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Short note on the history of the computer
Description of evolution of computers
Short note on the history of the computer
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This paper is about the computer. Today computers are used by hundreds of millions of people. There have been many advances in the computer. The computer used to weigh 30 tons and filled warehouse size rooms, but today can be as light as 3 pounds and fit in a persons pocket.There were basically three times the computer was mentioned. One as a mechanical computing device, in about 500 BC The other as a concept in 1833, and the third as the modern day computer in 1946. The first mechanical calculator was called the abacus.
The abacus is a is a string of moving beads.The first concept of the modern computer was first outlined in 1833 by the British mathematician Charles Babbage. His outline contained all of todays features in a computer today. Those features are memory, a control unit, and output devices. Even though Babbage worked on the machine for over 40 years he never actual saw it work. The modern computer grew out of intense research efforts mounted during World War II.
The military needed faster ballistics calculators, and British cryptographers needed machines to help break the German secret codes.Early as the 1940's the German Inventor, Konrad Zuse, produced the first operational computer. It was used in aircraft and missile designs, but the German government would not let him improve the machine so it never reached its maximum capability. Two engineers called John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr.
from the University of Pennsylvania constructed a calculator. Its construction was an enormous feat of engineering. The 30-ton machine was 18 feet high and 80 feet long, and contained 17,468 vacuum tubes linked by 500 miles of wiring. This calculator performed 100,000 operations per second, and its first operational test included calculations that helped determine the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb. Computers were finally made to a smaller size in 1958 by Jack Kilby. He used less expensive silicon chips, this made it possible to cram as many as 10 million components on 1 chip.
Another big step in the computer chip was made by American Engineer Marcian E. Hoff. He combined the uses of a computer into 1 tiny silicon chip which he called the microprocessor. This microprocessor was called the Intel 4004. By the mid 1970's the microprocessor or microchip reduced the cost of computers.
The first affordable desktop computer designed specifically for personal use was called the Altair 8800 and was sold by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems in 1974.
...m simple tasks. Then Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, led by Vannevar Bush, fabricated the first analog computer, which could perform more complicated tasks than the previous computer. The analog computer was improved upon even further by Howard Aiken, who created the first computer with memory (Brinkley 643).
In previous years, the first computers were mechanical, not electronic. One of the first computers ever made was the Difference Engine, designed by Charles Babbage. (Babbage, C, n.d.). The Difference Engine was able to calculate polynomials using the differences method. After the Difference Engine, Babbage began his work on an improved calculating engine, the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine used punch cards to operate, just like the Jacquard Loom. The Jacquard Loom used punch cards to control weaving that created interesting patterns in textiles. The punch cards were used in the Analytical Engine to define the input and the calculations to carry-out. The Analytical Engine had two major parts. The first part was the mill, which is similar to a modern day computer processing unit, or a CPU. The CPU is the brain of a modern day computer; it is what carries out modern day instructions inside a computer. The mill would execute what it received from the store. The second part was the store, which was the memory of the computer. “It was the world’s first general-purpose computer.” (Babbage, C, n.d.)....
The subject of this term paper will be about computers in the 1950’s. The divisions that will be covered are; the types of computers there were, the memory capacity of computers, the programming languages of that time, and the uses of the computers for that time. Information will be gathered from the Internet, from books, and from magazines, and from the encyclopedia.
In 1953 it was estimated that there were 100 computers in the world. Computers built between 1959 and 1964 are often regarded as the "second generation" computers, based on transistors and printed circuits - resulting in much smaller computers. 1964 the programming language PL/1 released by IBM. 1964 the launch of IBM 360. These first series of compatible computers. In 1970 Intel introduced the first RAM chip. In 1975 IBM 5100 was released. In 1976 the Apple Computer Inc. was founded, to market Apple I Computer. Designed to Stephen Wozinak and Stephan Jobs. In 1979 the first compact disk was released around 1981 IBM announced PC, the standard model was sold for $2,880.00.
In the year of 1944, IBM had perfected the the calculator it was known as Harvard
Computer evolution from the 1950’s until the present have been through numerous obstacles, but through all they have had a profound impact on human culture, human rights, and education. Before 1935, a computer was a person who performed mathmetical calculations. Between 1935 and 1945 the definition referred to a machine, rather than a person. The modern machine definition is based on von Neumann's concepts: a device that accepts input, processes data, stores data, and produces output (Graham). Before the computer was an electronic device, people were doing all of the computing, According to the Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology (Robert Barnhart, ed., NY: Harper Collins 1995), computer came into the English language in 1646 as a word for one who computes and then by 1897 as a mechanical calculating machine.
Have you ever pondered upon how computer came into existence? It could not have just pop out of nowhere, can it? What actually is a Computer? When was it invented? Who were the great men behind these inventions? With so many of these questions popping up, we should look back into history to answer all these questions and to have a bette...
Computers are a magnificent feat of technology. They have grown from simple calculators to machines with many functions and abilities. Computers have become so common that almost every home has at least one computer, and schools find them a good source for information and education for their students (Hafner, Katie, unknown). Computers have created new careers and eliminated others and have left a huge impact on our society. The invention of the computer has greatly affected the arts, the business world, and society and history in many different areas, but to understand how great these changes are, it is necessary to take a look at the origins of the computer.
Many encyclopaedias and other reference works state that the first large-scale automatic digital computer was the Harvard Mark 1, which was developed by Howard H. Aiken (and team) in America between 1939 and 1944. However, in the aftermath of World War II it was discovered that a program controlled computer called the Z3 had been completed in Germany in 1941, which means that the Z3 pre-dated the Harvard Mark I. Prof. Hurst Zuse (http://www.epemag.com/zuse/)
...ere are gears used to select which numbers you want. Though Charles Babbage will always be credited with making the first “true” computer, and Bill Gates with popularizing it, Blaise Pascal will always have a place among the first true innovator of the computer. There is even a programming language called Pascal or Object Pascal which is an early computer program.
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.
In 1838 Charles Babbage invented the first computer. This means that computers and similar technology have been around for almost two centuries about 180 years. Later in the 1800s technology began to form its way into the classroom. In 1870 the Magic Lantern was invented, this was the primitive version of today’s projector. Technology in the classrooms began to grow when the tools became more advanced.
The first substantial computer was the giant ENIAC machine Created by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) used words of 10 decimal digits instead of binary ones like the previous automated calculators/computers. ENIAC was also the first machine to use more than 2,000 vacuum tubes, It used nearly 18,000 vacuum tubes. And storage of all those vacuum tubes and the machinery required to keep the machine cool took up over 167 square meters (1800 square feet) of floor space. Never the rest, it had punched-card input and output and arithmetically had 1 multiplier, 1 divider-square rooter, and 20 adders employing decimal "ring counters," which served as adders and also as quick-access (0.0002 seconds) read-write register storage.
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.
The history of the computer dates back all the way to the prehistoric times. The first step towards the development of the computer, the abacus, was developed in Babylonia in 500 B.C. and functioned as a simple counting tool. It was not until thousands of years later that the first calculator was produced. In 1623, the first mechanical calculator was invented by Wilhelm Schikard, the “Calculating Clock,” as it was often referred to as, “performed it’s operations by wheels, which worked similar to a car’s odometer” (Evolution, 1). Still, there had not yet been anything invented that could even be characterized as a computer. Finally, in 1625 the slide rule was created becoming “the first analog computer of the modern ages” (Evolution, 1). One of the biggest breakthroughs came from by Blaise Pascal in 1642, who invented a mechanical calculator whose main function was adding and subtracting numbers. Years later, Gottfried Leibnez improved Pascal’s model by allowing it to also perform such operations as multiplying, dividing, taking the square root.