The ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator) was the first computer developed in the United States. John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering created the Eniac Computer. John Mauchly was the chief consultant and John Presper Eckert was the chief engineer. John Presper Eckert obtained his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1941 and his Master's degree in 1943, which qualified him to be chief engineer on the project. John Mauchly received his Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate degree at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland in physics. John Eckert met John Mauchly when he was a graduate student. It took Mauchly and Eckert one year to design and 18 months to build the Eniac.
The Eniac could hardly be considered “just a computer” due to its massive size and speed. One programmer of the Eniac described the machine as being “faster than thought.” This statement is not invalid due to the Eniac being able to calculate 5000 additions problems, 357 multiplications or 38 divisions in one second. It could perform the functions that one man would spend 20 hours on in around 15 minutes. This was one thousand times faster than any other calculating machine to date. The use of vacuum tubes rather than switches and relays created the increase in speed. These vacuum tubes made it a tough machine to re-program. Programming changes would take the technician’s weeks, and the machine always required long hours of maintenance. However this wasn’t a total bust because this led to many improvements in the vacuum tube.
All of this speed and the large number of components that make up the Eniac did not come at a cheap price. The total price of the f...
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...ce Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), both faster than Eniac, began to share the Computing Laboratory's workload with the ENIAC in 1953. It became noticeable almost immediately that the Eniac would have to be modified if it were to remain competitive, economical, and efficient. Even with these transformations and the fact that trouble-free operating time remained at about a 100 hours a week during the last 6 years of the Eniac’s operation, its operating costs were way more expensive then those of the EDVAC and ORDVAC. The Eniac was no longer competitive economically. The workload gradually shifted to the other machines, and at 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955, the power to the Eniac was cut off. Although the Eniac’s purpose was over it still played a major role in the development of the computer industry. “It's death was a natural one, it had served its purpose.”
In the fifties, computers were in the experimental stage they were extremely hard to work with, and were a constant technicians worst nightmare, because often enough you had to replace the fuses (s Appendix a).
Herman Hollerith (1860 - 1929) founded IBM ( as the Tabulating Machine Company ) in 1896. The company renames known as IBM in 1924. In 1906 Lee D. Forest in America developed the electronic tube (an electronic value). Before this it would have been impossible to make digital electronic computers. In 1919 W. H. Eccles and F. W. Jordan published the first flip-flop circuit design.
...) - “John W. Mauchly and the Development of the ENIAC Computer.” Penn Library Exhibitions. http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/maucly/jwm6.html
to replace the IBM machine. In the 1960s and the 1970s IBM came out quickly and built a
Computer engineering started about 5,000 years ago in China when they invented the abacus. The abacus is a manual calculator in which you move beads back and forth on rods to add or subtract. Other inventors of simple computers include Blaise Pascal who came up with the arithmetic machine for his father’s work. Also Charles Babbage produced the Analytical Engine, which combined math calculations from one problem and applied it to solve other complex problems. The Analytical Engine is similar to today’s computers.
The Osborne Computer Corporation was founded in 1980 by Adam Osborne. This company was founded upon the idea of developing one product, the portable computer system. The first Osborne 1 was shown at the National Computer Conference in May of 1981 and was an instant hit. It brought brand new concepts to the table, such as a built-in screen and an optional battery back. (2) This computer, though a success, had lots of room for technological advances. A small 5" screen and a weight of 24.5 lbs left users wanting more. Surprisingly, it wasn't the mobility of the computer that was the selling point, but it was the $1500 worth of software that was included in the $1795 price tag. To the business consumer, this was an incredible deal. Within the first 8 months of sales, 11,000 units were shipped and 50,000 were on backorder. The success of the world's first portable computer was apparent, but the business smarts of the Osborne Computer Corporation were not. After massive success with the Osborne 1, the company began to develop a new portable computer system to sell. Despite the rampant success of the Osborne 1, several other computer companies offered a large amount of competition. Not only did the competition make improvements upon the Osborne 1, but they also introduced a new a new IBM operating system that was faster and had more software titles available. Although the competition was heavy, the Osborne 1 continued to sell until early in 1983 when Adam Osborne announced the future arrival of a new product from the Osborne Computer Corporation. This announcement killed the demand for the Osborne 1 in anticipation for its replacement. As inventory increased, sales decreased until Sept. 13th, 1983 when Osborne Computer Corporation filed for bankruptcy. (3)
In the past few decades, one field of engineering in particular has stood out in terms of development and commercialisation; and that is electronics and computation. In 1965, when Moore’s Law was first established (Gordon E. Moore, 1965: "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits"), it was stated that the number of transistors (an electronic component according to which the processing and memory capabilities of a microchip is measured) would double every 2 years. This prediction held true even when man ushered in the new millennium. We have gone from computers that could perform one calculation in one second to a super-computer (the one at Oak Ridge National Lab) that can perform 1 quadrillion (1015) mathematical calculations per second. Thus, it is only obvious that this field would also have s...
Computers are changing the world as we know it, and they offer an exciting new way of working. The news represented a complete turnaround for the corporate giant. Microsoft Chairperson, Bill Gates publicly announced his company's new connection to the Internet. The announcement rang through the nation. Gates has consistently ignored the Internet in favor of desktop computing. So, with Microsoft's approval, computers kicked into even higher gear . The pace of innovation continues to astonish even those involved from the start. If one wants to find enthusiasm, intellect, hard work, and imagination; then computers is the place to be .
The UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was the first computer which was not a one-of-a- kind laboratory instrument. The UNIVAC became a household word in 1952 when it was used on a televised newscast to project the winner of the Eisenhower- Stevenson presidential race with stunning accuracy. That same year Maurice V. Wilkes (developer of EDSAC) laid the foundation for the concepts of microprogramming, which was to become the guide for computer design and construction. In 1954, the first general-purpose computer to be completely transistorized was built at Bell Laboratories.
This machine could do math, display graphics at the drop of a dime, and play two dimensional games (whic was all that was around back then). This wasn't something that you normally saw. This was something that seemed to come straight out of a science fiction film. At least that was what I thought.
The fist computer, known as the abacus, was made of wood and parallel wires on which beads were strung. Arithmetic operations were performed when the beads were moved along the wire according to “programming” rules that had to be memorized by the user (Soma, 14). The second earliest computer, invented by Blaise Pascal in 1694, was a “digital calculating machine.” Pascal designed this first known digital computer to help his father, who was a tax collector. Pascal’s computer could only add numbers, and they had to be entered by turning dials (Soma, 32). It required a manual process like its ancestor, the abacus. Automation was introduced in the early 1800’s by a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage. He created an automatic calculation machine that was steam powered and stored up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Unlike its two earliest ancestors, Babbage’s invention was able to perform various operations. It relied on cards with holes punched in them, which are called “punch cards.” These cards carried out the programming and storing operations for the machine. Unluckily, Babbage’s creation flopped due to the lack of mechanical precision and the lack of demand for the product (Soma, 46). The machine could not operate efficiently because technology was t adequate to make the machine operate efficiently Computer interest dwindled for many years, and it wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that people became interested in them once again.
Thousands of years ago calculations were done using people’s fingers and pebbles that were found just lying around. Technology has transformed so much that today the most complicated computations are done within seconds. Human dependency on computers is increasing everyday. Just think how hard it would be to live a week without a computer. We owe the advancements of computers and other such electronic devices to the intelligence of men of the past.
Gates and Allen soon got many opportunities to prove their computer skills. In 1972, they started their own company called 'Traf-O-Data.' They developed a portable computer that allowed them t...
Built in to his machine were operations that included everything a modern general-purpose computer would need. It was programmed by--and stored data on--cards with holes
The next major improvement is the memory of a computer. This includes the hard drive and the RAM. During the same generation as the 386, there was also the hard drive and RAM. But these two components were not much then. The hard drive was about 100-300 megabytes and the RAM was about 4 megabytes.