Introduction to the History of Computing

1
Introduction to the History of Computing
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Mechanical ComputersGeneration 0

• Didnt use electricity, some used gears, wires,
  beads
• Abacus
• 1000-500 BC (Babylonians) mechanical aid used
  for counting

The Salamis Tablet (Greek, 300BC)
The Roman Hand Abacus
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Abacus (cont.)
Middle Ages 5 A.D to c1400 A.D
4
Da Vincis Mechanical Calculator
Notebook sketches c1500
Working model
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Napiers Bones

• Early 1600s
• Multiplication tables inscribed on strips of wood
  and bones

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Oughtreds Slide Rule

• Rev. William Oughtred 1621
• Use logs to perform multiplication and division
  by using addition and subtraction

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Pascals arithmetic engine

• Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
• Mechanical calculator for addition and subtraction

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Leibnezs Step Reckoner

• Gottfried von Leibnez 1670
• Add, subtract, multiply, divide, square roots

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Jacquards punch card

• Joseph Marie Jacquard
• 1805 punch cards used to operator loom
• Could reprogram loom by changing cards

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Babbages Engines
Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

• Same chair at Cambridge as Newton and Hawking
• Designed the difference engine and later, the
  analytical engine
• Brass gears and strings of punch cards run by
  steam
• Analytical Engine never built

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The Worlds First Programmer

• Lady Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1952)
  
• Understood Babbages Analytical Engine
• saw it as what we would call a general-purpose
  computer.
• Her notes anticipate future developments,
  including computer-generated music.

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Holleriths Tabulating Machine

• Herman Hollerith (1860-1929)
• Invented a punched card device to help analyse
  the 1890 US census data
• Founded Tabulating Machine Company 1896
• 1924 Tabulating Machine Company merges with
  others to form IBM

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MIT Differential Analyzer

• Purpose to solve differential equations
• Mechanical computation with first use of vacuum
  tubes for memory
• Programmed by aligning gears on shafts
• 1930s

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Alan Turing (1912-1954)

• Develops theory of computability and the Turing
  Machine model a simple but elegant
  mathematical model of a general purpose computer
  (1936)
• Helped crack German codes in WWII (1939-1945)

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Konrad Zuse

• 1936 Z1 first binary computer using Erector Set
  parts, keyboard and lights for output (relay
  memory)
• 1938 Z2 using punched tape and relays

Z1
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Vacuum TubesGeneration 1

• 1939 Atanasoff-Berry Computer
• First electronic-digital computer?
• Binary numbers, direct logic for calculation,
  regenerative memory
• Prototype 1939
• 2 years then to build full scale model
• One op per 15 secs, 300 vacuum tubes, 700 pounds,
  mile of wire

ABC Prototype
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The first computers (cont.)

• 1943 British Colossus first all-electronic
  computer? (2,400 vacuum tubes)
• Decipher enigma coded messages at 5,000 chars/sec
• At peak, 10 machines ran 24 hours a day

A German enigma coding machine
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The first computers (cont.)

• 1943-44 Aiken at Harvard/IBM Mark 1 first
  electromechanical digital computer
  (electromagnetic relays magnets open and close
  metal switches) (recreation of Analytical Engine)
• 8 ft tall, 50 ft long, 1 million parts
• 323 decimal-digit additions per sec
• storage for 72 23-digit numbers.

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ENIAC (1946)

• 18,000 tubes, 1500 sq ft
• Programmed by wire plugs into panels
• 5,000 decimal-digit additions/sec
• 20 10-decimal digit accumulators

• 1941 Von Neumann proposes EDVAC Electronic
  Discrete Variable Computer
• Computer should
• Use binary
• Have stored programs
• Be function-oriented

Von Neumann and ENIAC
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UNIVAC-1

• The worlds first commercially available
  (non-military) computer
• I think there is a world market for about five
  computers
• Thomas J. Watson, IBM Chairman

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TransistorsGeneration 2

• Transistors replace vacuum tubes
• Size and cost decreased, speed increased
• 1960s IBM sells large mainframe computers to
  businesses, called 700 series
• Mainframes run operating systems that allow many
  dumb terminals to be attached
• Typical business applications are custom written
  and run in batch mode

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Integrated CircuitsGeneration 3

• Integrated circuits contain many transistors on
  one chip
• 1971 Intel produces 4004 chip with all circuitry
  for a calculator

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VLSI Generation 4

• Mid 1970s
• Very large scale integration
• 1977 Apple Corporation started by Steve Jobs
  sells personal computer for hobbyists
• 1980 IBM creates the PC to sell to businesses
• The PC is widely cloned and becomes widely
  accepted as prices drop
• PCs and clones use a text based operating system
  called DOS to programs
• 1984 Apple releases the MAC with a graphical user
  interface
• Generations on How Webopedia

IBM PC c1982
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Programming Language History

• Programming languages instruct computers what to
  do
• Charles Babbage's difference engine could only be
  made to execute tasks by changing the gears which
  executed the calculations
• US Government ENIAC could only be "programmed" by
  presetting switches and rewiring the entire
  system for each new "program" or calculation

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Programming Language HistoryGeneration 1

• late 40s / early 50s programmers coded
  directly in machine language
• it allowed the programmer to write its statements
  in 0's and 1's by hand

01111111010001010100110001000110000000010000001000
000001000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100000
00000000010000000000000000000000000000000010000000
000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000001010000100000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000011010000000000000
000000000000000000000000 0000000101000000000000000
1000000000000000000100000000001011100111001101101
00001110011011101000111001001110100011000010110001
000000000001011100111010 0011001010111100001110100
0000000000101110011100100110111101100100011000010
11101000110000100000000001011100111001101111001011
011010111010001100001011 0001000000000001011100111
0011011101000111001001110100011000010110001000000
00000101110011100100110010101101100011000010010111
001110100011001010111100 0011101000000000000101110
0110001101101111011011010110110101100101011011100
11101000000000000000000000000000000000010011101111
000111011111110010000000 1001100000000000000000000
0000100100000001001001100000000000000001010100000
00000000000000000001001001000010010101000000000000
001000000000000000000000 0000000000000000100000000
0000000000000000101000000001000000000000000010001
00100000001000000000000000100000001010100000000000
000000000000010010010000 1001010100000000000000100
0000000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000
00000000000101100000001000000000000000100001000000
000000000000000100000000 1000000000000000000000000
1000000111000111111000000000100010000001111010000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010
010000110010101101100011 0110001101111011101110110
1111011100100110110001100100001000010000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
100000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000001000000000011111111111100010
00000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000
0100000000001111111111110001000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000 0000000110000000000000000
0000001100000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000 0010000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000110000000000000000
000000100000000000000000
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Programming Language HistoryGeneration 2

• mid 1950s assembly languages replaced numeric
  codes with mnemonic names
• an assembler is a program that translates
  assembly code into machine code
• input assembly language program
• output machine language program
• still low-level machine-specific, but easier
  to program
• In 1951, Grace Hopper (US Rear Admiral) wrote the
  first compiler, A-0, which turned English-like
  instructions into 0's and 1's

gcc2_compiled. .global _Q_qtod .section
".rodata" .align 8 .LLC0 .asciz "Hello
world!" .section ".text" .align 4 .global
main .type main,function .proc 04 main
!PROLOGUE 0 save sp,-112,sp !PROLOGUE
1 sethi hi(cout),o1 or o1,lo(cout),o0 sethi
hi(.LLC0),o2 or o2,lo(.LLC0),o1 call
__ls__7ostreamPCc,0 nop mov o0,l0 mov
l0,o0 sethi hi(endl__FR7ostream), or
o2,lo(endl__FR7ostream), call __ls__7ostreamPFR
7ostream_R7ostream,0 nop mov 0,i0 b
.LL230 nop .LL230 ret restore .LLfe1 .size
main,.LLfe1-main .ident "GCC (GNU) 2.7.2"
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Programming Language HistoryGeneration 3

• In 1957, IBM creates the first of the major
  languages called FORTRAN.
• Its name stands for FORmula TRANslating system.
• The language was designed for scientific
  computing.
• Excellent language for scientific work, difficult
  input/output operations

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Programming Language History

•  In 1958, John McCarthy of MIT created the LISt
  Processing (or LISP) language.
• It was designed for Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  research.
• Because it was designed for such a highly
  specialized field, its syntax has rarely been
  seen before or since.
• Still in use today for AI research, offsprings
  include Scheme

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Programming Language History

• 1959 COBOL was developed for businesses.
• COBOL statements have a very English-like
  grammar, making it quite easy to learn.
• Much better input/output than FORTRAN permitting
  business applications
• Highly successful and used on most IBM mainframe
  computers, even today.

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Programming Language History

• The BASIC language was developed in 1964 by John
  Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz.
• BASIC is a very limited language and was designed
  for non-computer science people.
• Many versions of BASIC were developed, Bill Gates
  and his partner started business by writing a
  version of BASIC for a hobby computer
• Bill Gates would later start Microsoft when he
  licenses the DOS operating system to IBM

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Programming Languages History

• Pascal was begun in 1968 by Niklaus Wirth.
• Its development was mainly out of necessity for a
  good teaching tool.
• Pascal was designed in a very orderly approach,
  it combined many of the best features of the
  languages in use at the time, COBOL, FORTRAN, and
  ALGOL.

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Programming Language History

•  C was developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie while
  working at Bell Labs in New Jersey.
• The transition in usage from the first major
  languages to the major languages of today
  occurred with the transition between Pascal and
  C.
• C was built to be fast and powerful at the
  expense of being hard to read.
• Ritchie developed C for the new Unix system being
  created at the same time.
• C is very commonly used to program operating
  systems such as Unix, Windows, the MacOS, and
  Linux.

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Programming Language History

• In the late 1970's and early 1980's, a new
  programming method was being developed called
  Object Oriented Programming, or OOP.
• Bjarne Stroustroup liked this method and
  developed extensions to C known as C, which was
  released in 1983.
• C was designed to organize the raw power of C
  using OOP, but maintain the speed of C and be
  able to run on many different types of computers.
  
• C is most often used in simulations, such as
  games.

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Programming Language History

• Visual Basic 1 is released by Microsoft in 1991
• It includes a combination of QuickBasic
  (Microsofts version of BASIC) and a graphical
  design tool for creating the User Interface
  (originally developed by Alan Cooper)
• It includes an event-driven programming paradigm

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Programming Language History

• In the early 1990's, interactive TV was the
  technology of the future.
• Sun Microsystems decided that interactive TV
  needed a special, portable (can run on many types
  of machines), language.
• This language eventually became Java.
• In 1994, the Java project team changed their
  focus to the web, which was becoming "the cool
  thing" after interactive TV failed.
• The next year, Netscape licensed Java for use in
  their internet browser, Navigator.
• At this point, Java became the language of the
  future.

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Programming Language HistoryGeneration 4

• Often abbreviated 4GL, fourth-generation
  languages are programming languages closer to
  human languages than typical 3rd generation
  languages.
• In 1969, a language called RAMIS was released
• Most 4GLs are used to access databases and do in
  a few lines of code what would require hundreds
  of lines of COBOL or C.
• For example, a typical 4GL command is FIND ALL
  RECORDS WHERE NAME IS "SMITH"