The history of computers
Josh vanhoose
Fifth hour
12/15/11
How old are computers? When I was doing my research on computers I found a
time line of computers. from the information it had , it said Konrad Zuse was the
first person to ever create the first freely programmable computer. He invented it
in 1936. It was called the Z1 computer. Konrad zuse was a construction engineer
for the Henschel Aircraft Company in Berlin, Germany at the beginning of WWII.
He lived from (1910-1995). In 1936 he created the Z1 the mechanical calculator .
In 1939 he also created the Z2 the first fully functioning electro-mechanical
computer. And again in 1941 he created yet another called the Z3 This was the
world's first electronic, fully programmable digital computer.
In 1944 a man named Harvard aiken and a women named grace hopper created
the computer called the mark one computer. They where 55 feet long and 8 feet
high. The 5-ton device contained almost 760,000 separate pieces. Used by the US
Navy for gunnery and ballistic calculations. The mark one computer was
operational until 1959.
There where also other people like John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly .In
1946 that created the eniac 1 computer (Electrical Numerical Integrator
Calculator). And in 1948 the manchester baby computer & the williams tube was
created by Frederic Williams & Tom Kilburn. And in the transistor created in
1947/48 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & William Shockley. The transistor
was not a computer but it greatly affected the history of computers.
There are many more important names on the time line. But on down the road
there where the first apple computers .called apple lisa created in 1983 . the apple
macintosh computer in 1984 .these computer important because they had
monitors ,mouse and keyboards.
In November 1983 microsoft corparations formally announced Microsoft
Windows.a next-generation operating system that would provide a graphical user
interface (GUI). and a multitasking environment for IBM computers. in 1983, Bill
Gates showed a beta version of Windows to IBM's head honchos. Their response
was lackluster probably because they were working on their own operating
system called Top View