The Wonderful World
of
Computers
Larry Holder
The University of Tennessee at Martin
It all began with the ABC in the 1930’s
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/physical-object/Atanasoff_Berry/
Followed by the ENIAC in the 40’s
The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes and 5 million hand-soldered joints.
It weighed about 30 tons, was 8 × 3 × 100 feet in size, occupied an area of
1,800 square feet, and used 150 kW of electricity.
and the Univac in the 50’s
The Transistor: perhaps the most important
th
development of the 20 century
The transistor is the fundamental building block of modern electronic devices. First practically
implemented in 1947 by American physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley,
the transistor revolutionized the field of electronics, and paved the way for smaller and cheaper
radios, calculators, and computers, among other things. The transistor is on the list of IEEE
milestones in electronics, and Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in
Physics for their achievement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor
http://i0.wp.com/sostrenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/us__en_us__ibm100__603calc__603_vacuum__620x350.jpg
http://www.wylie.org.uk/technology/semics/Ediswan/Ediswan.htm
But the real revolution began in the 70’s
Not to mention the Internet’s beginnings in
1969 (no thanks to Al Gore)
http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/Visible_Storage/VSR_detail_panels/
http://nasa.gov
http://www.woodstock.com/gallery/home-gallery/
Remember any
of these Micros?
The Very Basics…
It all boils down to…
INPUT
Processing
OUTPUT
And Bits and Bytes
Everything in the
computer is stored as:
1,024 Bytes = Kilobyte (KB)
1,024 KB = Megabyte (MB)
1,204 MB = Gigabyte (GB)
1,204 GB = Terabyte (TB)
1,204 TB
= Petabyte (PB)
1,024 PB
= Exabyte (EB)
1,024 EB
= Zettabyte (ZB)
1,024 ZB
= Yottabyte (YB)
0 1
8 bits (Binary Digits) =
1 Byte
1,024
1,048,576
1,073,741,824
1,099,511,627,776
1,125,899,906,842,624
1,152,921,504,606,846,976
1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176
A TRILLION x TRILLION … Wow, that’s a Yotta bytes!!!
Binary is found in Nature
Electricity
Magnetism
Light
http://nerdbusiness.com/blog/programming-wire-light-bulbs-battery/
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/113237-ibm-stores-binary-data-on-12-atoms
https://delightlylinux.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/binary-lesson-7-bits-and-bytes/
The processing is handled by the CPU
(Central Processing Unit)
CPU’s are rated in Gigahertz
Giga = Billion
Hertz = Cycle
Gigahertz = Billions of Cycles per Second
The Machine Cycle
http://cpu.pascalturbo.net/tag/cpu-machine-cycle
And it needs lots of RAM! (Memory)
How much RAM?
1990 – 4 MB (about 4 million bytes) at $50 per MB = $200
2016 – 4 GB (about 4 BILLION bytes) = $20
4 GB at 1990’s prices?
4 GB = 4,096 MB x $50/MB = $204,800
Memory vs Hard Drive
RAM
Paging
File
(Virtual Memory)
Hard Drive
Typical 1 to 3 TB
The Layers of Computing
The “User” (you)
Application Software (the “apps”)
Systems Software (Windows, MacOS, Linux)
Hardware (the nuts and bolts)
Storing our Data
Connecting our Stuff
USB
(Universal Serial Bus)
HDMI
(for display to TV, etc)
Ethernet
(for Internet)
Everything’s a Computer!!!
And the Internet has changed the world
What did we do before:
Amazon
Travelocity
Airbnb
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter
Google
Gmail
Wikipedia
… etc. etc. etc. …
http://arstechnica.com/unite/2015/10/the-future-is-the-internet-of-things-deal-with-it/
Percentages of Computers in Household
and Internet Use at Home
between 1984 and 2011
https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf
Internet Users Worldwide
First graphical web
browser, NCSA Mosaic,
released in 1993
http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/
lholder@utm.edu
larry@larryholdermusic.org
www.utm.edu/staff/lholder
larryholdermusic.org
threechordsandacapo.wordpress.com
… etc. etc. etc. …
This presentation is purely for non-profit
educational purposes. Any images taken
from various websites are used under
Fair Use. Additional credits or removal
of images will be done upon request.