HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF COMPUTER:

The history of computer dated back to the period of scientific revolution (i.e. 1543 – 1678). The
calculating machine invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642 and that of Goffried Liebnits marked the
genesis of the application of machine in industry. This progressed up to the period 1760 – 1830
which was the period of the industrial revolution in Great Britain where the use of machine for
production altered the British society and the Western world. During this period Joseph Jacquard
invented the weaving loom (a machine used in textile industry).
The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out of a need to solve a serious
number-crunching crisis. By 1880, the United State (U.S) population had grown so large that it
took more than seven years to tabulate the U.S. Census results. The government sought a faster
way to get the job done, giving rise to punch-card based computers that took up entire rooms.
Today, we carry more computing power on our smart phones than was available in these early
models. The following brief history of computing is a timeline of how computers evolved from
their humble beginnings to the machines of today that surf the Internet, play games and stream
multimedia in addition to crunching numbers. The followings are historical events of computer.
1623: Wilhelm Schickard designed and constructed the first working mechanical calculator. 1673:
Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated a digital mechanical calculator, called the Stepped Reckoner. He
may be considered the first computer scientist and information theorist, for, among other reasons,
documenting the binary number system.
1801: In France, Joseph Marie Jacquard invents a loom that uses punched wooden cards to
automatically weave fabric designs. Early computers would use similar punch cards. Home /
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Physics. 1820: Thomas de Colmar launched the mechanical calculator industry when he released
his simplified arithmometer, which was the first calculating machine strong enough and reliable
enough to be used daily in an office environment.
1822: English mathematician Charles Babbage (Father of Computer) conceives of a steam-driven
calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. The project, funded by the
English government, is a failure. More than a century later, however, the world's first computer
was actually built.
1843: During the translation of a French article on the Analytical Engine, Ada Lovelace wrote, in
one of the many notes she included, an algorithm to compute the Bernoulli numbers, which is
considered to be the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a
computer.
1885: Herman Hollerith invented the tabulator, which used punched cards to process statistical
information; eventually his company became part of IBM.
1890: Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate the 1880 census, accomplishing
the task in just three years and saving the government $5 million. He established a company that
would ultimately become IBM.

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1936: Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine, later called the Turing machine,
capable of computing anything that is computable. The central concept of the modern computer
was based on his ideas.
1937: J.V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State University, attempts
to build the first computer without gears, cams, belts or shafts.
1937: One hundred years after Babbage's impossible dream, Howard Aiken convinced IBM,
which was making all kinds of punched card equipment and was also in the calculator business
to develop his giant programmable calculator, the ASCC/Harvard Mark I, based on Babbage's
Analytical Engine, which itself used cards and a central computing unit. When the machine was
finished, some hailed it as "Babbage's dream come true".
1939: Hewlett-Packard is founded by David Packard and Bill Hewlett in a Palo Alto, California,
garage, according to the Computer History Museum. 1941: Atanasoff and his graduate student,
Clifford Berry, design a computer that can solve 29 equations simultaneously. This marks the
first time a computer is able to store information on its main memory.
1943-1944: Two University of Pennsylvania professors, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert,
build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). Considered the grandfather
of digital computers, it fills a 20-foot by 40-foot room and has 18,000 vacuum tubes. 1946:
Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and receive funding from the Census
Bureau to build the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for business and government
applications.
1947: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of Bell Laboratories invent the
transistor. They discovered how to make an electric switch with solid materials and no need for a
vacuum. 1953: Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which eventually becomes
known as COBOL. Thomas Johnson Watson Jr., son of IBM CEO Thomas Johnson Watson Sr.,
conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Nations keep tabs on Korea during the war.
1954: The FORTRAN programming language, an acronym for FORmula TRANslation, is
developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus, according to the University of
Michigan.
1958: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known as the computer chip.
Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his work.
1964: Douglas Engelbart shows a prototype of the modern computer, with a mouse and a
graphical user interface (GUI). This marks the evolution of the computer from a specialized
machine for scientists and mathematicians to technology that is more accessible to the general
public.
1969: A group of developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX, an operating system that addressed
compatibility issues. Written in the C programming language,

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UNIX was portable across multiple platforms and became the operating system of choice among
mainframes at large companies and government entities. Due to the slow nature of the system, it
never quite gained traction among home PC users.
1970: The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Access Memory (DRAM)
chip. 1971: Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the "floppy disk," allowing
data to be shared among computers. 1973: Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for
Xerox, develops Ethernet for connecting multiple computers and other hardware. 1974 -1977: A
number of personal computers hit the market, including Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair, IBM 5100,
Radio Shack's TRS-80 — affectionately known as the "Trash 80" — and the Commodore PET.
1975: The January issue of Popular Electronics magazine features the Altair 8080, described as
the "world's first minicomputer kit to rival commercial models." Two "computer geeks," Paul
Allen and Bill Gates, offer to write software for the Altair, using the new Beginners All Purpose
Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) language. On April 4, after the success of this first endeavor,
the two childhood friends form their own software company, Microsoft.
1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple Computers on April Fool's Day and roll out the
Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board, according to Stanford University. 1977:
Radio Shack's initial production run of the TRS-80 was just 3,000. It sold like crazy. For the first
time, non-geeks could write programs and make a computer do what they wished.
1977: Jobs and Wozniak incorporate Apple and show the Apple II at the first West Coast
Computer Faire. It offers color graphics and incorporates an audio cassette drive for storage.
1978: Accountants rejoice at the introduction of VisiCalc, the first computerized spreadsheet
program.
1979: Word processing becomes a reality as MicroPro International releases WordStar. "The
defining change was to add margins and word wrap," said creator Rob Barnaby in email to Mike
Petrie in 2000. "Additional changes included getting rid of command mode and adding a print
function. I was the technical brains — I figured out how to do it, and did it, and documented it.
"The first IBM personal computer, introduced on Aug. 12, 1981, used the MSDOS operating
system. (Image: © IBM).
1981: The first IBM personal computer, code-named "Acorn," is introduced. It uses Microsoft's
MSDOS operating system. It has an Intel chip, two floppy disks and an optional color monitor.
Sears & Roebuck and Computer land sell the machines, marking the first time a computer is
available through outside distributors. It also popularizes the term PC.
1983: Apple's Lisa is the first personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI). It also
features a drop-down menu and icons. It flops but eventually evolves into the Macintosh. The
Gavilan SC is the first portable computer with the familiar flip form factor and the first to be
marketed as a "laptop." The TRS80, introduced in 1977, was one of the first machines whose
documentation was intended for non-geeks (Image: © Radioshack)

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1985: Microsoft announces Windows, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. This was the
company's response to Apple's graphical user interface (GUI). Commodore unveils the Amiga
1000, which features advanced audio and video capabilities.
1985: The first dot-com domain name is registered on March 15, years before the World Wide
Web would mark the formal beginning of Internet history. The Symbolics Computer Company, a
small Massachusetts computer manufacturer, registers Symbolics.com. More than two years later,
only 100 dot-coms had been registered.
1986: Compaq brings the “Deskpro 386” to market. Its 32-bit architecture provides as speed
comparable to mainframes. 1990: Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the high-energy
physics laboratory in Geneva, develops Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), giving rise to
the World Wide Web. 1993: The Pentium microprocessor advances the use of graphics and music
on PCs. 1994: PCs become gaming machines as "Command & Conquer," "Alone in the Dark 2,"
"Theme Park," "Magic Carpet," "Descent" and "Little Big Adventure" are among the games to
hit the market. 1996: Sergey Brin and Larry Page develop the Google search engine at Stanford
University. 1997: Microsoft invests $150 million in Apple, which was struggling at the time,
ending Apple's court case against Microsoft in which it alleged that Microsoft copied the "look
and feel" of its operating system.
1999: The term Wi-Fi becomes part of the computing language and users begin connecting to the
Internet without wires.
2001: Apple unveils the Mac OS X operating system, which provides protected memory
architecture and pre-emptive multi-tasking, among other benefits. Not
to be outdone, Microsoft rolls out Windows XP, which has a significantly redesigned graphical
user interface GUI.
2003: The first 64-bit processor, AMD's Athlon 64, becomes available to the consumer market.
2004: Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 challenges Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the dominant Web browser.
Facebook, a social networking site, launches.
2005: YouTube, a video sharing service, is founded. Google acquires Android, a Linux-based
mobile phone operating system.
2006: Apple introduces the MacBook Pro, its first Intel-based, dual-core mobile computer, as
well as an Intel-based iMac. Nintendo's Wii game console hits the market.
2007: The iPhone brings many computer functions to the smart phone.
2009: Microsoft launches Windows 7, which offers the ability to pin applications to the taskbar
and advances in touch and handwriting recognition, among other features.
2010: Apple unveils the iPad, changing the way consumers view media and jumpstarting the
dormant tablet computer segment.
2011: Google releases the Chromebook, a laptop that runs the Google Chrome OS.

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2012: Facebook gains 1 billion users on October 4.
2015: Apple releases the Apple Watch. Microsoft releases Windows 10.
2016: The first reprogrammable quantum computer was created. "Until now, there hasn't been
any quantum-computing platform that had the capability to program new algorithms into their
system. They're usually each tailored to attack a particular algorithm," said study lead author
Shantanu Debnath, a quantum physicist and optical engineer at the University of Maryland,
College Park.
2017: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a new
"Molecular Informatics" program that uses molecules as computers. "Chemistry offers a rich set
of properties that we may be able to harness for rapid, scalable information storage and
processing," Anne Fischer, program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office, said in a
statement. "Millions of molecules exist, and each molecule has a unique three-dimensional
atomic structure as well as variables such as shape, size, or even color. This richness provides a
vast design space for exploring novel and multi-value ways to encode and process data beyond
the 0s and 1s of current logic-based, digital architectures." [Computers of the Future May Be
Minuscule Molecular Machines].
The history of computer is considered with the generations of a computer from first generation to
fifth generation. In 19th century English mathematics professor name Charles Babbage referred
as a “Father of Computer”. He designed the Analytical Engine and it was this design that the
basic framework of the computers of today are based on. Generally speaking, computers can be
classified into five generations. Each generation lasted for a certain period of time and each gave
us either a new and improved computer or an improvement to the existing computer. The
generations of computer are as follows:
First Generation of Computer (1937 – 1946): In 1937 the first electronic digital computer was
built by Dr. John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry. It was called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer
(ABC). In 1943 an electronic computer name the Colossus was built for the military. Other
developments continued until in 1946 the first general– purpose digital computer, the Electronic
Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) was built. It is said that this computer weighed 30
tons, and had 18,000 vacuum tubes which was used for processing. When this computer was
turned on for the first time lights dim in sections of Philadelphia. Computers of this generation
could only perform single task, and they had no operating system. Characteristics:
i. Sizes of these computers were as large as the size of a room.
ii. Possession of Vacuum Tubes to perform calculation.
iii. They used an internally stored instruction called program.
iv. Use capacitors to store binary data and information.
v. They use punched card for communication of input and output data and information
vi. They generated a lot of heat.
vii. They have about One Thousand 1000 circuits per cubic foot.

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 Examples: i. Mark I developed by Aiken in 1944. ii. Electronic Numerical Integrator
and Calculator (ENIAC) built at the Moore School for Engineering of the University
of Pennsylvania in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert and William Mauchley. iii. Electronic
Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) also developed in 1947 by Eckert
and Mauchley
Second Generation of Computer (1947 – 1962): Second generation of computers used transistors
instead of vacuum tubes which were more reliable. In 1951 the first computer for commercial use
was introduced to the public; the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC 1). In 1953 the
International Business Machine (IBM) 650 and 700 series computers made their mark in the
computer world. During this generation of computers over 100 computer programming languages
were developed, computers had memory and operating systems. Storage media such as tape and
disk were in use also were printers for output. Characteristics:
i. The computers were still large, but smaller than the first generation of computers.
ii. They use transistor in place of Vacuum Tubes to perform calculation.
iii. They were produced at a reduced cost compared to the first generation of computers.
iv. Possession of magnetic tapes as for data storage.
v. They were using punch cards as input and output of data and information. The use of
keyboard as an input device was also introduced.
vi. These computers were still generating a lot of heat in which an air conditioner is needed
to maintain a cold temperature.
vii. They have about one thousand circuits per cubic foot.
Example: i. Leprechaun, IBM built by Bell Laboratories in 1947 ii. Transis produced by
philco, GE and RCA. iii. UNIVAC 1107, UNIVAC III. iv. RCA 501. v. IBM 7030 stretch.
Third Generation of Computer (1963 – 1975): The invention of integrated circuit brought
us the third generation of computers. With this invention computers became smaller,
more powerful more reliable and they are able to run many different programs at the
same time.
Characteristics:
i. They used large-scale integrated circuits, which were used for both data processing and
storage.
ii. Computers were miniaturized, that is, they were reduced in size compared to previous
generation.
iii. Keyboard and mouse were used for input while the monitor was used as output
device.
iv. Use of programming language like COBOL and FORTRAN were developed.
v. They have hundred thousand circuits per cubic foot.
Examples: i. Burroughs 6700, Mini computers ii. Honeywell 200 iii. IBM system 360 iv.
UNIVAC 9000 series. Fourth Generation of Computer (PC 1975 – Current) At this time
of technological development, the size of computer was redivided to what we called
Personal Computers, PC. This was the time the first Microprocessor was created by Intel.
The microprocessor was a very largescale, that is,

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Transistors on one chip were capable performing all the functions of a computer’s central
processing unit.
Characteristics:
i. Possession of microprocessor which performs all the task of a computer system use
today.
ii. The size of computers and cost was reduced.
iii. Increase in speed of computers.
iv. Very large scale (VLS) integrated circuits were used.
v. They have millions of circuits per cubic foot.
Examples: i. IBM system 3090, IBM RISC6000, IBM RT. ii. ILLIAC IV. iii. Cray 2
XMP. iv. HP 9000. v. Apple Computers.
Fifth Generation of Computers (Present and Beyond) Fifth generations computing
devices, based on artificial intelligence (AI) are still in development, although there
are some application such as voice recognition, facial face detector and thumb print
that are used today. Characteristics: i. Consist of extremely large scale integration. ii.
Parallel processing iii. Possession of high speed logic and memory chip. iv. High
performance, micro-miniaturization. v. Ability of computers to mimic human
intelligence, e.g. voice recognition, facial face detector, thumb print. vi. Satellite links,
virtual reality. vii. They have billions of circuits per cubic. Examples: i. Super
computers ii. Robots iii. Facial face detector iv. Thumb print. Conclusion: The
earliest foundations of what would become computer science predate the invention of
the modern digital computer. Machines for calculating fixed numerical tasks such as
the abacus have existed Charles Babbage, sometimes referred to as the "father of
computing". Ada Lovelace is often credited with publishing the first algorithm
intended for processing on a computer. Since antiquity, aiding in computations such
as multiplication and division. Algorithms for performing computations have existed
since antiquity, even before the development of sophisticated computing equipment.
In1980 Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-Dos) was born and in 1981 IBM
introduced the personal computer (PC) for home and office use. Three years later
Apple gave us the Macintosh computer with its icon driven interface and the 90s gave
us Windows operating system. As a result of the various improvements to the
development of the computer we have seen the computer being used in all areas of
life. It is a very useful tool that will continue to experience new development as ti
me passes.