Copyright 1995-2005 Suzanne Tomlinson and Curt Hill 1
History of Computers
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
Copyright 1995-2005 Suzanne Tomlinson and Curt Hill 2
First Attempts at Counting Systems
Chalkmarks - scratches on wall Roman Numerals
– mark for groups of numbers I,V,C,D Decimal System
– base 10– invented by Hindus, century or two AD– adopted and improved by Arabs - 7th
century– Mohammed ibn Mûsâ al-Khowârizmî ~ 825
– Dutch Army Quartermaster adds digits to right of decimal in 15th century
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Early Computing Aids Counting Board
– rocks on grooves in board or stone tablets– 5000 years BC
Abacus– beads string on wires– positional math– 3500 years BC– still in use today
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Napier's Bones
John Napier– 1614
portable multiplication tool– ivory rods with triangular grids that when
laid side by side would show answer to multiplication problem
lead to development of the slide rule by Edmund Gunter in 1620
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Pascaline Blaise Pascal– French mathematician and philosopher– father was tax collector– programming language named for him
1642 cogs and wheels could add and subtract
– unsuccessfully marketed– mechanical accuracy problems
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Stepped Reckoner Gottfried Von Leibniz
– Prussian mathematician– independently invented Calculus
could add, subtract, multiply and divide 1671 started, finished in 1694 better acceptance than pascaline accepted by Emperor of China, Czar of
Russia (Peter the Great) and the French Academy of Science
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Industrial Revolution
Started in England in 1760, completed by 1830
Enlightened people as to what machines could do
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Jacquard Loom Joseph Jacquard
– French silk weaver 1801 designs for silk created by punched wooden
cards– cards connected to form "belt" so design
could be repeated many times by 1812, 11,000 looms in France alone
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Difference Engine Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
– Rich, eccentric genius
1822-1830 was to be used to produce star tables for
navigation and be powered by steam funded by British Govt. $7000 funding cut off in 1842 a machine based on Difference engine was
completed in 1855
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Analytical Engine Charles Babbage's second idea started 1833 had input device, output device, control
unit, internal storage and a processor never finished due to lack of technology built several years ago from historical notes
and ran without modification was to use punched card idea of Jacquard's
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Concept of Programming Ada Augusta Lovelace (1815-1852)
– daughter of Lord Byron– first programmer– mathematical education
DOD language named Ada after her recorded all information and diagrams on
analytical engine wrote the program for the analytical engine
even though it was never utilitzed or tested
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Boolean Algebra George Boole (1815-1864)
– English 1854 built on premise that everything can be
expressed in terms of true/false basis for use of binary arithmetic in
computer ignored until 1910 AND OR truth tables
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Important sidelights
C. Sholes invents typewriter between 1867 and 1873– Marketed by Remington
W.S. Burroughs invents the first modern adding machine - 1886– Founds the Burroughs company
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U.S. Census
1880 Census took 7 years 1890 Census was expected to take 11 Census Bureau approaches Herman
Hollerith at University of Pennsylvania
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Hollerith Cards Herman Hollerith (1860-1926)
– invented a series of machines based on punched cards
became head of Census and later formed Tabulating Machine Company (which was to become IBM)
cut time for census from 7 yr to 2 1/2 yr 1890 6 weeks - 60,000,000 cards punched paper cards for data input
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Vacuum Tubes Lee DeForest
– 1908– American– "Father of Modern Electronic Communications"
Diode in 1904 Triode in 1907 instead of just controlling flow of electricity,
could amplify it or completely switch it on or off
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Electronic Era
General time frame– Alan Turing (1924-44) - Colossus– Vannevar Bush (1930)– Howard Aiken (1937)– Conrad Zuse (1930’s-1944) - Z1-Z4– J.V. Atanasoff (1930’s)
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Collossus
1940's1940's BritishBritish used to decode German messages done by used to decode German messages done by
Enigma (German encoder)Enigma (German encoder) war effort so was secret - wasn't mentioned war effort so was secret - wasn't mentioned
until 20 years lateruntil 20 years later used 1800 vacuum tubesused 1800 vacuum tubes
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Vannevar Bush
Large analog computer Built at MIT - 1930 Built to solve differential equations
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Automatic Sequence Calculator
Funded by IBM at Harvard H. H. Aiken 11 or 23 digit arithmetic Controlled by paper tape 23 digit multiplication in 4.5 seconds 8 feet high, 51 feet long 3 million electrical connections
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Z1 Through Z4
Konrad Zuse German 1930's through 1944 automatic calculating machines none survived the war
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ABCAtanasoff Berry Computer
John V. Atanasoff Professor of Physics at Iowa State "Father of the Modern Computer" worked with Clifford Berry, Grad Student $650 grant was to solve 23 simultaneous equations due to war, ISU forgot to register patent after lawsuit in 1973, ABC is recognized as the "First
Electronic Digital Computer" vacuum tubes and binary math
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ENIAC
Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator John Mauchly and J.Presper Eckert University of Pennsylvania 1943 designed to solve ballistic equations for Navy
1946-1955 Mauchly got many of the ideas from the ABC Founded UNIVAC which was acquired by
Remington Rand Co.
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ENIAC
18,000 vacuum tubes Filled a 30 by 50 room 30 tons and two stories high Cost $486,840 in 1946 5,000 additions per second 6,000 multi-position switches 100,000 pulses per second
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ENIAC in 1952
7,247 logged hours– 3,491 production– 1,061 problem setup and checking– 195.3 idle– 651 scheduled engineering– 1,847.8 unscheduled engineering
90% was finding and fixing tubes
19,000 tubes were replaced in 1952
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EDSAC Electronic Delay Storage Automatic
Computer Built at Cambridge U. (England) Wilkis was a student of Mauchly &
Eckert and familiar with von Neumann First computer to be able to store a
program in memory (beat US by few months)
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EDVAC Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic
Computer John von Neumann (with Mauchly & Eckert) University of Pennsylvania for US Army 1951 became operational change from decimal to binary number system could store program in memory used until December 1962
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UNIVAC
First commercial computer Start of the "First Generation“ First two were sold to Census Bureau
and next one to GE Engineering
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Computer Generations Four main divisions in computer
hardware advancements (technology) some believe we are starting the fifth
division to see development, need to compare
the characteristics of each generation
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Generation Characteristics
time period technology operation time cost per function processing speed
memory size in bytes
mean time between failure
auxiliary units examples of models languages used
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First Generation Time Period -- 1951-1958 Technology
– logic unit -- vacuum tubes primary memory -- magnetic drums input devices -- card-oriented Cost per function -- $5.00 Processing speed -- 2000 ins/sec Memory Size in Bytes -- 1000-4000 Mean Time between Failures -- minutes to hours
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First Generation (Continued)
Auxiliary units– punched card-oriented
Examples of models sold– UNIVAC 1– IBM 701
Languages– machine and assembly
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Second Generation Time Period -- 1959-1964 Technology
– logic unit -- transistors, invented by Schockley, Bardeen and Brattain
primary memory -- magnetic cores input devices -- tape-oriented Operation time -- microseconds Cost per function -- $0.50 Processing speed -- 1 million ins/sec
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Second Generation (Cont.) Memory size in bytes -- 4000-32,000 Mean time between failures -- days Auxiliary units -- tape-oriented Examples of models sold
– UNIVAC M460– IBM 700 series– PDP1 - PDP8
Languages -- FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP
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Third Generation Time Period -- 1965-1970 Technology -- logic unit (integrated circuit) primary memory -- integrated circuit input devices -- magnetic disk-oriented time-sharing Operation time -- nanoseconds Cost per function -- $0.05 Processing speed -- 10 million ins/sec Memory size in bytes -- 32,000-3,000,000
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Third Generation (Cont.)
Mean time between failures -- days-weeks Auxiliary units -- disk-oriented Examples of models sold
– IBM 360– PDP 11
Languages– PL/1– FORTH– BASIC
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Fourth Generation
Time Period -- 1971-1990 Technology -- logic unit VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated circuits) primary memory -- VLSI input/secondary memory -- disk, bubble Operation time -- nanoseconds or picoseconds Cost per function -- $.01 to $0.0001 Processing speed -- 100 million-1billion
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Fourth Generation (Cont.)
Memory size in bytes -- 3,000,000+ Mean time between failures -- weeks to months Auxiliary units -- disk and mass storage Examples of models sold
– micros - Apple, IBM/PC– mini - Digital (VAX)
Languages -- Structured High Level– Pascal, C, Ada
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Fifth Generation
Time Period -- 1990 to present Technology – Single chip CPUs
– Little difference in speed between mainframes and PCs
Processing speed -- gigahertz Memory size -- 100M and up Auxiliary units -- touch screens, voice,
transparent interfaces
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Fifth Generation (Cont.)
Examples -- Our laptop Languages
– OOP (Object-oriented programming)– C++– Natural languages
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Personal Computers 1975 to 1981 Kenbak-1 - $750
– 40 machines made and sold 1971– All TTL chips
Altair - first popular micro sold– named after "Star Trek" destination– Edward Roberts (March 1974)– Structure:
1 CPU (8080), 256 characters of memory, switches and lights for I/O
– sold for $397.00
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Apple Computers
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs belonged to one of earliest and most
active computer clubs - Homebrew Computer Club in Northern Calif
1977 in garage while both teenagers marketing strategy - give to schools,
then students (and parents) will want to buy them for home
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Other Firsts 1971 -- "floppy" disk 1978 -- electronic spreadsheet -
VisiCalc 1979 -- commercial word processor -
WordStar 1981 -- IBM personal computer
– shipping rate rose to 1 million units/mo 1983 -- LOTUS 1-2-3 comes to market