The History of

Computers
What are computers?
 A computer is a machine or device that performs
processes, calculations and operations based
on instructions provided by a software or
hardware program. It is designed to execute
applications and provides a variety of solutions
by combining integrated hardware and software
components
Abacus
 The abacus was an early aid
for mathematical
computations. Its only value is
that it aids the memory of the
human performing the
calculation. A skilled abacus
operator can work on addition
and subtraction problems at
the speed of a person
equipped with a hand
calculator (multiplication and
division are slower).
Abacus
 The abacus is often
wrongly attributed to
China. In fact, the
oldest surviving
abacus was used in
300 B.C. by the
Babylonians. The
abacus is still in use
today, principally in
the far east.
John Napier
 In 1617 an eccentric (some say mad) Scotsman
named John Napier invented logarithms, which
are a technology that allows multiplication to be
performed via addition.
 Ex: log2x = 5

 John Napier invented

Napier's Bones.
Napier’s Bones
 The magic ingredient is
the logarithm of each
operand, which was
originally obtained from a
printed table. But Napier
also invented an
alternative to tables,
where the logarithm
values were carved on
ivory sticks which are
now called Napier's
Bones.
Napier’s Bones
Slide Rule

 Napier's invention led directly to the slide rule,

first built in England in 1632 and still in use in the
1960's by the NASA engineers of the Mercury,
Gemini, and Apollo programs which landed men
on the moon.
 Leonardo da Vinci

 Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) made drawings of

gear-driven calculating machines but apparently
never built any.
Blaise Pascal
 In 1642 Blaise Pascal, at age 19, invented the
Pascaline as an aid for his father who was a tax
collector. Pascal built 50 of this gear-driven one-function
calculator (it could only add) but couldn't sell many
because of their exorbitant cost and because they really
weren't that accurate (at that time it was not possible to
fabricate gears with the required precision).
 Up until the present age when car dashboards went
digital, the odometer portion of a car's speedometer
used the very same mechanism as the Pascaline to
increment the next wheel after each full revolution of the
prior wheel.
8-digit Pascaline
6-digit Pascaline ( Cheaper )
Pascaline Insides
 Leibniz Machine-invented by
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
 Just a few years after Pascal, the German Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (co-inventor with Newton of calculus)
managed to build a four-function (addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division) calculator that he called the
stepped reckoner because, instead of gears, it employed
fluted drums having ten flutes arranged around their
circumference in a stair-step fashion. Although the
stepped reckoner employed the decimal number system
(each drum had 10 flutes), Leibniz was the first to
advocate use of the binary number system which is
fundamental to the operation of modern computers.
Leibniz is considered one of the greatest of the
philosophers but he died poor and alone.
Stepped Reckoner
Jacquard Loom- In 1801 the Frenchman
Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a power
loom
 In 1801 the Frenchman Joseph
Marie Jacquard invented a
power loom that could base its
weave (and hence the design
on the fabric) upon a pattern
automatically read from
punched wooden cards, held
together in a long row by rope.
Descendents of these
punched cards have been in
use ever since (remember the
"hanging chad" from the
Florida presidential ballots of
the year 2000?).
Jacquard’s Loom
 By selecting
particular cards
for Jacquard's
loom you defined
the woven pattern
Close up of a card
Jacquard’s Loom
 Close up of a tapestry
woven by the loom
Technology -vs- Jobs
 Jacquard's technology was a
real boon to mill owners, but
put many loom operators out of
work. Angry mobs smashed
Jacquard looms and once
attacked Jacquard himself.
History is full of examples of
labor unrest following
technological innovation yet
most studies show that,
overall, technology has
actually increased the number
of jobs.
Charle’s Babbage-invented Analytical
Engine/Difference Engine or machine in
1822-father of modern computer
 By 1822 the English
mathematician Charles
Babbage was
proposing a steam
driven calculating
machine the size of a
room, which he called
the Difference Engine.
Difference Engine
 This machine would be able to compute tables of
numbers, such as logarithm tables.
 He obtained government funding for this project due to
the importance of numeric tables in ocean navigation.
 Construction of Babbage's Difference Engine proved
exceedingly difficult and the project soon became the
most expensive government funded project up to that
point in English history.
 Ten years later the device was still nowhere near
complete, acrimony abounded between all involved, and
funding dried up. The device was never finished.
Babbage-Analytic Engine
 Babbage was not deterred, and by then was on to
his next brainstorm, which he called the Analytic
Engine.
 This device, large as a house and powered by 6
steam engines,
 It was programmable, thanks to the punched card
technology of Jacquard.
 Babbage saw that the pattern of holes in a punch
card could be used to represent an abstract idea
such as a problem statement or the raw data
required for that problem's solution.
Babbage-Analytic Engine
 Babbage realized that punched paper could be
employed as a storage mechanism, holding
computed numbers for future reference.
 Because of the connection to the Jacquard loom,
Babbage called the two main parts of his Analytic
Engine the "Store" and the "Mill", as both terms are
used in the weaving industry.
 The Store was where numbers were held and the
Mill was where they were "woven" into new results.
 In a modern computer these same parts are called
the memory unit and the central processing unit
(CPU).
Babbage – Analytic Engine
 The Analytic Engine also had a key function
that distinguishes computers from
calculators: the conditional statement.
 A conditional statement allows a program to
achieve different results each time it is run.
 Based on the conditional statement, the path
of the program can be determined based
upon a situation that is detected at the very
moment the program is running.
Lady Ada Byron-first
programmer
 Babbage befriended Ada Byron, the daughter of
the famous poet Lord Byron
 Though she was only 19, she was fascinated by
Babbage's ideas
 She began fashioning programs for the Analytic
Engine, although still unbuilt.
 The Analytic Engine remained unbuilt (the British
government refused to get involved with this one)
but Ada earned her spot in history as the first
computer programmer.
 Ada invented the subroutine and was the first to
recognize the importance of looping.
US Census
 The next breakthrough occurred in America. The
U.S. Constitution states that a census should be
taken of all U.S. citizens every 10 years in order to
determine the representation of the states in
Congress.
 While the very first census of 1790 had only required
9 months, by 1880 the U.S. population had grown
so much that the count for the 1880 census took 7.5
years. Automation was clearly needed for the next
census.
 The census bureau offered a prize for an inventor to
help with the 1890 census and this prize was won
by Herman Hollerith,
Hollerith desk
 The Hollerith desk,
consisted of:
 a card reader which
sensed the holes in the
cards,
 a gear driven mechanism
which could count (similar
to Pascal’s)
 A large wall of dial
indicators to display the
results of the count.
Hollerith Desk-invented by
Herman Hollerith-in year 1890
Hollerith Desk
 Hollerith's technique
was successful and the
1890 census was
completed in only 3
years at a savings of 5
million dollars.
IBM  Hollerith built a company,
the Tabulating Machine
Company which, after a
few buyouts, eventually
became International
Business Machines,
known today as IBM.
Hollerith’s Inovation
 By using punch cards,
Hollerith created a way
to store and retrieve
information.
 This was the first type
of read and write
technology
Examples of Punch Cards
US Military
 The U.S. military desired a mechanical calculator
more optimized for scientific computation.
 By World War II the U.S. had battleships that could
lob shells weighing as much as a small car over
distances up to 25 miles.
 Physicists could write the equations that described
how atmospheric drag, wind, gravity, muzzle
velocity, etc. would determine the trajectory of the
shell, but solving such equations was extremely
laborious.
US Military
 Human computers would compute results of these
equations and publish them in ballistic "firing tables"
 During World War II the U.S. military scoured the country
looking for (generally female) math majors to hire for the
job of computing these tables, but not enough humans
could be found to keep up with the need for new tables.
 Sometimes artillery pieces had to be delivered to the
battlefield without the necessary firing tables and this
meant they were close to useless because they couldn't be
aimed properly.
 Faced with this situation, the U.S. military was willing to
invest in even hair-brained schemes to automate this type
of computation.
Mark I-invented by Howard
Aiken in 1944
 One early success was the
Harvard Mark I computer
which was built as a
partnership between
Harvard and IBM in 1944.
 This was the first
programmable digital
computer made in the U.S.
 But it was not a purely
electronic computer.
Instead the Mark I was
constructed out of switches,
relays, rotating shafts, and
clutches.
Mark I
 The machine weighed 5
tons, incorporated 500
miles of wire, was 8 feet tall
and 51 feet long, and had a
50 ft rotating shaft running
its length, turned by a 5
horsepower electric motor.
 The Mark I ran non-stop for
15 years, sounding like a
roomful of ladies knitting.
Mark I
The First Bug-invented by Grace
Hopper- bug means computer error
 One of the primary
programmers for the Mark I
was a woman, Grace Hopper.
 Hopper found the first
computer "bug": a dead moth
that had gotten into the Mark I
 The word "bug" had been used
to describe a defect since at
least 1889 but Hopper is
credited with coining the word
"debugging" to describe the
work to eliminate program
faults.
Humor
 On a humorous note, the principal designer
of the Mark I, Howard Aiken of Harvard,
estimated in 1947 that six electronic digital
computers would be sufficient to satisfy the
computing needs of the entire United States.
The Future of Computers?
 IBM had commissioned this study to determine
whether it should bother developing this new
invention into one of its standard products (up until
then computers were one-of-a-kind items built by
special arrangement).
 Aiken's prediction wasn't actually so bad as there
were very few institutions (principally, the
government and military) that could afford the cost
of what was called a computer in 1947.
 He just didn't foresee the micro-electronics
revolution which would allow something like an IBM
Stretch computer of 1959:
First Generation Computers
 The first electronic computer was designed at
Iowa State between 1939-1942
 The Atanasoff-Berry Computer used the
binary system(1’s and 0’s).
 Contained vacuum tubes and stored numbers
for calculations by burning holes in paper
IBM Stretch - 1959
IBM Stretch - 1959
Atanasoff – Berry Computer-
in 1937 by J. V. Atanasoff
 One of the earliest attempts to
build an all-electronic (that is,
no gears, cams, belts, shafts,
etc.) digital computer occurred
in 1937 by J. V. Atanasoff,
 This machine was the first to
store data as a charge on a
capacitor, which is how today's
computers store information in
their main memory (DRAM or
dynamic RAM). As far as its
inventors were aware, it was
also the first to employ binary
arithmetic.
Colussus- built during World War II by Britain for
the purpose of breaking the cryptographic codes
used by Germany.
 The Colossus, built during
World War II by Britain for
the purpose of breaking the
cryptographic codes used
by Germany.
 Britain led the world in
designing and building
electronic machines
dedicated to code breaking,
and was routinely able to
read coded Germany radio
transmissions.
 Not a general purpose,
reprogrammable machine.
Eniac
 The title of forefather of today's all-electronic digital
computers is usually awarded to ENIAC, which
stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Calculator.
 ENIAC was built at the University of
Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1945 by two
professors, John Mauchly and the 24 year old J.
Presper Eckert, who got funding from the war
department after promising they could build a
machine that would replace all the "computers”
 ENIAC filled a 20 by 40 foot room, weighed 30 tons,
and used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes.
ENIAC
ENIAC
Programming the ENIAC
 To reprogram the ENIAC you had to rearrange the
patch cords that you can observe on the left in the
prior photo, and the settings of 3000 switches that
you can observe on the right.
 To program a modern computer, you type out a
program with statements like:
 Circumference = 3.14 * diameter
 To perform this computation on ENIAC you had to
rearrange a large number of patch cords and then
locate three particular knobs on that vast wall of
knobs and set them to 3, 1, and 4.
Programming the ENIAC
Problems with the ENIAC
 The ENIAC used 18,000 vacuum tubes to
hold a charge
 Vacuum tubes were so notoriously unreliable
that even twenty years later many
neighborhood drug stores provided a "tube
tester"
Replacing a vacuum tube
The Stored Program Computer
 In 1945 John von Neumann presented his
idea of a computer that would store computer
instructions in a CPU
 The CPU(Central Processing Unit) consisted
of elements that would control the computer
electronically
The Stored Program Computer
 The EDVAC, EDSAC and UNIVAC were the
first computers to use the stored program
concept
 They used vacuum tubes so they were too
expensive and too large for households to
own and afford
Edvac
 It took days to change
ENIAC's program.
 Eckert and Mauchly's next
teamed up with the
mathematician John von
Neumann to design
EDVAC, which pioneered
the stored program.
 After ENIAC and EDVAC
came other computers with
humorous names such as
ILLIAC, JOHNNIAC, and,
of course, MANIAC
Second Generation Computers
 In 1947, the transistor was invented
 The transistor made computers smaller, less
expensive and increased calculating
speeds.
Second Generation Computers
 Second generation
computers also saw a
new way data was
stored
 Punch cards were
replaced with magnetic
tapes and reel to reel
machines
Univac
 The UNIVAC computer was
the first commercial (mass
produced) computer.
 In the 50's, UNIVAC (a
contraction of "Universal
Automatic Computer") was
the household word for
"computer" just as
"Kleenex" is for "tissue".
 UNIVAC was also the first
computer to employ
magnetic tape.
 Third Generation Computers
 Transistors were replaced
by integrated circuits(IC)
 One IC could replace
hundreds of transistors
 This made computers even
smaller and faster.
Fourth Generation Computers
 In 1970 the Intel Corporation invented the
Microprocessor: an entire CPU on one chip
 This led to microcomputers-computers on a
desk
Computer Programming
in the ’70’s
 If you learned computer
programming in the
1970's, you dealt with
what today are called
mainframe
computers, such as
the IBM 7090 (shown
below), IBM 360, or
IBM 370.
Time-Sharing
 There were 2 ways to
interact with a mainframe.
 The first was called time
sharing because the
computer gave each user a
tiny sliver of time in a round-
robin fashion.
 Perhaps 100 users would
be simultaneously logged
on, each typing on a
teletype such as the
following:
Teletype
 A teletype was a motorized
typewriter that could
transmit your keystrokes to
the mainframe and then
print the computer's
response on its roll of
paper.
 You typed a single line of
text, hit the carriage return
button, and waited for the
teletype to begin noisily
printing the computer's
response
Batch-Mode Processing
 The alternative to time
sharing was batch mode
processing, where the
computer gives its full
attention to your program.
 In exchange for getting the
computer's full attention at
run-time, you had to agree
to prepare your program off-
line on a key punch
machine which generated
punch cards.
Punch Cards
 University students in the 1970's bought blank cards
a linear foot at a time from the university bookstore.
 Each card could hold only 1 program statement.
 To submit your program to the mainframe, you
placed your stack of cards in the hopper of a card
reader.
 Your program would be run whenever the computer
made it that far.
 You often submitted your deck and then went to
dinner or to bed and came back later hoping to see
a successful printout showing your results
Programming Today
 But things changed
fast. By the 1990's a
university student
would typically own his
own computer and
have exclusive use of it
in his dorm room.
Microprocessor
 This transformation was a
result of the invention of the
microprocessor.
 A microprocessor (uP) is a
computer that is fabricated
on an integrated circuit (IC).
 Computers had been
around for 20 years before
the first microprocessor was
developed at Intel in 1971.
Microprocessor
 The micro in the name
microprocessor refers
to the physical size.
 Intel didn't invent the
electronic computer,
but they were the first
to succeed in cramming
an entire computer on a
single chip (IC)
Integrated Circuits
 The microelectronics
revolution is what
allowed the amount of
hand-crafted wiring
seen in the prior photo
to be mass-produced
as an integrated
circuit which is a small
sliver of silicon the size
of your thumbnail
Integrated Circuits
 Integrated circuits and
microprocessors
allowed computers to
be faster
 This led to a new age
of computers
 The first home-brew
computers is called the
ALTAIR 8800
Apple 1 Computer - 1976
The IBM PC
Commodore 64
Apple Macintosh
The Amiga
Windows 3
Macintosh System 7
Apple Newton
Standard UNIX
PowerPC
IBM OS/2
Windows 95
References
 Most of the information for this powerpoint
was obtained from the following web page:
 http://www.computersciencelab.com/Comput
erHistory/History.htm
A computer is made up of multiple parts and
components that facilitate user functionality. A
computer has two primary categories:

Hardware: Physical structure that houses a

computer's processor, memory, storage,
communication ports and peripheral devices
Software: Includes operating system (OS) and
software applications
A computer works with software programs
that are sent to its underlying hardware
architecture for reading, interpretation and
execution. Computers are classified
according to computing power, capacity,
size, mobility and other factors, as personal
computers (PC), desktop computers, laptop
computers, minicomputers, handheld
computers and devices, mainframes or
supercomputers.