Introduction to ICT

USMAN ALI
Lecture - 3

HISTORY OF COMPUTER
The Origin of Computers
 Where did the computers come from?
 Why did computers emerge in the 1940s?
 How did computers differ from the previous
technologies for computation?

 Threads in the story

 Charles Babbage / Ada Lovelace: Difference Engine,
Analytical Engine
 Tabulating machines, card-based calculators
 ENIAC to EDVAC to UNIVAC and the birth of the
commercial computing industry
The Origin of Computers

 Computers are nothing more but Calculating

Machines
 It took over generations for early man to build
mechanical devices for counting large numbers
 The first calculating device called ABACUS was
developed by the Egyptian and Chinese people
The Origin of Computers
 The word ABACUS means calculating board
 It consisted of sticks in horizontal positions on which were
inserted sets of pebbles
 It has a number of horizontal bars each having ten beads
 Horizontal bars represent units, tens, hundreds, etc.
The Origin of Computers
Charles Babbage (1791-1871), British

 Motivated by the desire to reduce drudgery of calculation, and to

improve its accuracy
 Was born in the steam age, when electronics was in its infancy
 As a consequence, thought to create a mechanical, steam-
powered computing machine
 First machine was the Difference Engine, a mechanical calculator
 Second machine was the Analytical Engine, a programmable
calculation device
The Origin of Computers

Babbage Difference Engine Charles Babbage Analytical

Engine death-mill-1871
The Origin of Computers
Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852)

A mathematical genius, worked with Babbage

on Analytical Engine
 Documented the Analytical Engine, but more
importantly programmed Analytical Engine
 Though never realized, Ada developed a strong
mental model of how it works, and then
developed programs, also in her head, that ran
on the machine
 Generally credited as being the world’s first
computer programmer
Generations of Computers
 The evolution of computer started from the 16th century and
resulted in the form that we see today
 The present day computer, however, has also undergone rapid
change during the last fifty-sixty years
 This period, during which the evolution of computer took place,
can be divided into five distinct phases known as Generations of
Computers
 Each phase is distinguished from others on the basis of the type of
switching circuits used
 Each generation is characterized by major technological
development that fundamentally changed the way computers
operate, resulting in increasingly smaller, cheaper and more
powerful, efficient and reliable devices
Generations of Computers
FIRST GENERATION (1940-1956)
 The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic
drums for memory and were often enormous, taking up entire
rooms
 They were too expensive to operate
 They required a great deal of electricity and generated a lot of
heat
 They relied on machine language to perform operations and could
solve one problem at a time
 Input was based on punched cards and paper tape and output
was displayed printouts
Generations of Computers
FIRST GENERATION (1940-1956)
 Some of the computers of the first generation were ENIAC
(Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) and EDVAC
(Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)
Generations of Computers
SECOND GENERATION (1956-1963)
 Around 1955, vacuum tubes were replaced with transistors in the
second generation computers
 Transistor was far superior to the vacuum tube, allowing computers
to become smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy efficient and
more reliable
 It is in the second generation that the concept of Central
Processing Unit (CPU), memory, programming language and input
and output units were developed
 They used assembly languages and early versions of high-level
languages like COBOL and FORTAN
Generations of Computers
SECOND GENERATION (1956-1963)
 Some of the computers of the second generation were IBM 1620,
IBM 1401 and CDC 3600
Generations of Computers
THIRD GENERATION (1964-1971)
 The development of the integrated circuit was the hallmark of the third
generation of computers
 Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips called Integrated
Circuits (ICs) which drastically increased the speed and efficiency of
computers
 A single IC has many transistors, registers and capacitors built on a single
thin slice of silicon
 Instead of punched cards and printouts, user interacted with computers
through keyboards and monitors, and run different applications at one time
on them
 They became accessible to mass audience because they were smaller
and cheaper than their predecessors
Generations of Computers
THIRD GENERATION (1964-1971)
 Some of the computers developed during this period were IBM-360,
ICL-1900, IBM-370, and VAX-750
 Higher level language such as BASIC was developed during this
period
Generations of Computers
FORTH GENERATION (1971-PRESENT)
 The present day computers that you see today are the fourth
generation computers that started around 1970s
 It uses Large Scale Integrated Circuits (LSIC) built on a single silicon
chip called microprocessors
 The microprocessor brought the forth generation of computers, as
thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip
 The Intel 4004 chip, developed 1971, located all the components of
the computer, from CPU and memory to input/output controls, on a
single chip
Generations of Computers
FORTH GENERATION (1971-PRESENT)
 In 1981 IBM introduced its first computer for home users, 1984 Apple
introduced the Macintosh
 Microprocessors moved from desktop computers and into many
areas of life as more and more everyday products began to use
microprocessor
 This generation also brought the concept of GUIs, the mouse and
handheld devices
Generations of Computers
FIFTH GENERATION (Present and Beyond)

 Fifth generation computing devices, based on artificial intelligence,

are still in development, though there are some applications, such as
voice recognition, that are being used today
 The use of parallel processing, quantum computation and molecular
and nanotechnology will radically change the face of computers in
years to come
 The goal of modern computers is to develop devices that respond to
natural language input and are capable of learning and self-
organization
Evolution of Computers
ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Calculator
 Development began during WWII, but was completed in 1946
 ENIAC could be programmed, Not a stored program
computer
 Complex sequences of instructions, could include loops,
branches, and subroutines
 Taking a problem and mapping it onto the machine was
complex, often took weeks
 Once a potential mapping was put onto paper, the process
of getting the program into the ENIAC took days of
manipulating cables and switches
Evolution of Computers
EDVAC - Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic
Computer
 A follow-on to ENIAC - Key idea was to create a stored
program computer
 An important feature of this device was that operating
instructions and function tables would be stored in
exactly the same sort of memory device as that used for
numbers
 This notion of stored-program computing has been
central to every computer that has come since
Evolution of Computers
UNIVAC 1 - Universal Automatic Computer

 First commercial computer, launched the commercial

computer industry
 It used about 5,000 vacuum tubes, weighed 16,686
pounds and consumed 125 Kw
 It could perform about 1,905 operations per second
running on a 2.25 MHz clock and occupied more than
35.5 m² (382 ft²) of floor space
Evolution of Computers
Microprocessors
 First microprocessor is Intel 4004 (1971, 4-bit)
 First computer based on microprocessor is Intel SIM4-01
 First microprocessor used in a “PC” is 8008 (1972, 8-bit)
 First PC based on 8008 is Micral (1973)
 First IBM PC was available in 1981 (8088, 4.77MHz, 16-bit, x86
architecture)
 First Pentium processor introduced by Intel in 1993 (200 MHz),
Pentium-II (1997, 500 MHz), Pentium-III (1999, 900 MHz), Pentium 4
(2000, 2.26 GHz), all are based on x86 architecture and 32-bit
 First 64-bit processor is Intel Itanium (2001, 800 MHz)
 Then came the Core i3, i5, i7, i9, and high-end Xeon series
processors (2010 onwards, microarchitecture)
Evolution of Computers
Microprocessor VS Microcontroller VS Microcomputer
 Microprocessor
 is a single integrated circuit that has ability to perform all the
functions of central processing unit in a single microchip
 Microcontroller
 is a highly integrated chip that has all the necessary
components present in a single microchip
 Microcomputer
 is simply a personal computer with all the circuitry at one
place, but not in single chip
Evolution of Computers
Computer History Museum
 Located in Mountain View, perhaps the best computer
history museum in the world
 Exhibit first 2000 years of computing
Thank You