THE

HISTORY OF
COMPUTER
•Four basic periods
Characterized by a principal
technology used to solve the
input,processing, output and
communication problems of the
time:
1.Premechanical,
2.Mechanical,
3.Electromechanical, and
4.Electronic
The Premechanical Age: 3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.

1. Writing and Alphabets--communication

• First humans communicated only through speaking

and
picture drawings.

• 3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia

devised cuniform

• Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols

• The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician

alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave
the letters Latin names to create the alphabet
we use today.
2. Paper and Pens--input technologies.

• Sumerians' input technology was a

stylus that could
• scratch marks in wet clay.

• About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on

the papyrus plant

• around 100 A.D., the Chinese made

paper from rags, on which modern-day
papermaking is based.
 3. Books and Libraries: Permanent
Storage Devices

• Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept

the earliest "books"

• The Egyptians kept scrolls

• Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to

fold sheets of papyrus vertically into
leaves and bind them together.
 4. The first numbering systems

• Egyptian system: The numbers 1-9 as

vertical lines, the number 10 as a U or circle,
the number 100 as a coiled rope, and the
number 1,000 as a lotus blossom.

• The first numbering systems similar to

those in use today were invented between
100 and 200 A.D. by Hindus in India who
created a nine-digit numbering system.

• Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was

developed.
The First Calculators: The Abacus
 The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840

1. The First Information Explosion.

•Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)

Invented the movable metal-type printing
process in
1450.

•The development of book indexes and the

widespread
use of page numbers.
2. The first general pupose "computers"

•Actually people who held the job title

"computer: one who works with
numbers."
3.Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's
Machine

•Slide Rule

•Early 1600s, William Oughtred an English

clergyman, invented the slide rule.
PICTURE OF A SLIDE RULE
 The Pascaline
• Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62).
•One of the first mechanical computing
machines, around 1642
Leibniz's Machine

•Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716),

German mathematician and philosopher.

The Reckoner (reconstruction)

Babbage's Engines
•Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English
mathematician.
•Working model created in 1822.
•The "method of differences".
The Difference Engine
THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE
Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom
•Designed during the
1830s
•Parts remarkably similar
to modern-day computers.
•The "store"
•The "mill"
•Punch cards.
Punch card idea picked up by
Babbage from Joseph Marie Jacquard's
(1752-1834) loom.
• Introduced in 1801
• Binary logic
• Fixed program that would operate in
real time.
• Augusta Ada Byron (1815-52).
• The first programmer
C. The Electromechanical Age:
1840 - 1940.
The discovery of ways to
harness electricity was the
key advance made during this
period. Knowledge and
information could now be
converted into electrical
impulses.
 1. The Beginnings of
Telecommunication
1.Voltaic Battery.
• Late 18th century.
2.Telegraph.
• Early 1800s.
3.Morse Code.
• Developed in1835 by Samuel
Morse
• Dots and dashes.
4.Telephone and Radio.
• Alexander Graham Bell.
• 1876
5.Followed by the discovery that
electrical waves travel through space
and can produce an effect far from the
point at which they originated.
6.These two events led to the invention of
the radio
• Guglielmo Marconi
• 1894
 2. Electromechanical
Computing
1.Herman Hollerith and
IBM.
• Herman Hollerith
(1860-1929) in 1880.
• CENSUS MACHINE
• Early Punch Cards
• Punch Card Workers

•By 1890
•The International Business Machines
Corporation (IBM).
• Its first logo
2. MARK 1
•Paper tape stored data and program instructions
• Howard Aiken, a Ph.D.
student at Harvard University
• Built the Mark I
• Completed January 1942
• 8 feet tall, 51 feet long,
2 feet thick, weighed 5
tons, used about 750,000
parts
 D. The Electronic
Age: 1940 - Present
1. First Tries
• Early 1940s
• Electronic vacuum
tubes
2. Eckert and Mauchly.
1.The First High-Speed, General
Purpose Computer Using Vacuum
Tubes:
Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Computer (ENIAC).
The ENIAC team (Feb 14, 1946). Left
to right: J. Presper Eckert, Jr.; John
Grist Brainerd; Sam Feltman; Herman
H. Goldstine; John W. Mauchly;
Harold Pender; Major General G. L.
Barnes; Colonel Paul N. Gillon.
Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Computer
•1946.
•Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical
devices) to do its calculations.
•Hence, first electronic computer
•Developers John Mauchly, a physicist,
and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical
engineer.
•The Moore School of Electrical
Engineering at the University of
Pennsylvania
•Funded by the U.S. Army
•But it could not storeits programs
The First Stored-Program Computer
• Early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert
began to design the EDVAC - the
Electronic Discreet Variable
Computer.

• John von Neumann's influential

report in June 1945:
"The Report on the EDVAC"

• British scientists used this report

and outpaced the Americans.

• Max Newman headed up the effort

at Manchester University.
• Where the Manchester Mark I went into
operation in June 1948 becoming the
first stored-program computer.

• Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at

Cambridge University, completed the
EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage
Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two years
before EDVAC was finished.

• Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-

program computer in general use (i.e., not a
prototype).
 The First General-Purpose Computer for
Commercial Use Universal Automatic Computer
(UNIVAC)
• Late 1940s, Eckert and
Mauchly began the
development of a computer
called UNIVAC (Universal
Automatic Computer)
•Remington Rand.
•First UNIVAC delivered to
Census Bureau in 1951.
• But, a machine called LEO
(Lyons Electronic Office)
went into action a few
months before UNIVAC and
became the world's first
commercial computer.
3. TheFour Generations of
Digital Computing.
• The First Generation (1951 to
1958).
1. Vacuum tubes as their main logic
elements.
2. Punch cards to input and
externally store data.
3.Rotating magnetic drums for
internal storage of data and
programs
• Programs written in
• Machine language
• Assembly language
»Requires a compiler
The Second Generation
• Vacuum tubes replaced by
transistors as main logic
element.
• AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in the
1940s
• Crystalline mineral materials
called semiconductors could be
used in the design of a device
called a transistor
• Magnetic tape and disks began to
replace punched cards as external
storage devices.
• Magnetic cores (very small donut-
shaped magnets that could be
polarized in one of two directions to
represent data) strung on wire within
the computer became the primary
internal storage technology.
• High-level programming languages
»E.g., FORTRAN and COBOL
THE THIRD GENERATION
• Individual transistors were replaced by
integrated circuits
• Magnetic tape and disks completely replace
punch cards as external storage devices.
• Magnetic core internal memories began to
give way to a new form metal oxide
semiconductor (MOS) memory, which, like
integrated circuits, used silicon-backed chips.
• Operating systems
• Advanced programming languages like
BASIC developed.
»Which is where Bill Gates and
Microsoft got their start in 1975.
 The Fourth Generation
(1979- Present)
• Large-scale and very large-scale
integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)
• Microprocessors that contained
memory, logic, and control circuits (an
entire CPU = Central Processing
Unit) on a single chip.
• Which allowed for home-use
personal computers or PCs like the
Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC.
• Which allowed for home-use personal
computers or PCs, like the Apple (II and
Mac) and IBM PC. Apple II released to
public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and
Steven Jobs.
• Initially sold for $1,195 (without a
monitor); had 16k RAM.
• First Apple Mac released in 1984.
• IBM PC introduced in 1981.
• Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft
Disk Operating System)
•Fourth generation language software
products
• E.g., Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase,
Microsoft Word, and many others.
• Graphical User Interfaces (GUI)
for PCs arrive in early 1980s
• MS Windows debuts in 1983,
but is quite a clunker.
•Windows wouldn't take off until
version 3 was released in 1990
•Apple's GUI (on the first Mac)
debuts in 1984.
 HISTORY
OF
COMPUTER