Name: Mylena Livia Ferreira de Albergaria
Code Name: myjava.scrip
PART 1
The history of computers began long before modern laptops and smartphones. Early humans
used simple tools such as fingers, stones, and counting boards to perform calculations. One of the
earliest important calculating devices was the abacus, which was used thousands of years ago.
Later, mechanical calculators were developed to perform mathematical operations automatically.
The person most commonly associated with the invention of the first machine that could
reasonably be called a computer is Charles Babbage. Babbage was an English mathematician and
engineer.
In the 1820s, he designed the Difference Engine, a mechanical machine intended to calculate
mathematical tables. Later, he designed the much more advanced Analytical Engine. The
Analytical Engine was never completed during Babbage's lifetime, but its design included many
ideas found in modern computers. It had a memory called the “store,” a processing unit called
the “mill,” input using punched cards, and output. It was designed to be programmable, which
made it different from simple calculators.
Another important early computer was created by Konrad Zuse, a German engineer. In 1941,
Zuse completed the Z3, which is often considered the first working programmable automatic
computer. It used electromechanical relays and could perform calculations according to a
program. This shows why the answer to the question of the “first computer” depends on the
definition. Babbage designed the first important general-purpose programmable computer, while
Zuze built one of the first working programmable computers.
Ada Lovelace and Programming - Ada Lovelace wrote the first published computer program in
the 1840s for Babbage's Analytical Engine. Her program calculated Bernoulli numbers. An early
programming language was Plankalkül, created by Konrad Zuse in the 1940s.
Alan Turing - Alan Turing was a British mathematician and computer scientist. He developed
the idea of the Turing machine, which became a foundation of computer science. During World
War II, he helped break German Enigma codes.
John von Neumann - John von Neumann was a mathematician who helped develop the storedprogram computer. His architecture stored both programs and data in memory. This became the
basis of many modern computers.
Important Programming Languages
Programming languages developed over many decades. Each introduced new ideas or made
programming easier.
Plankalkül — 1940s: Developed by Konrad Zuse. It was one of the earliest high-level
programming languages and provided a formal way to describe algorithms.
FORTRAN — 1957: Developed at IBM under John Backus. It made scientific and mathematical
programming much easier by allowing programmers to use mathematical formulas and highlevel instructions.
LISP — 1958: Developed by John McCarthy. It became very important for artificial intelligence
and symbolic processing.
COBOL — 1959: Designed mainly for business applications. It used English-like statements and
became widely used for business data processing.
BASIC — 1964: Developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. It was designed to make
programming easier for students and beginners.
Pascal — 1970: Developed by Niklaus Wirth. It emphasized structured programming and
became popular for teaching programming.
C — 1972: Developed by Dennis Ritchie. C provided efficient control over computer hardware
and became extremely important for operating systems and systems programming.
SQL — 1970s: Developed for working with databases. It allowed users to store, search, update,
and organize large amounts of data.
C++ — 1980s: Developed by Bjarne Stroustrup. It added object-oriented programming features
to C and became important for large software applications.
Python — 1991: Created by Guido van Rossum. Python emphasized readability and simplicity
and became widely used in education, web development, science, automation, and artificial
intelligence.
Java — 1995: Developed by Sun Microsystems. Java introduced a strong emphasis on portability
through the Java Virtual Machine, allowing programs to run on many different computer
systems.
JavaScript — 1995: Developed for web browsers. It made websites interactive and became an
important language for web applications.
Compiled and Interpreted Languages - A compiled language is translated into machine code
before execution. Examples are C and C++. An interpreted language is generally processed while
the program runs. Examples are Python and JavaScript.
Part 2 Computer Architecture
Major Laptop Components - A laptop contains a motherboard, CPU, RAM, storage, battery,
cooling system, wireless hardware, and input/output connections.
Motherboard - The motherboard is the main circuit board. It connects the CPU, memory, storage,
and other components so they can communicate.
ROM and RAM
RAM is temporary, volatile memory used for programs and data currently being used.
ROM is non-volatile memory that stores important firmware instructions.
Major CPU Units
Control Unit: Controls and coordinates instructions.
ALU: Performs arithmetic and logical operations.
Registers: Store small amounts of data temporarily.
Cache: Stores frequently used data and instructions.
Clock: Synchronizes CPU operations.
What Is a CPU Made Of?
A CPU is mainly made from silicon and contains billions of tiny transistors connected by metal
layers.
Fill in the Blanks
A modern CPU contains billions of transistors, which are connected by metal interconnects.
Transistors in Modern CPUs - Modern high-end CPUs can contain billions or tens of billions of
transistors.
Year
1971
1978
1989
1993
Approx. Transistors
2,300
29,000
1.2 million
3.1 million
Year
2000
2003
2010
2012
2020s
Approx. Transistors
42 million
220 million
1.17 billion
3.1 billion
10+ billion
Simple graph:
Transistors
10B+ |
●
1B |
●
100M |
●
10M |
●
1M |
●
100K | ●
10K | ●
+---------------------------1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Production Yield - Yield is the percentage of chips that work correctly after manufacturing.
Yield can vary greatly, but mature processes can achieve very high percentages.
High yield is important because defective chips increase costs and waste.
Logic Gates - Logic gates process binary values, 0 and 1.
The three basic Boolean operations are AND, OR, and NOT. Common gates also
include NAND, NOR, XOR, and XNOR.
Logic Gates in CPUs - Modern CPUs use combinations of AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, and
XOR gates.Logic gates are built from transistors. They are combined to perform addition,
subtraction, comparisons, calculations, and decisions. Large numbers of gates form the circuits
inside a CPU.
Conclusion - Modern computers combine the CPU, memory, storage, motherboard, and other
components. Billions of transistors form logic gates and circuits that allow computers to process
information and make decisions.