Ancient Times
Early Man relied on counting on his fingers and toes (which
by the way, is the basis for our base 10 numbering system). He
also used sticks and stones as markers. Later notched sticks
and knotted cords were used for counting. Finally came
symbols written on hides, parchment, and later paper. Man
invents the concept of number, then invents devices to help
keep up with the numbers of his possessions.
Roman Empire
The ancient Romans developed an Abacus, the first
"machine" for calculating. While it predates the Chinese
abacus we do not know if it was the ancestor of that
Abacus. Counters in the lower groove are 1 x 10n, those in
the upper groove are 5 x 10n
Industrial Age - 1600
John Napier, a Scottish nobleman and
politician devoted much of his leisure time
to the study of mathematics. He was
especially interested in devising ways to
aid computations. His greatest contribution
was the invention of logarithms. He
inscribed logarithmic measurements on a
set of 10 wooden rods and thus was able to
do multiplication and division by matching
up numbers on the rods. These became known as Napier’s Bones.
1621 - The Sliderule
Napier invented logarithms, Edmund Gunter invented the logarithmic scales
(lines etched on metal or wood), but it was William Oughtred, in England
who invented the sliderule. Using the concept of Napier’s bones, he inscribed
logarithms on strips of wood and invented the calculating "machine" which
was used up until the mid-1970s when the first hand-held calculators and
microcomputers appeared.
1642 - Blaise
Pascal(1623-1662)
help his father, who was also a
machine consisted of a series of gears
representing the numbers 0 to 9. As each
trip the next gear up to make 1/10 of a
remained the foundation of all mechanical
after his death. The Pascal programming language was named in his honor.
Blaise Pascal, a French
mathematical genius, at the
age of 19 invented a machine,
which he called
the Pascaline that could do
addition and subtraction to
mathematician. Pascal’s
with 10 teeth each,
gear made one turn it would
revolution. This principle
adding machines for centuries
1673 - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)
Gottfried Wilhelm von
Leibniz invented differential
and integral calculus
independently of Sir Isaac
Newton, who is usually
given sole credit. He
invented a calculating
machine known
as Leibniz’s Wheel or
the Step Reckoner. It could
add and subtract, like
Pascal’s machine, but it could also multiply and divide. It did this by
repeated additions or subtractions, the way mechanical adding machines
of the mid to late 20th century did. Leibniz also invented something
essential to modern computers — binary arithmetic.
1725 - The Bouchon Loom
Basile Bouchon, the son of an organ maker, worked in the textile
industry. At this time fabrics with very intricate patterns woven into
them were very much in vogue. To weave a complex pattern, however
involved somewhat complicated manipulations of the threads in a loom
which frequently became tangled, broken, or out of place. Bouchon
observed the paper rolls with punched holes that his father made to
program his player organs and adapted the idea as a way of
"programming" a loom. The paper passed over a section of the loom and
where the holes appeared certain threads were lifted. As a result, the
pattern could be woven repeatedly. This was the first punched paper,
stored program. Unfortunately the paper tore and was hard to advance.
So, Bouchon’s loom never really caught on and eventually ended up in
the back room collecting dust.
1728 - Falçon Loom
In 1728 Jean-Batist Falçon, substituted a deck of punched cardboard cards for the paper roll of Bouchon’s
loom. This was much more durable, but the deck of cards tended to get shuffled and it was tedious to
continuously switch cards. So, Falçon’s loom ended up collecting dust next to Bouchon’s loom.
1745 - Joseph
It took inventor Joseph
Bouchon’s idea of a
ides of durable
workable
operations were
together to form a long
cards as you wanted.
roll was clicked
revolutionized the
Marie Jacquard (1752-1834)
M. Jacquard to bring together
continuous punched roll, and Falcon’s
punched cards to produce a really
programmable loom. Weaving
controlled by punched cards tied
loop. And, you could add as many
Each time a thread was woven in, the
forward by one card. The results
weaving industry and made a lot of
money for Jacquard. This idea of
punched data storage was later adapted for computer data input.
1822 – Charles Babbage (1791-1871) and Ada Augusta, The Countess of Lovelace
Charles Babbage is
known as the Father
of the modern
computer (even
though none of his
computers worked
or were even
constructed in their
entirety). He first
designed plans to
build, what he
called
the Automatic
Difference Engine.
It was designed to help in the construction of
mathematical tables for navigation. Unfortunately, engineering limitations of his time made it impossible
for the computer to be built. His next project was much more ambitious.
While a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University (where
Stephen Hawkin is now), a position he never actually occupied, he
proposed the construction of a machine he called the Analytic Engine. It
was to have a punched card input, a memory unit (called the store), an
arithmetic unit (called the mill), automatic printout, sequential program
control, and 20-place decimal accuracy. He had actually worked out a
plan for a computer 100 years ahead of its time. Unfortunately it was
never completed. It had to wait for manufacturing technology to catch up
to his ideas.
During a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada Lovelace translated
Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's
Analytic Engine. With her translation she appended a set of notes which
specified in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers
with the Engine. Historians now recognize this as the world's first
computer program and honor her as the first programmer. Too bad she
has such an ill-received programming language named after her.
1880s – Herman Hollerith (18601929)
The computer trail next takes us to, of all
places, the U.S. Bureau of Census. In
1880 taking the U.S. census proved to be
a monumental task. By the time it was
completed it was almost time to start over
for the 1890 census. To try to overcome
this problem the Census Bureau hired Dr.
Herman Hollerith. In 1887, using
Jacquard’s idea of the punched card data
storage, Hollerith developed a punched card tabulating system, which allowed
the census takers to record all the information needed on punched cards which
were then placed in a special tabulating machine with a series of counters.
When a lever was pulled a number of pins came down on the card. Where there was a hole the pin went
through the card and made contact with a tiny pool of mercury below and tripped one of the counters by
one. With Hollerith’s machine the 1890 census tabulation was completed in 1/8 the time. And they checked
the count twice.
After the census Hollerith turned to using his tabulating machines for business and in 1896 organized the
Tabulating Machine Company which later merged with other companies to become IBM. His contribution
to the computer then is the use of punched card data storage. BTW: The punched cards in computers were
made the same size as those of Hollerith’s machine. And, Hollerith chose the size he did because that was
the same size as the one dollar bill at that time and therefore he could find plenty of boxes just the right size
to hold the cards.
1939-1942 Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff(1903-1995) and Clifford Berry (1918-1963)
Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff and his graduate assistant, Clifford Barry, built the first truly electronic
computer, called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer or ABC. Atanasoff said the idea came to him as he was
sitting in a small roadside tavern in Illinois. This computer used a circuit with 45 vacuum tubes to perform
the calculations, and capacitors for storage. This was also the first computer to use binary math.
1943 – Colossus I
The first really successful electronic computer was built
in Bletchley Park, England. It was capable of
performing only one function, that of code breaking
during World War II. It could not be re-programmed.
1944 – Mark I - Howard Aiken (1900-1973) and Grace Hopper (1906-1992)
In 1944 Dr. Howard Aiken
of Harvard finished the
construction of the
Automatic Sequence
Controlled Calculator,
popularly known as the
Mark I. It contained over
3000 mechanical relays
and was the first electromechanical computer
capable of making logical
decisions, like if x==3
then do this not like If its
raining outside I need to carry an umbrella. It could perform an addition
in 3/10 of a second. Compare that with something on the order of a couple of nano-seconds (billionths of a
second) today.
The important contribution of this machine was that it was programmed by means of a punched paper tape,
and the instructions could be altered. In many ways, the Mark I was the realization of Babbage’s dream.
One of the primary
programmers for the
Mark I was Grace
Hopper. One day the
Mark I was
malfunctioning and
not reading its paper
tape input correctly.
Ms Hopper checked
out the reader and
found a dead moth in
the mechanism with
its wings blocking
the reading of the holes in the paper tape. She removed the moth, taped
it into her log book, and recorded... Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being
found.
She had debugged the program, and while the word bug had been used to describe defects since at least
1889, she is credited with coining the word debugging to describe the work of eliminating program errors.
It was Howard Aiken, in 1947, who made the rather short-sighted comment to the effect that the computer
is a wonderful machine, but I can see that six such machines would be enough to satisfy all the
computing needs of the entire United States.
1946 – ENIAC - J. Prosper Eckert (1919-1995) and John W. Mauchly (1907-1980)
The first all electronic computer was
the Electrical Numerical Integrator and
Calculator, known as ENIAC. It was designed
by J. Prosper Eckert and John W. Mauchly of
the Moore School of Engineering at the
University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was the
first multipurpose electronic computer, though
very difficult to re-program. It was primarily
used to computer aircraft courses, shell
trajectories, and to break codes during World
War II.
ENIAC occupied a
20 x 40 foot room
and used 18,000
vacuum tubes.
ENIAC also could
never be turned off.
If it was it blew too
many tubes when
turned back on. It
had a very limited
storage capacity and it was programmed by jumper wires
plugged into a large board.
1948 – The Transister
In 1948 an event occurred that was to forever change the course of
computers and electronics. Working at Bell Labs three scientists, John
Bordeen (1908-1991) (left), Waltar Brattain (1902-1987) (right), and
William Shockly (1910-1989) (seated) invented the transistor.
The change over from vacuum tube circuits to transistor circuits
occurred between 1956 and 1959. This brought in the second
generation of computers, those based on transisters. The first
generation was mechanical and vacuum tube computers.
1951 – UNIVAC
The first practical electronic computer was built by Eckert
and Mauchly (of ENIAC fame) and was known
as UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer). The first
UNIVAC was used by the Bureau of Census. The unique
feature of the UNIVAC was that it was not a one-of-akind computer. It was mass produced.
1954 – IBM 650
In 1954 the first electronic computer for
business was installed at General Electric
Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky.
This year also saw the beginning of
operation of the IBM 650 in Boston. This
comparatively inexpensive computer gave
IBM the lead in the computer market. Over
1000 650s were sold.
1957-59 – IBM 704
From 1957-1959 the IBM 704 computer appeared, for which the
Fortran language was developed. At this time the state of the art
in computers allowed 1 component per chip, that is individual
transistors.
1958 - 1962 – Programming languages
From 1958-1962 many programming languages were developed.
FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator)
COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language)
LISP (LISt Processor)
ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language)
BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)
1964 – IBM
System/360
In 1964 the beginning of the third-generation computers came with the introduction of the IBM
System/360. Thanks to the new hybrid circuits (that gross looking orange thing in the circuit board on the
right), the state of the art in computer technology allowed for 10 components per chip.
1965 - PDP-8
In 1965 the first integrated circuit computer, the PDP-8 from
Digital Equipment Corporation appeared. (PDP stands for
Programmable Data Processor) After this the real revolution in
computer cost and size began.
1970 - Integrated Circuits
By the early 70s the state of the art in computer technology allowed
for 1000 components per chip. To get an idea of just how much the
size of electronic components had shrunk by this time look at the
image on the right. The woman is peering through a microscope at a
16K RAM memory integrated circuit. The stand she has her
microscopy sitting on is a 16K vacuum tube memory circuit from
about 20 years previous.
1971
The Intel corporation produced the first microprocessor chip which was a 4-bit chip. Today’s chips are 64bit. At approximately 1/16 x 1/8 inches in size, this chip contained 250 transistors and had all the
computing power of ENIAC. It matched IBM computers of the early 60s that had a CPU the size of an
office desk.
1975 – Altair 8800
The January 1975 issue
of Popular Electronics
carried an article, the
first, to describe the
Altair 8800, the first
low-cost microprocessor
computer which had just
became commercially
available.
Late 1970s to early 1980s –
The Microcomputer
Explosion
During this period many
companies appeared and
disappeared, manufacturing a
variety of microcomputers (they
were called micro to distinguish
them from the mainframes which
some people referred to
as real computers). There was Radio Shack’s TRS-80, the Commodore 64,
the Atari, but...
1977 - The Apple II
The most successful of the early
microcomputers was the Apple II,
designed and built by Steve Wozniak.
With fellow computer whiz and
business savvy friend, Steve Jobs,
they started Apple Computer in 1977
in Woz’s garage. Less than three
years later the company earned over
$100 million. Not bad for a couple of college dropout computer
geeks.
1981
In 1981, IBM produced their first microcomputer. Then the clones
started to appear. This microcomputer explosion fulfilled its
slogan computers by the millions for the millions. Compared to
ENIAC, microcomputers of the early 80s:
Were 20 times faster (Apple II ran at the speed of ¼
Megahertz).
Had a memory capacity as much as 16 times larger (Apple
had 64 K).
Were thousands of times more reliable.
Consumed the power of a light bulb instead of a locomotive.
Were 1/30,000 the size.
Cost 1/10,000 as much in comparable dollars
(An Apple II with full 64 K of RAM cost $1200 in 1979.
That’s the equivalent of about $8000 to $10000 in today's dollars)
1984-1989
In 1984 the Macintosh was introduced. This
was the first mass-produced, commerciallyavailable computer with a Graphical User
Interface. In 1989 Windows 1.0 was
introduced for the PC. It was sort of Mac-like
but greatly inferior. Macintosh owners were
know to refer to it sarcastically as AGAM84 Almost as Good As Macintosh 84.
1990s
Compared to ENIAC, microcomputers of the 90s:
Were 36,000 times faster (450 Megahertz was the average speed)
Had a memory capacity 1000 to 5000 times larger (average was between 4 and 20 Megabytes)
Were 1/30,000 the size
Cost 1/30,000 as much in comparable dollars (A PC still cost around $1500 the equivalent of about $2500
in 2008 dollars)
Early 2000s
Compared to ENIAC, microcomputers of the early 2000s:
Are 180,000 times faster (2.5+ Gigahertz is the average speed)
Have a memory capacity 25,000 times larger (average 1+ Gigabytes of RAM)
Are 1/30,000 the size
Cost 1/60,000 as much in comparable dollars (A PC can cost from $700 to $1500)
Data Storage
Data storage has also grown in capacity and shrunk in size as dramatically as have computers. Today a
single data DVD will hold around 4.8 gigabytes. It would take 90,000,000 punch cards to hold the same
amount of data. And, there is talk of a new high density video disk (HVD) that will be able to hold fifty
times that much data. That's more than 240 gigabytes.