MIS 100 Essential Computing Concepts

1
MIS 100 Essential Computing Concepts

• Personal Computer History
• History is merely a list of surprises. It can
  only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
• -- Kurt Vonnegut

2
Read great books that capture the excitement,
joy, pioneering spirit and creative energy of
computing

• Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
• Hackers and Crypto by Steven Levy
• Just for Fun The Story of an Accidental
  Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds
• Rebel Code Linux and the Open Source
  Revolution by Moody
• Where Wizards Stay Up Late The Origins Of The
  Internet by Hafner
• Go To The Story of the Math Majors, Bridge
  Players, Engineers, Chess Wizards, Maverick
  Scientists and Iconoclasts--The Programmers Who
  Created the Software Revolution by Lohr
• Dealers of Lightning Xerox PARC and the Dawn
  of the Computer Age by Hiltzik
• Accidental Empires by Cringley
• Fermat's Enigma The Epic Quest to Solve the
  World's Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon
  Singh as well as The Code Book The Science of
  Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum
  Cryptography

3
A Few Milestone Events in Computer Hardware
History

• 2600B.C. Chinese invent the abacus
• 1621 Slide rule (used into the 1970s)
• 1679 Leibniz binary math
• 1822 Babbages Difference Engine
• 1890 U.S. Census bureau uses electric
  tabulating system by Hollerith (8 yrs to 2 yrs)
• 1896 Hollerith forms Tabulating Machine
  Company, later becomes ?

• 1904 vacuum tubes
• 1943-45 U.S. Army builds ENIAC
• 1943 British build Colossus for code breaking
• 1945 John Von Neumann lays out theoretical
  architecture for computers as we know them
• 1947 Shockley invents the transistor
• 1954 Texas Instruments could produce silicon
  transistors commercially. IBM had 1st mass
  produced computer.
• 1958 TI makes 1st integrated circuit
• 1969 Intel designs early microchip

4
A Few Milestone Events...

• 1975 Popular Electronics magazine featured the
  Altair 8800, the first PC
• 1976 - The Steves (Wozniak and Jobs) introduce
  the Apple
• Radio Shack, Commodore, others...

• 1981 IBM PC
• 16K RAM, 5.25 in floppy
• 1982 Compaq first IBM compatible
• 1984 the Macintosh
• 1985 80386 32bit CPU
• 1993 Pentium introduced
• ... faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper,
  smaller and smaller, more connected and more
  connected, more mainstream and more mainstream...

5
Computerese - Bits and Bytes

• Bit a binary digit (0 or 1), an on/off switch
  or transistor
• machine language, binary notation, base-2
• 1 Byte 8 bits
• Can represent the decimal numbers 0-255
• 0 00000000
• 255 11111111
• 6 ??
• 1 byte per character, 256 characters

6
Early Computer History

• Pascalene 1624
• The first accurate mechanical calculator
• Created by Blaise Pascal
• Used to add, subtract, multiply, and divide

• Jacquard Loom 1820
• Created by Joseph Jacquard
• A machine that automated the weaving of complex
  patterns
• Used holes punched in cards to automate the
  process

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Early Computer History

• Analytical Engine 1834
• Created by Charles Babbage
• The father of computing
• The first automatic calculator
• Includes components similar to those found in
  today's computers

• Hollerith Tabulating Machine 1890
• Created by Herman Hollerith
• Used punch cards to tabulate census data
• Hollerith started the Tabulating Machine Company,
  which later became IBM

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Basic Model of A Computer System

• A Computer
• Accept input
• Process - perform computational functions
• Communicate results

System bus 16bit, 32 bit, 64 bit lanes on the
highway

• CPU
• Arithmetic-Logic Unit
• Control Unit

• Input Devices
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Touch Screen

• Secondary Storage
• Hard disk
• floppy, Zip, Flash, CD, DVD
• Tape

• Output Devices
• Printers
• Monitors
• Audio

• Communication Devices
• Buses - internal
• Ports - external

Primary Storage RAM
9
Early Computer History

• Z1 1936
• Created by Konrad Zuse
• The Z1 is a mechanical calculator
• It included a control unit and memory functions
• Atanasoff-Berry Computer 1939
• Created by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry
• The first electrically powered digital computer
• Used vacuum tubes to store data
• The first computer to use the binary system

Atansoff-Berry Computer
10
Early Computer History

• Harvard Mark I 1944
• Created by Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper
• A computer used by the US Navy for ballistics
  calculations
• Hoppers contribution to computing was
• Invention of the compiler
• Coined the term computer bug
• Turing Machine 1939
• Created by Alan Turing
• A hypothetical model that defined a mechanical
  procedure or algorithm
• Concept of an infinite tape that could read,
  write, and erase was precursor to todays RAM

1st use of computer bug
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Early Computer History

• ENIAC 1944
• Created by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
• The first successful high-speed electronic
  digital computer
• UNIVAC 1951
• The first commercially successful electronic
  digital computer
• Used magnetic tape

ENIAC
UNIVAC
12
Early Computer History

• Transistors 1945
• Invented at Bell Laboratories
• Replaces vacuum tubes
• Integrated circuits 1958
• Invented by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments
• A small chip containing thousands of transistors
• Enabled computers to become smaller and lighter

13
Intel 8080 and the Altair 8800

• The first microcomputer
• Sold as a kit - 395 out of a warehouse in New
  Mexico
• Switches for input
• Lights for output
• Bill Gates and Paul Allen (students at Harvard)
  create a compiler for BASIC (Beginner's
  All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)
• MITS receives 4,000 orders

14
Apple I and Apple II

• Apple I built by Steve Wozniak in 1976
• Apple II developed by Steve Jobs in 1977
• Uses Motorola processor
• First fully contained microcomputer
• Highly successful

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Early Competitors

• Commodore
• TRS-80
• Osborne

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IBM PC

• IBM enters small computer market 1981
• Uses open architecture
• Purchases operating system from Microsoft

17
Early Computer History

• Microprocessor chip 1971
• Created by Intel Corporation
• A small chip containing millions of transistors
• It functions as the central processing unit (CPU)

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Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
(BASIC)

• Revolutionized the software industry
• Programming language that beginners could easily
  learn
• Key language of the PC
• Bill Gates and Paul Allen used BASIC to write the
  program for the Altair
• Led to the creation of Microsoft
• Visual Basic for Applications

19
Advent of Operating Systems

• Steve Wozniak invents floppy drive
• Disk Operating System (DOS) Operating system
  that controlled the first Apples
• Control Program for Microcomputers (CP/M) First
  operating system for Intel-based PCs
• MS-DOS
• Operating system for IBM PCs
• Based on an operating system called Quick and
  Dirty Operating System (QDOS)
• Created by Bill Gates and Paul Allen
• All PCs using the Intel chip used MS-DOS

20
Software Application Explosion

• Electronic Spreadsheets
• VisiCalc
• Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel
• Word Processing
• WordStar
• Word for MS-DOS
• Word Perfect

Bricklin and Frankston
VisiCalc screenshot
21
Graphical User Interface

• Xerox
• Palo Alto Research Center
• Alto 1972
• Apple
• Lisa 1983
• Macintosh 1984
• Super Bowl

Xerox Alto
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The Internet Boom

• Mosaic
• Netscape
• Internet Explorer
• Windows 95