The History of Computers

1
The History of Computers

• Past, Present, and Beyond

2
Topics

• Famous Predictions about Computers
• Prehistory
• Early History of Computers
• The First Generation of Computers
• The Second Generation of Computers
• The Third Generation of Computers
• The Fourth Generation of Computers
• The Future of Computing
• References

3
Famous Quotes about Computers

• I think there is a world market for maybe five
  computers. Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM,
  1943
• Computers in the future may weigh no more than
  1.5 tons. Popular Mechanics, 1949
• There is no reason anyone in the right state of
  mind will want a computer in their home. Ken
  Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977.

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Famous Quotes about Computers

• "So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got
  this amazing thing, even built with some of your
  parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or
  we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay
  our salary, we'll come work for you' And they
  said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard,
  and they said, 'Hey we don't need you. You
  haven't got through college yet.'" - Apple
  Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to
  get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve
  Wozniak's personal computer.

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The Prehistory of Computers

• The Abacus
• Blaise Pascal
• Joseph Jacquard
• Charles Babbage
• Ada Lovelace

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The Abacus

• The abacus, a simple counting aid, may have been
  invented in Babylonia (now Iraq) in the fourth
  century B.C.

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Wilhelm Schickard'sMechanical Calculator

• First known mechanical calculator
• Capable of simple arithmetic

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Blaise Pascals Mechanical Calculator

• Blaise Pascal
• Born on June 19, 1623 in France
• Builds the first operating mechanical calculator
  in 1642 called the Pascaline
• Calculator limited to addition and subtraction of
  decimal numbers
• Metal wheels used to enter numbers, results
  appear in the calculators window

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Pascals Calculator
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Gottfried Leibniz'sMore advanced Mechanical
Calculator

• German mathematician
• Calculator purely mechanical with no source of
  power
• Calculator capable of multiplication and division

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Joseph Jacquards Programmable Loom

• Joseph-Marie Jacquard
• Invents an automatic loom controlled by punch
  cards in 1801
• First machine programmed with punched cards
• People rioted over the loss of jobs it produced

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Punch cards for a loom
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Jacquard Loom
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Charles Babbage, The Father of Computers

• Charles Babbage
• Born December 26, 1792.
• Known as the Father of Computers
• Devises the Difference Engine in the early 1820s.
• Mechanical, steam powered machine for calculating
  astronomical tables.
• Works on the project for 20 years before the
  project is cancelled by the British government in
  1842.

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Babbage Difference Engine, constructed by the
British Government in 1991.
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Charles Babbages Analytical Engine

• The Analytical Engine
• A mechanical computer that can solve any
  mathematical problem.
• Includes these features crucial to future
  computers
• An input device (punch cards)
• A storage facility to hold numbers for processing
• A processor or number calculator
• A control unit to direct tasks to be performed
• An output device.

17
Ada Byron, The First Computer Programmer

• Countess Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace
• Born December 10, 1815, daughter of the poet Lord
  Byron
• Meets Babbage in 1833
• Often called the first computer programmer

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Ada Byron

• Ada Lovelace, Continued
• Publishes an analysis of the Analytical Engine.
• Outlines the fundamentals of computer
  programming, including data analysis, looping and
  memory addressing.

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Early History of Computers

• Herman Hollerith
• Mark 1
• The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
• The ENIAC

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Herman Hollerith and the 1890 US Census

• Herman Hollerith
• The 1880 US Census took almost seven years to
  count.
• Using punch cards, developed an electromechanical
  machine that counted the 1890 Census in six
  weeks.
• Brought his punch card reader to the business
  world in 1896 when he founded Tabulating Machine
  Company, which later merged with International
  Business Machines (IBM).
• Punch cards remained in use for data processing
  until the 1960s.

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Mark 1

• An electromechanical computer developed in 1944
  by Howard Aiken
• Developed to calculate ballistics charts for the
  US Navy
• Was about half as long as a football field and
  contained 500 miles of wire
• Used electromagnetic signals to move mechanical
  parts
• Was obsolete by the time it was complete

22
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)

• The worlds first digital electronic computer.
• Built by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry around
  1940.
• Used the binary number number system,
  regenerative memory, and separated memory and
  computing functions.

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The ENIAC

• The worlds first large-scale, general purpose
  electronic computer
• Developed in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert and John
  W. Mauchly
• Used 18,000 vacuum tubes
• Occupied a 30 by 50 ft room
• Computed at speeds up to 1,000 times faster than
  the Mark 1
• Used for ballistics, weather prediction, and for
  atomic energy calculations.
• To program, hundreds of wires and thousands of
  switches had to be set by hand

Vacuum Tube
24
The ENIAC
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John van Neumann Architecture

• Stored-programming concept
• Suggested that programs and data could be
  represented in the same internal memory.
• All modern ocmputers store programs in internal
  memory.

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First Generation of Computers 1951 - 1958

• Vacuum Tubes
• Punch Cards
• The UNIVAC

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The size of a cell phone built with Vacuum Tubes
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The size of a pager built with vacuum tubes
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The size of a home computer built with vacuum
tubes
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Punch Cards

• At the time, the primary way to enter information
  and programs into a computer

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The UNIVAC

• Built in 1951 by Remington Rand
• The first computer mass produced for general use
• Used magnetic tape instead of punch cards for
  input and output
• Predicted the winner of the 1952 presidential
  election

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Second Generation of Computers 1959 - 1964

• Transistors
• Admiral Grace Hopper

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Transistors

• The transistor (on/off switch) was invented in
  1948 and began to replace vacuum tubes in
  computers by 1956.
• Developed by a team at Bell Labs, won the Nobel
  Prize in Physics in 1956.
• Transistors allowed computers to become smaller,
  faster and more reliable.
• Today, transistors are about .25 microns in size,
  that is smaller than the width of a human hair.

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The First Transistor
35
Grace Hopper revolutionizes computer programming

• Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
• Born December 9, 1906 in New York City
• One of the first US computer programmers
• A leader in the field of compilers
• Believed that programming languages should be
  more like English
• Was a leading force in the development of the
  COBOL business programming language
• Coined the term Debugging

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Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
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Third Generation of Computers 1965 - 1970

• The rise of operating systems, minicomputers, and
  word processing
• Integrated Circuits
• IBM 360
• PDP-8
• Development of the first computer networks

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Integrated Circuits

• Integrated circuits (computer chips) began
  replacing transistors
• An integrated circuit contains many transistors
  and electronic circuits on a single wafer of
  silicon or chip.

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The IBM 360

• Developed in 1964, the first computer to use
  integrated circuits.
• Became the basic model for other mainframes
  produced by IBM and other companies.
• Price Up to a million dollars
• Number sold 14,000 by 1968

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The IBM 360
41
The PDP-8

• The first microcomputer, produced by Digital
  Equipment Co. (DEC) in 1965.
• Cost 5,000
• Number Sold 50,000

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The PDP-8
43
Fourth Generation of Computers 1971 - Present

• The Microprocessor
• The First Microcomputers

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The Microprocessor

• A computer chip that contains on it the entire
  CPU
• Mass produced at a very low price
• Computers become smaller and cheaper
• Intel 4004 the first computer on a chip, more
  powerful than the original ENIAC.

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The Microcomputer

• 1975 - The first microcomputer, the Altair 8800
  was introduced. The BASIC translator used by the
  Altair was developed by Bill Gates
• 1975 The first super computer, the Cray 1, was
  announced
• 1976 DEC introduces its minicomputer, the VAX

46
The Microcomputer

• 1977 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak begin
  producing Apple computers in a garage
• 1978 The first spreadsheet for Apple is
  introduced
• 1981 IBM introduces the IBM Personal Computer.
  Uses the MS-DOS operating system (birth of
  Microsoft)
• By 1982, 835,000 IBM PCs had been sold

47
The Microcomputer

• 1982 Sun Microsystems introduces its first
  workstation
• 1984 Apple produces the first Macintosh
• 1985 Microsoft introduces Windows

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Summary
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The Future of Computing

• Bleeding Edge Technology
• Molecular Computing
• DNA Computing
• Biological Computing
• Quantum Computing

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Molecular Computing

• The amount of circuitry that can be placed on a
  silicon chip is limited.
• As more transistors are crammed onto a silicon
  chip the process becomes complex and expensive.
• Today about 28 million transistors can be placed
  on a computer chip.
• Molecules are much smaller than transistors.
• Molecular chips that contain billions or
  trillions of switches and components.

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Advantages of Molecular Computing

• Main Advantages
• Potential to pack vastly more circuitry onto a
  microchip than will ever be possible with silicon
  chips
• Astonishing fast
• Potentially cheap and easy to produce

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Potential Uses of Molecular Computing

• Potential Uses
• Molecular memories with a million times the
  storage of todays chips
• Supercomputers the size of a wrist watch
• Current Work
• Creating switches using molecules
• Molecules do not usually carry a current
• Small molecular devices that could be integrated
  with todays silicon chips

53
DNA Computing

• DNA is a unique data structure
• Has enormous data density up to 1 million Gbits
  of data per inch
• Todays best hard drive store about 7Gbits psi
• Double stranded nature has potential for error
  correction
• Massively Parallel Operations
• Using enzymes, which operate on one DNA at the
  same time

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DNA Computing

• Main Advantages
• Massively parallel operations
• Huge memory capacity
• Possible Uses
• Solving computational problems that can never be
  solved using silicon-based computers.

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Biological Computing

• Creating devices out of cells that can compute
  and be programmed
• Probably not a replacement for traditional
  computers
• Biological computing is at the stage that
  traditional computing was in the 1920s.

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Biological Computing

• Possible Uses
• Process control for biochemical systems
• Insulin delivery systems that could sense the
  amount of glucose in the blood and deliver the
  right amount
• Devices that detect food contamination or toxins
  in the air

57
Quantum Computing

• Computers based on quantum mechanics
• Building block of data is the quantum bit (or
  qubit)
• A qubit can exist in two states at the same time,
  so it can hold a value of both one and zero
  simultaneously
• Potential for parallel computation
• Disadvantages
• Fragile and difficult to control
• The whole system can lose coherence and collapse.

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References

• Quotes
• http//lalaland.cl.msu.edu/vanhoose/humor/0261.ht
  ml
• http//aspire.virtualave.net/quotes.phtml
• http//www.funehumor.com/fun_main/computer.htm

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References

• Prehistory
• http//www.allsands.com/History/Objects/babbagecom
  puter_yy_gn.htm
• http//sol.brunel.ac.uk/history/hist1910.html

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References

• History of Computers
• http//www.cnet.com/techtrends/0-1544318-7-1656936
  .html?tagst.cn.1.tlpg.1544318-7-1656936
• http//www.digitalcentury.com/encyclo/update/comp_
  hd.html
• http//www.cln.org/themes/computer_history.html

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References

• The Future of Computing
• http//www.techreview.com/articles/may00/full_text
  .htm