A Brief History of Computers

Ancient Times

Early Man relied on counting on his fingers and toes (which by the way, is the basis for
our base 10 numbering system). He also used sticks and stones as markers. Later notched
sticks and knotted cords were used for counting. Finally came symbols written on hides,
parchment, and later paper. Man invents the concept of number, then invents devices to
help keep up with the numbers of his possessions.

Roman Empire

The ancient Romans developed an Abacus, the first "machine" for calculating. While it
predates the Chinese abacus we do not know if it was the ancestor of that Abacus. Counters
in the lower groove are 1 x 10n, those in the upper groove are 5 x 10 n
Industrial Age - 1600

John Napier, a Scottish nobleman and politician devoted much of his leisure time to the
study of mathematics. He was especially interested in devising ways to aid computations.
His greatest contribution was the invention of logarithms. He inscribed logarithmic
measurements on a set of 10 wooden rods and thus was able to do multiplication and
division by matching up numbers on the rods. These became known as Napier’s Bones.

1621 - The Sliderule

Napier invented logarithms, Edmund Gunter invented the logarithmic scales (lines etched
on metal or wood), but it was William Oughtred, in England who invented the sliderule.
Using the concept of Napier’s bones, he inscribed logarithms on strips of wood and
invented the calculating "machine" which was used up until the mid-1970s when the first
hand-held calculators and microcomputers appeared.
1642 - Blaise Pascal(1623-1662)

Blaise Pascal, a French mathematical genius, at the age of 19 invented a machine, which he
called the Pascaline that could do addition and subtraction to help his father, who was also
a mathematician. Pascal’s machine consisted of a series of gears with 10 teeth each,
representing the numbers 0 to 9. As each gear made one turn it would trip the next gear up
to make 1/10 of a revolution. This principle remained the foundation of all mechanical
adding machines for centuries after his death. The Pascal programming language was
named in his honor.
1673 - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented differential and integral calculus

independently of Sir Isaac Newton, who is usually given sole credit. He invented a
calculating machine known as Leibniz’s Wheel or the Step Reckoner. It could add and
subtract, like Pascal’s machine, but it could also multiply and divide. It did this by repeated
additions or subtractions, the way mechanical adding machines of the mid to late 20th
century did. Leibniz also invented something essential to modern computers — binary
arithmetic.

1725 - The Bouchon Loom

Basile Bouchon, the son of an organ maker, worked in the textile industry. At this time
fabrics with very intricate patterns woven into them were very much in vogue. To weave a
complex pattern, however involved somewhat complicated manipulations of the threads in
a loom which frequently became tangled, broken, or out of place. Bouchon observed the
paper rolls with punched holes that his father made to program his player organs and
adapted the idea as a way of "programming" a loom. The paper passed over a section of
the loom and where the holes appeared certain threads were lifted. As a result, the pattern
could be woven repeatedly. This was the first punched paper, stored program.
Unfortunately the paper tore and was hard to advance. So, Bouchon’s loom never really
caught on and eventually ended up in the back room collecting dust.
1728 - Falçon Loom
In 1728 Jean-Batist Falçon, substituted a deck of punched cardboard cards for the paper roll
of Bouchon’s loom. This was much more durable, but the deck of cards tended to get
shuffled and it was tedious to continuously switch cards. So, Falçon’s loom ended up
collecting dust next to Bouchon’s loom.
1745 - Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834)

It took inventor Joseph M. Jacquard to bring together Bouchon’s idea of a

continuous punched roll, and Falcon’s ides of durable punched cards to produce a really
workable programmable loom. Weaving operations were controlled by punched cards tied
together to form a long loop. And, you could add as many cards as you wanted. Each time a
thread was woven in, the roll was clicked forward by one card. The results revolutionized the
weaving industry and made a lot of money for Jacquard. This idea of punched data storage
was later adapted for computer data input.
1822 – Charles Babbage (1791-1871) and Ada Augusta, The Countess of
Lovelace

Charles Babbage is known as the Father of the modern computer (even though
none of his computers worked or were even constructed in their entirety). He first designed
plans to build, what he called the Automatic Difference Engine. It was designed to help in
the construction of mathematical tables for navigation. Unfortunately, engineering
limitations of his time made it impossible for the computer to be built. His next project was
much more ambitious.

While a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University (where Stephen Hawkin is

now), a position he never actually occupied, he proposed the construction of a machine he
called the Analytic Engine. It was to have a punched card input, a memory unit (called
the store), an arithmetic unit (called the mill), automatic printout, sequential program
control, and 20-place decimal accuracy. He had actually worked out a plan for a computer
100 years ahead of its time. Unfortunately it was never completed. It had to wait for
manufacturing technology to catch up to his ideas.

During a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada Lovelace translated Italian mathematician

Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's Analytic Engine. With her translation she
appended a set of notes which specified in complete detail a method for calculating
Bernoulli numbers with the Engine. Historians now recognize this as the world's first
computer program and honor her as the first programmer. Too bad she has such an ill-
received programming language named after her.
1880s – Herman Hollerith (1860-1929)

The computer trail next takes us to, of all places, the U.S. Bureau of Census. In
1880 taking the U.S. census proved to be a monumental task. By the time it was completed
it was almost time to start over for the 1890 census. To try to overcome this problem the
Census Bureau hired Dr. Herman Hollerith. In 1887, using Jacquard’s idea of the punched
card data storage, Hollerith developed a punched card tabulating system, which allowed the
census takers to record all the information needed on punched cards which were then
placed in a special tabulating machine with a series of counters. When a lever was pulled a
number of pins came down on the card. Where there was a hole the pin went through the
card and made contact with a tiny pool of mercury below and tripped one of the counters
by one. With Hollerith’s machine the 1890 census tabulation was completed in 1/8 the time.
And they checked the count twice.

After the census Hollerith turned to using his tabulating machines for business and in 1896
organized the Tabulating Machine Company which later merged with other companies to
become IBM. His contribution to the computer then is the use of punched card data
storage. BTW: The punched cards in computers were made the same size as those of
Hollerith’s machine. And, Hollerith chose the size he did because that was the same size as
the one dollar bill at that time and therefore he could find plenty of boxes just the right size
to hold the cards.
1939-1942 Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff(1903-1995) and Clifford Berry
(1918-1963)

Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff and his graduate assistant, Clifford Barry, built the first
truly electronic computer, called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer or ABC. Atanasoff said the
idea came to him as he was sitting in a small roadside tavern in Illinois. This computer used
a circuit with 45 vacuum tubes to perform the calculations, and capacitors for storage. This
was also the first computer to use binary math.

1943 – Colossus I

The first really successful electronic computer was built in Bletchley Park, England. It was
capable of performing only one function, that of code breaking during World War II. It
could not be re-programmed.
1944 – Mark I - Howard Aiken (1900-1973) and Grace Hopper (1906-
1992)

In 1944 Dr. Howard Aiken of Harvard finished the construction of the Automatic
Sequence Controlled Calculator, popularly known as the Mark I. It contained over 3000
mechanical relays and was the first electro-mechanical computer capable of making logical
decisions, like if x==3 then do this not like If its raining outside I need to carry an
umbrella. It could perform an addition in 3/10 of a second. Compare that with something
on the order of a couple of nano-seconds (billionths of a second) today.

The important contribution of this machine was that it was programmed by means of a
punched paper tape, and the instructions could be altered. In many ways, the Mark I was
the realization of Babbage’s dream.

One of the primary programmers for the Mark I was Grace Hopper. One day the
Mark I was malfunctioning and not reading its paper tape input correctly. Ms Hopper
checked out the reader and found a dead moth in the mechanism with its wings blocking
the reading of the holes in the paper tape. She removed the moth, taped it into her log
book, and recorded... Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being
found.
She had debugged the program, and while the word bug had been used to describe
defects since at least 1889, she is credited with coining the word debugging to describe the
work of eliminating program errors.

It was Howard Aiken, in 1947, who made the rather short-sighted comment to the effect
that the computer is a wonderful machine, but I can see that six such machines would
be enough to satisfy all the computing needs of the entire United States.
1946 – ENIAC - J. Prosper Eckert (1919-1995) and John W. Mauchly
(1907-1980)

The first all electronic computer was the Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator,
known as ENIAC. It was designed by J. Prosper Eckert and John W. Mauchly of the Moore
School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was the first multipurpose
electronic computer, though very difficult to re-program. It was primarily used to computer
aircraft courses, shell trajectories, and to break codes during World War II.
ENIAC occupied a 20 x 40 foot room and used 18,000 vacuum tubes. ENIAC also could
never be turned off. If it was it blew too many tubes when turned back on. It had a very
limited storage capacity and it was programmed by jumper wires plugged into a large
board.

1948 – The Transister

In 1948 an event occurred that was to forever change the course of computers
and electronics. Working at Bell Labs three scientists, John Bordeen (1908-1991) (left),
Waltar Brattain (1902-1987) (right), and William Shockly (1910-1989) (seated) invented the
transistor.

The change over from vacuum tube circuits to transistor circuits occurred between 1956
and 1959. This brought in the second generation of computers, those based on transisters.
The first generation was mechanical and vacuum tube computers.

1951 – UNIVAC

The first practical electronic computer was built by Eckert and Mauchly (of ENIAC fame) and
was known as UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer). The first UNIVAC was used by the
Bureau of Census. The unique feature of the UNIVAC was that it was not a one-of-a-
kind computer. It was mass produced.

1954 – IBM 650

In 1954 the first electronic computer for business was installed at General Electric Appliance
Park in Louisville, Kentucky. This year also saw the beginning of operation of the IBM 650 in
Boston. This comparatively inexpensive computer gave IBM the lead in the computer
market. Over 1000 650s were sold.
1957-59 – IBM 704
From 1957-1959 the IBM 704 computer appeared, for which the Fortran language was
developed. At this time the state of the art in computers allowed 1 component per chip,
that is individual transistors.

1958 - 1962 – Programming languages

From 1958-1962 many programming languages were developed.

FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator)

COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language)
LISP (LISt Processor)
ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language)
BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)
1964 – IBM System/360

In 1964 the beginning of the third-generation computers came with the introduction of the
IBM System/360. Thanks to the new hybrid circuits (that gross looking orange thing in the
circuit board on the right), the state of the art in computer technology allowed for 10
components per chip.

1965 - PDP-8

In 1965 the first integrated circuit computer, the PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corporation
appeared. (PDP stands for Programmable Data Processor) After this the real revolution in
computer cost and size began.

1970 - Integrated Circuits

By the early 70s the state of the art in computer technology allowed for 1000 components
per chip. To get an idea of just how much the size of electronic components had shrunk by
this time look at the image on the right. The woman is peering through a microscope at a
16K RAM memory integrated circuit. The stand she has her microscopy sitting on is a 16K
vacuum tube memory curcuit from about 20 years previous.
1971

The Intel corporation produced the first microprocessor chip which was a 4-bit chip. Today’s
chips are 64-bit. At approximately 1/16 x 1/8 inches in size, this chip contained 250
transistors and had all the computing power of ENIAC. It matched IBM computers of the
early 60s that had a CPU the size of an office desk.

1975 – Altair 8800

The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics carried an article, the first, to describe the
Altair 8800, the first low-cost microprocessor computer which had just became
commercially available.

Late 1970s to early 1980s – The Microcomputer Explosion

During this period many companies appeared and disappeared, manufacturing a variety
of microcomputers (they were called micro to distinguish them from
the mainframes which some people referred to as real computers). There was Radio
Shack’s TRS-80, the Commodore 64, the Atari, but...
1977 - The Apple II

The most successful of the early microcomputers was the Apple II, designed and built by
Steve Wozniak. With fellow computer whiz and business savvy friend, Steve Jobs, they
started Apple Computer in 1977 in Woz’s garage. Less than three years later the company
earned over $100 million. Not bad for a couple of college dropout computer geeks.
Click here to see an interesting article from the March 2016
issue of Smithsonian Magazine about Woz and the Apple I.

1981

In 1981, IBM produced their first microcomputer. Then the clones started to appear.
This microcomputer explosion fulfilled its slogan computers by the millions for the
millions. Compared to ENIAC, microcomputers of the early 80s:
Were 20 times faster (Apple II ran at the speed of ¼ Megahertz).
Had a memory capacity as much as 16 times larger (Apple had 64 K).
Were thousands of times more reliable.
Consumed the power of a light bulb instead of a locomotive.
Were 1/30,000 the size.
Cost 1/10,000 as much in comparable dollars
(An Apple II with full 64 K of RAM cost $1200 in 1979.
That’s the equivalent of about $8000 to $10000 in today's dollars)

1984-1989

In 1984 the Macintosh was introduced. This was the first mass-produced, commercially-
available computer with a Graphical User Interface. In 1989 Windows 1.0 was introduced for
the PC. It was sort of Mac-like but greatly inferior. Macintosh owners were know to refer to
it sarcastically as AGAM-84 Almost as Good As Macintosh 84.

1990s
Compared to ENIAC, microcomputers of the 90s:
Were 36,000 times faster (450 Megahertz was the average speed)
Had a memory capacity 1000 to 5000 times larger (average was between 4 and 20
Megabytes)
Were 1/30,000 the size
Cost 1/30,000 as much in comparable dollars (A PC still cost around $1500 the
equivalent of about $2500 in 2008 dollars)

Early 2000s
Compared to ENIAC, microcomputers of the early 2000s:
Are 180,000 times faster (2.5+ Gigahertz is the average speed)
Have a memory capacity 25,000 times larger (average 1+ Gigabytes of RAM)
Are 1/30,000 the size
 Cost 1/60,000 as much in comparable dollars (A PC can cost from $700 to $1500)

Data Storage
Data storage has also grown in capacity and shrunk in size as dramatically as have
computers. Today a single data DVD will hold around 4.8 gigabytes. It would take
90,000,000 punch cards to hold the same amount of data. And, there is talk of a new high
density video disk (HVD) that will be able to hold fifty times that much data. That's more
than 240 gigabytes.