HISTO

RY OF

COMPUTE

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SCIENCE

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BEFORE 1900 – THE ABACUS

• Computational devices have been in use for a very long time

• It is predicted that the Abacus has been in use since year 3000 B.C.

• An abacus is a device with beads on it that can be moved up or down on sticks to aid with counting and calculating.

BEFORE 1900 – JOHN NAPIER

• Another computing device that has been used for a very long time is Napier’s Bones

• Napier’s bones were invented circa year 1610 by John Napier

• John Napier was a Scottish man who developed the use of logarithms

IMAGES OF NAPIER'S BONES AND AN ABACUS

Napier’s Bones Ancient Chinese Abacus

BEFORE 1900 – JOSEPH-MARIE JACQUARD• Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed a system in the

early 1800’s from a loom that could weave complicated patterns

• This loom created patterns depending on the number and arrangement of holes in punched cards that were fed into the machine

• This punched card method became significant and was the first of many computers to use this

JOSEPH-MARIE JACQUARD'S LOOM

1900-1939

• Developments on devices used for calculations kept

improving

• Calculation devices for specific purposes, such as

factoring integers began to also develop

• Electrically operated devices started to exist around

this time

• Big names in Computer Science history like Alan

Turing and Kurt Gödel became prominent in this field

ALAN TURING

• In 1936, Alan Turing and Alonzo Church introduced the more mainstream use of an algorithm

• Alan Turing contributed a significant amount to computer sciences, such as a thesis and a description of the well-known “Turing machine”

• The Turing machine, in theory, can simulate the completion of any algorithm which can be performed on a modern computer if given enough resources to do so.

• The Turing machine works by printing, erasing, and rewriting data on an infinitely long piece of paper

• Alan Turing was arrested for “gross indecency” for being a homosexual many years later

• He committed suicide by eating an apple that he had poisoned

TURING MACHINE

1940’S

• The times of war sparked even more development in the field of computing due to the usefulness for warfare

• The first electronic digital computer was created

• Computers were used to calculate targets for ballistic weapons, and as a result the weapons were more accurate and took less time to use

• Computers were also used for decrypting and code-breaking in the war times

• An electronic computer that was able to store programs was designed called the EDVAC

• One of the people who worked on the EDVAC is named John Von Neumann, a notable mathematician

JOHN VON NEUMANN

• Von Neumann was an extremely talented mathematician

• He developed many theories and published a lot of work in mathematics and programming which accelerated the growth of computing

• Von Neumann also helped in the creation of “The Atomic Bomb,” which was later dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the second World War.

1940’S

• In Germany, a man named Konrad Zuse built the first operating program controlled calculator for general purpose in 1941

• This calculator was called the “Z3”

• The invention of the transistor in 1947 made way for the creation of the microprocessor and the microprocessor revolution in computer sciences

• The transistor earned the inventors of it a Nobel Prize in physics.

• The inventors of the transistor are named John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley

COMPUTER TRANSISTORS

1950’S

• The first computer “bug” was discovered

• The bug was a moth that had gotten into a computer at Harvard and caused issues with the computer

• The term was later coined and is used today as a word to describe an issue in a computer, usually in code or programming

• A significant compiler called LISP was invented for artificial intelligence programming by John McCarthy in 1958

1960’S

• ARPAnet had started to be created, which was a precursor to todays Internet

• There were many advances in the use and design of Operating Systems.

• The first real microprocessor chip was invented near the end of the decade

• Many new programming languages were developed, such as BASIC

A MODERN MICROPROCESSOR

1970’S

• The Unix operating system was developed at Bell Laboratories

• A notable programming language called C was also created in the 70’s, as well as Pascal and Ada

• The first supercomputer was created in this time. One of the first was titled CRAY-1

• The CRAY-1 could perform 160 million operations per second

• There were further advances in the use of algorithms

• Computers grew more and more complicated throughout the years

1980’S

• This decade is the time when the first Personal Computers started to become popular

• Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, founders of Apple, helped significantly with this

• The first computer viruses were developed in 1981

• The first successful Portable Computer was marketed called the Osborne I

• The US National Science Foundation started NSFnet, which was also a precursor to todays Internet

1990’S AND ON

• Interest in Quantum Computing started to grow

• Computers are constantly growing smaller and smaller in size with the further advancements in technology

• Parallel Computing, in which multiple programs can be ran at once of a computer, continues to grow and become stronger

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Courses/134/history.html

• http://www.computerhistory.org/

• http://www.eingang.org/Lecture/

• http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/publications/0337.pdf

• http://www.cs.brown.edu/~jes/papers/09_ch5.pdf

• http://www.firstpost.com/topic/person/john-von-neumann-history-of-computer-video-anLX3hir0cg-14840-17.html

• http://systemcomputing.org/turing%20award/Maurice_1967/TheFirstDraft.pdf

• http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TuringMachine.html