Adamson University

College of Engineering
Computer Engineering Department

Computer Fundamental and Programming LAB

Research Title
Name: __Patrice Pauline S. Tamoria_ Date: September 2, 2020
Student no.: ___201520097

What is a Computer?
- A computer is any machine that can be programmed to carry out a set of algorithms
and arithmetic instructions.

HISTORY OF COMPUTERS
THE MECHANICAL ERA (1623-1945)
The idea of using machines to solve mathematical problems can be traced at least
as far as the early 17th century. The first multi-purpose, i.e. programmable,
computing device was probably Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, which was
begun in 1823 but never completed. A more ambitious machine was the Analytical
Engine that was designed in 1842, but unfortunately it also was only partially
completed by Babbage. Many historians think the major reason he was unable to
complete these projects was the fact that the technology of the day was not reliable
enough. In spite of never building a complete working machine, Babbage and his
colleagues, most notably Ada, Countess of Lovelace, recognized several important
programming techniques, including conditional branches, iterative loops and index
variables.
A machine inspired by Babbage's design was arguably the first to be used in
computational science. George Scheutz read of the difference engine in 1833, and
along with his son Edvard Scheutz began work on a smaller version. By 1853 they
had constructed a machine that could process 15-digit numbers and calculate fourth-
order differences. Their machine won a gold medal at the Exhibition of Paris in 1855,
and later they sold it to the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York, which used it
to calculate the orbit of Mars. One of the first commercial uses of mechanical
computers was by the US Census Bureau, which used punch-card equipment
designed by Herman Hollerith to tabulate data for the 1890 census. In 1911
Hollerith's company merged with a competitor to found the corporation which in
1924 became International Business Machines.
FIRST GENERATION ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS (1937-1953)
Three machines have been promoted at various times as the first electronic
computers. These machines used electronic switches, in the form of vacuum tubes,
instead of electromechanical relays.
The earliest attempt to build an electronic computer was by J. V. Atanasoff, a
professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State, in 1937. Atanasoff set out to
build a machine that would help his graduate students solve systems of partial
differential equations. By 1941 he and graduate student Clifford Berry had succeeded
in building a machine that could solve 29 simultaneous equations with 29 unknowns.
However, the machine was not programmable, and was more of an electronic
calculator.
A second early electronic machine was Colossus, designed by Alan Turing for the
British military in 1943. This machine played an important role in breaking codes
used by the German army in World War II. Turing's main contribution to the field of
computer science was the idea of the Turing machine, a mathematical formalism
widely used in the study of computable functions. The existence of Colossus was kept
secret until long after the war ended, and the credit due to Turing and his colleagues
for designing one of the first working electronic computers was slow in coming.
The first general purpose programmable electronic computer was the Electronic
Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), built by J. Presper Eckert and John V.
Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania. Work began in 1943 and was completed
in 1945.
SECOND GENERATION (1954-1962)
Electronic switches in this era were based on discrete diode and transistor
technology with a switching time of approximately 0.3 microseconds. The first
machines to be built with this technology include TRADIC at Bell Laboratories in
1954 and TX-0 at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. Memory technology was based on
magnetic cores which could be accessed in random order, as opposed to mercury
delay lines, in which data was stored as an acoustic wave that passed sequentially
through the medium and could be accessed only when the data moved by the I/O
interface.
Important innovations in computer architecture included index registers for
controlling loops and floating point units for calculations based on real numbers.
During this second generation many high level programming languages were
introduced, including FORTRAN (1956), ALGOL (1958), and COBOL (1959).
Important commercial machines of this era include the IBM 704 and its successors,
the 709 and 7094. The latter introduced I/O processors for better throughput between
I/O devices and main memory.
THIRD GENERATION (1963-1972)
 The third generation brought huge gains in computational power. Innovations in
this era include the use of integrated circuits, or ICs (semiconductor devices with
several transistors built into one physical component), semiconductor memories
starting to be used instead of magnetic cores, microprogramming as a technique for
efficiently designing complex processors, the coming of age of pipelining and other
forms of parallel processing (described in detail in Chapter CA), and the introduction
of operating systems and time-sharing.
FOURTH GENERATION (1972-1984)
The next generation of computer systems saw the use of large scale integration
(LSI - 1000 devices per chip) and very large scale integration (VLSI - 100,000
devices per chip) in the construction of computing elements. At this scale entire
processors will fit onto a single chip, and for simple systems the entire computer
(processor, main memory, and I/O controllers) can fit on one chip.

FIFTH GENERATION (1984-1990)

The development of the next generation of computer systems is characterized
mainly by the acceptance of parallel processing. Until this time parallelism was
limited to pipelining and vector processing, or at most to a few processors sharing
jobs. The fifth generation saw the introduction of machines with hundreds of
processors that could all be working on different parts of a single program. The scale
of integration in semiconductors continued at an incredible pace - by 1990 it was
possible to build chips with a million components - and semiconductor memories
became standard on all computers. Other new developments were the widespread use
of computer networks and the increasing use of single-user workstations.
Scientific computing in this period was still dominated by vector processing. Most
manufacturers of vector processors introduced parallel models, but there were very
few (two to eight) processors in this parallel machines. In the area of computer
networking, both wide area network (WAN) and local area network (LAN)
technology developed at a rapid pace, stimulating a transition from the traditional
mainframe computing environment toward a distributed computing environment in
which each user has their own workstation for relatively simple tasks (editing and
compiling programs, reading mail) but sharing large, expensive resources such as file
servers and supercomputers. RISC technology (a style of internal organization of the
CPU) and plummeting costs for RAM brought tremendous gains in computational
power of relatively low cost workstations and servers.
SIXTH GENERATION (1990-PRESENT)
This generation is beginning with many gains in parallel computing, both in the
hardware area and in improved understanding of how to develop algorithms to exploit
diverse, massively parallel architectures. Parallel systems now compete with vector
 processors in terms of total computing power and most expect parallel systems to
dominate the future. One of the most dramatic changes in the sixth generation will be
the explosive growth of wide area networking. Network bandwidth has expanded
tremendously in the last few years and will continue to improve for the next several
years.

PARTS OF A COMPUTER
The five main components that make up a typical, present-day computer include:
1. MOTHERBOARD - a printed circuit board and foundation of a computer that is the
biggest board in a computer chassis. It allocates power and allows communication to
and between the CPU, RAM, and all other computer hardware components.

2. CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT (CPU) - the unit which performs most of the
processing inside a computer. It processes all instructions received by software
running on the PC and by other hardware components, and acts as a powerful
calculator.

3. GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT (GPU) - A programmable processor specialized

for rendering all images on the computer's screen.

4. RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) - RAM gives applications a place to store

and access data on a short-term basis. It stores the information your computer is
actively using so that it can be accessed quickly.

5. STORAGE - Modern computers either use a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or Solid-State
Drive (SSD). HDDs are made of an actual disk onto which data is stored. The disk is
read by a mechanical arm. SSDs have no moving parts and are faster than a hard
drive, because no time is spent waiting for a mechanical arm to find data on a
physical location on the disk.

ELEMENTS OF A COMPUTER SYSTEM

There are six main elements that make up a computer system. They all interact with each other
and perform the task at hand.
1. HARDWARE - These are all the physical aspects of a computer system. Hardware
components are the electronic or mechanical instruments, like keyboard, monitor,
printer etc. They help the user’s interface with the software, and also display the
result of the tasks being performed. There are four types of hardware, depending on
which function they perform.
 4 Types of Hardware:
 INPUT HARDWARE - For users to input data into the computer system.
Examples are keyboard, mouse, and scanner.
 OUTPUT HARDWARE - To translate and display the result of the data
processing. Examples are Monitor Screen and Printer.
 PROCESSING AND MEMORY HARDWARE - This is where data and
information are processed and manipulated to perform the task at hand. It
is also the workspace of the computer, where it temporarily stores data.
Examples are Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Random-Access
Memory (RAM).
 SECOND STORAGE HARDWARE - Where the computer system stores
data permanently. Examples are Hard disk and Pen drive.

2. SOFTWARE - Software is the intangible aspect of the computer system. Software is

nothing but a set of programs (computer instructions), which helps the user to do a set
of specific tasks. It helps the user interact with the computer system with the help of
hardware.
6 Types of Software:
 OPERATING SYSTEM - These specialized programmes allow the
communication between software and hardware. The operating systems
run all the other computer programmes, and even regulate the startup
process of the computer. Examples are Windows XP and Macintosh.
 APPLICATION SOFTWARE - These are designed to perform a specific
task or a bunch of tasks. They can be user-designed (specific to the user’s
needs) or readymade application software. Examples are PowerPoint and
Tally.
 UTILITY SOFTWARE - It helps maintain and protect the computer
system. For example, Anti-virus software.
 LANGUAGE PROCESSORS - Software that interprets computer
language and translates it into machine language. It also checks for errors
in language syntax and fixes the problems.
 SYSTEM SOFTWARE - This type of software controls the hardware, the
reading of the data and other such internal functions.
 CONNECTVITY SOFTWARE - The special software that facilitates the
connection between the computer system and the server. This allows the
computer to share information and communicate with each other.

3. PEOPLE - They are the ultimate “users” of the computer systems. There are three
types of people that interact with the system: The programmers, the System Analyst
and the End-users.
4. PROCEDURES – These are a set of instructions, written in code, to instruct a
computer on how to perform a task, run a software, do calculations etc.
5. DATA - This is essentially the raw facts and figures that we input in the computer.
The data gets processed via the computer system and becomes information, which is
processed and organized data. Information can then be used for decision-making
purposes.
6. CONNECTIVITY - This is when the computers are linked to a network. It facilitates
sharing of information, files, and other facilities. Computers can connect to a network
via LAN cables, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, satellites etc. The internet is one example of
connectivity in a computer system.
 REFERENCES:

(1) https://web.itu.edu.tr/~gerzeli/History.htm

(2) https://www.livescience.com/20718-computer-history.html

(3) https://www.idtech.com/blog/parts-of-a-computer

(4) https://www.toppr.com/guides/accountancy/application-of-computers-in-
accounting/meaning-and-elements-of-computer-system/