C# Programming
Computer Literacy Notes
I.
Historical Timeline (Mechanization of Arithmetic Function):
a. Abacus – Ancient Chinese
b. Slide Rule
c. Pascal’s Adder
i. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) – French Mathematician.
ii. Adding machine (1642) – much like a car’s odometer.
d. Joseph Jacquard
i. Metal punch cards used with mechanical loom.
e. Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
i. The difference engine
1. Ran by punch cards
2. First successful run - 1855
ii. The analytical engine
1. Completed by his son after his death
f. Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace
i. Daughter of Lord and Lady Byron
ii. Backed Charles Babbage
iii. Wrote programs for the difference engine (hence the 1st programmer).
g. Herman Hollerith (1860-1929)
i. Developed a tabulating machine that was used in the 1890 census.
ii. The 1880 census took 7 years to complete; the 1890 census was
tabulated in 6 months, and only 2 years to be completed and defined,
iii. Founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which merged (in 1911) with
Computing Scale Company and International Time Recording to form
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). In 1924, CTR changed
its name to International Business Machines (IBM).
h. Mark I
i. Developed jointly by Harvard University and the US Navy.
ii. Its collaborators were Howard Aiken (1900-1973) and Grace Hopper
(1906-1992).
iii. Conceived in 1937, completed in 1944; used by the Navy for ballistic
calculations.
iv. Hopper coined the term “bug” for a computer fault (the term came when
a moth caused a hardware problem). She became the first person to
debug a computer.
i. ABC (The Atanasoff-Berry Computer)
i. John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry
ii. Determined by the courts in 1973 to be the first electronic computer
j. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
II.
i. J.P. Eckert and John Mauchly
ii. First electronic computer patented (1946)
iii. Used for Military Purposes.
The Generations of Computers
a. First Generation (1951-1957)
i. Computers:
1. UNIVAC (Universal Automated Computer) –Eckert and Mauchly –
Remington Rand
2. 701 EDPM – IBM
ii. Uses:
1. Government
2. Military
3. Aircraft Companies
4. Research Facilities
5. World Headquarters (RR and IBM)
iii. Characteristics:
1. Large, Hot, Unreliable
2. Vacuum Tubes
3. Machine (Binary) Language
4. Must rewire machine to change a program.
b. Second Generation
i. Innovations:
1. John Von Neuman – Stored Program Concept
a. Use of Magnetic Tape.
b. No more rewiring.
2. Transistor
a. Invented at Bell Labs by Jon Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and
William Shockley.
b. Winners of 1956 Nobel Prize.
c. Smaller size creates smaller computers.
d. Higher reliability than vacuum tubes
ii. Programming Languages:
1. Assembler – Hybrid of Machine language and modern programming
languages,
2. COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) – Used by Big
Businesses. Grace Hopper helped in its design.
3. FORTRAN (Formula Translation) – Used by Research and Science.
iii. Outgrowths:
1. Separation of business and mathematical applications.
2. Separation of hardware and software specialties.
3. First negatives from public – the term “Automation.”
c. The Third Generation (1965-1979)
i. Innovations:
1.
The invention of the Integrated Circuit (microchip).
a. Leads to even smaller, more reliable computers.
b. Allows NASA to fly men to the Moon.
2. The race for a single programming language:
a. BASIC (Beginner’s All-Purpose Instructional Code)
b. Pascal – Niklaus Wirth
c. PL/I (IBM)
d. B (Bell Labs), which becomes C, then C++, and now C#.
d. The Fourth Generation (1980-1996)
i. Innovations:
1. The Personal Computer:
a. Xerox PARC
i. Palo Alto Research Center
ii. Developed 1st Personal Computer, as well as developing
the Ethernet.
iii. NYC office didn’t think much of it, and the product
was never developed.
b. Apple
i. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
ii. First “true” personal computer
c. IBM PC
i. First large market computer
2. Other companies tried to jump on the bandwagon:
a. Radio Shack (TRS-80)
b. Atari
c. Commodore
d. Texas Instruments
e. AT&T
f. Most are just memories.
e. The Fifth Generation (1997-Present)
i. Innovations:
1. Multi-media
2. The Internet