JDs Lecture: History of Computer (Table)

Computer History Year/Enter	Computer History Inventors/Inventions	Computer History Description of Event
1936	Konrad Zuse - Z1 Computer	First freely programmable computer.
1942	John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry ABC Computer	Who was first in the computing biz is not always as easy as ABC.
1944	Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper Harvard Mark I Computer	The Harvard Mark 1 computer.
1946	John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly ENIAC 1 Computer	20,000 vacuum tubes later...
1948	Frederic Williams & Tom Kilburn Manchester Baby Computer & The Williams Tube	Baby and the Williams Tube turn on the memories.
1947/48	John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley The Transistor	No, a transistor is not a computer, but this invention greatly affected the history of computers.
1951	John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly UNIVAC Computer	First commercial computer & able to pick presidential winners.
1953	International Business Machines IBM 701 EDPM Computer	IBM enters into 'The History of Computers'.
1954	John Backus & IBM FORTRAN Computer Programming Language	The first successful high level programming language.
1955 (In Use 1959)	Stanford Research Institute, Bank of America, and General Electric ERMA and MICR	The first bank industry computer - also MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) for reading checks.
1958	Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce The Integrated Circuit	Otherwise known as 'The Chip'
1962	Steve Russell & MIT Spacewar Computer Game	The first computer game invented.
1964	Douglas Engelbart Computer Mouse & Windows	Nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end.
1969	ARPAnet	The original Internet.
1970	Intel 1103 Computer Memory	The world's first available dynamic RAM chip.
1971	Faggin, Hoff & Mazor Intel 4004 Computer Microprocessor	The first microprocessor.
1971	Alan Shugart &IBM The "Floppy" Disk	Nicknamed the "Floppy" for its flexibility.
1973	Robert Metcalfe & Xerox The Ethernet Computer Networking	Networking.
1974/75	Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers	The first consumer computers.
1976/77	Apple I, II & TRS-80 & Commodore Pet Computers	More first consumer computers.
1978	Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston VisiCalc Spreadsheet Software	Any product that pays for itself in two weeks is a surefire winner.
1979	Seymour Rubenstein & Rob Barnaby WordStar Software	Word Processors.
1981	IBM The IBM PC - Home Computer	From an "Acorn" grows a personal computer revolution
1981	Microsoft MS-DOS Computer Operating System	From "Quick And Dirty" comes the operating system of the century.
1983	Apple Lisa Computer	The first home computer with a GUI, graphical user interface.
1984	Apple Macintosh Computer	The more affordable home computer with a GUI.
1985	Microsoft Windows	Microsoft begins the friendly war with Apple.
So on

JDs Lecture: History of Computer Part 2

Computer “an electronic device that computes”

Harvard Mark I computer which was built as a partnership between Harvard and IBM in 1944. 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.

In 1965 the work of the German Konrad Zuse was published for the first time in English. Z( 1 and 2) was built between 1936 and 1938 in the parlor of his parent's home. Z3, built in 1941, was probably the first operational, general-purpose, programmable (that is, software controlled) digital computer. Zuse reinvented Babbage's concept of programming and decided on his own to employ binary representation for numbers.

The title of forefather of today's all-electronic digital computers is usually awarded to ENIAC, which stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator. ENIAC was built at the University of Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1945 by two professors, John Mauchly and the 24 year old J. Presper Eckert, who got funding from the war department after promising they could build a machine that would replace all the "computers"

Once ENIAC was finished and proved worthy of the cost of its development, its designers set about to eliminate the obnoxious fact that reprogramming the computer required a physical modification of all the patch cords and switches. It took days to change ENIAC's program. Eckert and Mauchly's next teamed up with the mathematician John von Neumann to design EDVAC, which pioneered the stored program. Because he was the first to publish a description of this new computer, von Neumann is often wrongly credited with the realization that the program (that is, the sequence of computation steps) could be represented electronically just as the data was. But this major breakthrough can be found in Eckert's notes long before he ever started working with von Neumann. Eckert was no slouch: while in high school Eckert had scored the second highest math SAT score in the entire country.

Eckert and Mauchly left the University of Pennsylvania over a dispute about who owned the patents for their invention. They decided to set up their own company. In the 50's, UNIVAC (a contraction of "Universal Automatic Computer") was the household word for "computer", was the first computer to employ magnetic tape. After a success there came personal computers together with the invention of microprocessor and IBM hiring firm called Microsoft to provide software for their products.

The 8080 was employed in the MITS Altair computer, which was the world's first personal computer (PC).

JDs Lecture: History of Computer

The origin of the computer is hard to pin down together with the exact date. But let see computer history by its definition.

Computer “a device that computes”

Abacus is a Latin word that has its origins in the Greek words abax or abakon (meaning "table" or "tablet") which in turn, possibly originated from the Semitic word abq, meaning "sand". It is also called a counting frame, a calculating tool used primarily for performing arithmetic processes. It was developed and used by the Chinese in 3000 BC. But the oldest surviving abacus was used in 300 B.C. by the Babylonians

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. The magic ingredient is the logarithm of each operand, which was originally obtained from a printed table. But Napier also invented an alternative to tables, where the logarithm values were carved on ivory sticks which are now called Napier's Bones

Slide Rule appeared in 1650 and was the result of a joint effort of two Englishmen Edmund Gunter and the reverend William Oughtred. This slide rule based on Napier's logarithms was to become the first analog computer (of the modern ages) since multiplication and subtraction were figured out by physical distance.

In 1642 Blaise Pascal, at age 19, invented the Pascaline as an aid for his father who was a tax collector. Pascal built 50 of this gear-driven one-function calculator (it could only add) but couldn't sell many because of their exorbitant cost and because they really weren't that accurate (at that time it was not possible to fabricate gears with the required precision).

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 that he called the stepped reckoner because, instead of gears, it employed fluted drums having ten flutes arranged around their circumference in a stair-step fashion. Although the stepped reckoner employed the decimal number system (each drum had 10 flutes), Leibniz was the first to advocate use of the binary number system which is fundamental to the operation of modern computers. Leibniz is considered one of the greatest of the philosophers but he died poor and alone.

In 1801 the Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a power loom (Jacquard’s 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.

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. Then he invented Analytic Engine. This device, large as a house and powered by 6 steam engines, would be more general purpose in nature because it would be programmable, thanks to the punched card technology of Jacquard.

From Jacquards Loom came Hollerith’s Punch (Read/Write) Cards. Hollerith had the insight to convert punched cards (read-only) to what is today called a read/write technology. While riding a train, he observed that the conductor didn't merely punch each ticket, but rather punched a particular pattern of holes whose positions indicated the approximate height, weight, eye color, etc. of the ticket owner. This was done to keep anyone else from picking up a discarded ticket and claiming it was his own (a train ticket did not lose all value when it was punched because the same ticket was used for each leg of a trip). Hollerith realized how useful it would be to punch (write) new cards based upon an analysis (reading) of some other set of cards. Complicated analyses, too involved to be accomplished during a single pass thru the cards, could be accomplished via multiple passes thru the cards using newly printed cards to remember the intermediate results. Then Hollerith after a success built Tabulating Machine Company, where in short time became International Business Machines, known today as IBM.

JDs Lecture: Computer

Computer - as any programmable electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data (Webster Dictionary).

- A device that computes, especially a programmable electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes information.

Input Devices – are devices used to input data to the system for processing.

Ex. Keyboards, Mice, Webcam, CD/DVD-ROM Drives, Floppy Disk Drives,

Microphone, Scanner etc.

Output Devices – are devices used to output data from the system.

Ex. Monitor, Printer, Speaker etc.

Hardware - is a comprehensive term for all of the physical parts of a computer.

- Anything that can be touch by human that relates to computer.

Software - is the collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions telling a computer what to do.

System Software – software that is used to help computer run without this the

Computer won’t run.

Ex. Operating Systems

Application Software – examples are Microsoft Office (word, Exel etc.), Games,

Browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Netscape etc.)

Programming Software – software used to program

Ex. Turbo C, C++, Perl, Java etc.

Computer Primary Parts

Monitor – is a primary device, TV like, used for displaying information or data.

Ex. CRT – Cathode Ray Tube, LCD – Liquid Crystal Display etc.

Keyboard – is a primary device used for entering information or data to be processed by the System Unit.

Mouse – an input device used for navigating and interacting with the computer

Power supply - An electrical transformer regulates the electricity used by the computer.

CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/Multi Purpose Drives – is an input, output or input/output device that uses Disc (CD-ROM – Compact Disc Read Only Memory, DVD-ROM – Digital Versatile Disc Read Only Memory)

Floppy Drive - This is the slot in the front of your computer where you insert a disk to store data and move it to another computer.

System Unit (Professional Term) - also known as a base unit or CPU(Layman’s Term), is the main body of a desktop computer, typically consisting of a plastic enclosure containing the motherboard, power supply, cooling fans, internal disk drives, and the memory modules and expansion cards that are plugged into the motherboard, such as video and network cards.

- This is where all the important parts that processes data.

Computer Main Parts (System Units Parts)

Central processing unit (CPU) - The microprocessor "brain" of the computer system is called the central processing unit. It's a chip that holds a complete computational engine. It uses assembly language as its native language. Everything that a computer does is overseen by the CPU.

Memory - This is used to hold data. There are several specific types of memory in a computer:

Random-access memory (RAM) - Used to temporarily store information with which the computer is currently working

Read-only memory (ROM) – A permanent type of memory storage used by the computer for important data that doesn't change. (Not included as Main Parts)

Ex. CD, DVD, CD-RW, BluRay Disc

Hard disk - This is large-capacity permanent storage used to hold information such as programs and documents.

Basic input/output system (BIOS) - A type of ROM that is used by the computer to establish basic communication (POST – Power On Self-Test) when the computer is first powered on.

Motherboard - This is the main circuit board to which all of the other internal components connect. The CPU and memory are usually on the motherboard. Other systems may be found directly on the motherboard or connected to it through a secondary connection. For example, a sound card can be built into the motherboard or connected through an expansion slot.

Graphics card - This translates image data from the computer into a format that can be displayed by the monitor. Some graphics cards have their own powerful processing units (called a GPU -- graphics processing unit). The GPU can handle operations that normally would require the CPU.

Sound card - This is used by the computer to record and play audio by converting analog sound into digital information and back again.

Bus – are connectors used to transmit digital signals of data from one part of the system unit to another for processing.

Computer Extras

Printer – an output device used to produce hardcopy of documents from a computer.

- A device that converts soft copy documents or files into hard copy (printouts).

Scanner – an input device used to convert hard copy files, documents or Photo into Soft copy that can be processed by the computer.

Audio Output Device – a sound/audio output device.

Ex. Speaker, Headset, Headphone.

Microphone – an audio/sound input device.

Webcam – a video/image input device.

Modem – use to provide internet connection to a computer.

– is used to convert Digital signal to Analog signal or vice versa.