascaline In 1642, Blaise Pascal (French mathematician) invented

mechanical calculator called Pascaline. Pascaline, also called Arithmetic Machine, the first calculator or

adding machine. It could only do addition and subtraction, with numbers being entered by manipulating its dials.

Pascal invented the machine for his father, a tax collector. so it was the first business machine too. He built 50 of them over the next 10 years.

In 1671, Gottfried Von Leibniz (German mathematician) extended pascaline to do multiplication, division and square root.

None of the machines discussed above (abacus and pascaline) had memory and they required human intervention at each step.

Pascaline

Difference Engine In 1822 Charles Babbage (English mathematician) called the

father of computer by some people developed the Difference Engine. A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions.

The name derives from the method of divided differences, a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial coefficients.

Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions, functions commonly used by both navigators and scientists, can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.

It was designed to automate the computation of polynomial equation. This machine implemented some storage . From time to time Babbage changed the capacity of the Engine.

Difference Engine

Difference Engine No. 1, portion,1832

Analytical Engine In 1833 Charles Babbage designed the Analytical Engine but he

died before he could build it. It was build after his death. The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-

purpose computer designed by Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's

Difference engine, a design for a mechanical computer. The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit,

control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer.

Analytical Engine

Trial model of a part of the Analytical Engine, built by Babbage, as displayed at the Science Museum (London)

Punch Card Machine Major development in 1886 The first card machine which was electrically activated. It was used by Hollerith to compute the statistics of the 1890

US census. Till 1960s the punched card system was the chief mode of

processing data.

First Digital Computer In 1937, H.A. Aiken of Harvard University began work to

design a fully automatic calculating machine. In 1944, the design became reality and it was named MARK I It could accept data from punch cards, store them in memory

and make calculations It could be programmed Perform arithmetic and logical operations

First Electronic Computer ENIAC(Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was

the first electronic general-purpose computer. It was digital and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.

ENIAC was initially designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army.

It was then announced as “Giant brain” It was introduced in 1947 Contains vacuum tubes, registers, capacitors and switches It was much faster than MARK I

First Computer to Use Stored Program

EDSAC (Electronic Delayed Storage Automatic Computer) was first introduce the stored program concept.

It was designed and completed in 1949 at Cambridge University

It used vacuum tubes It was little faster than the ENIAC

First Commercially Produced Computer

UNIVAC -I (Universal automatic computer) built in 1946 It could process numeric as well as alphabetic data. It used vacuum tubes. It used magnetic tape for data input and output, first time ever After introducing transistor the size and cost reduced and the

speed increased

Generation of Computer

The generation of computer can be described with the technology used and developed day after day.

First generation (1942-1955): vacuum tube

Second generation (1956-1963): transistor

Third generation (1964-1971): integrated circuit

Fourth generation (1971- present): microprocessor

Fifth generation (present and beyond): artificial

intelligence

First Generation Computer

Also called the vacuum tube based generation. The first generation computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry

and magnetic drums for memory. Input system was based on punch card and output system was on

printouts. Machine (Binary) languages are the only languages understood

by computers. They were enormous in size, taking up entire rooms. They were very expensive to operate. It took a great deal of

electricity to operate as a result a lot of heat was produced which often caused the malfunctions.

The UNIVAC and ENIAC are the examples of first generation computers.

Second Generation Computer

Called as the transistor based generation. In second generation transistors were used for circuitry as

transistors replaced vacuum tubes. Computers still relied on punched cards for input and printouts

for output. Second generation computers were moved to symbolic or

assembly language from binary machine language. Computers became smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy

efficient and more reliable than their first generation predecessors.

Example: IBM 1401, CDC 1604

Third Generation Computer

Called as the IC or integrated circuit based generation. In third generation semiconductor materials (IC) were used for

circuitry. Computer chips both for CPU and memory were composed of

semiconductor materials or in other words IC. Capable of running more operations simultaneously. users interacted with computer through keyboard for input and

monitor for output. Computers became much smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy

efficient and more reliable than their second generation predecessors.

Example: IBM 360, Honeywell 600

Fourth Generation Computer

Called as the microprocessor based generation. In first three generation the pivot or focus of development was

the circuitry. And the intention was to reduce the size and make the computer more energy efficient by reducing power consumption.

However the computers became faster and cheaper in those days than ancient time.

But in fourth generation the pivot or focus of development was the processor or the brain. And the intention was to make the computer more and more faster, efficient and reliable.

As a result microprocessor was introduced which was very smaller and faster than earlier processor.

Fourth Generation Computer

Three basic characteristics that differentiate microprocessors from earlier processors:

Instruction set: microprocessor functions by executing set of instructions.

Bandwidth: the number of bits processed in a single instruction by the microprocessor.

Clock speed: the clock speed determines how many instructions the microprocessor can execute per second.

The fourth generation computers was also adorned with the GUI, the mouse and handheld devices.

The Intel 4004chip, developed in 1971 was the first microprocessor. In 1981 IBM introduced its first computer for home user and in 1984 apple introduced their macintosh

Fifth Generation Computer Fifth generation computers are in developmental stage which is based

on the artificial intelligence. The goal of the fifth generation is to develop the device which could respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-organization. Quantum computation and molecular and nanotechnology will be used in this technology. So we can say that the fifth generation computers will have the power of human intelligence. The characteristics:

The fifth generation computers will use super large scale integrated chips.

They will have artificial intelligence. They will be able to recognize image and graphs. Fifth generation computer aims to be able to solve highly complex

problem including decision making, logical reasoning. They will be able to use more than one CPU for faster processing speed. Fifth generation computers are intended to work with natural language.

Fifth Generation Computer

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/

25

Md. Shakhawat HossainStudent of Department of Computer Science & EngineeringUniversity of RajshahiE-mail: [email protected]