The Abacus
The invention of the abacus marks
the beginning of computers. For the
first time, people use a calculating
device to do math. It is thought to
have originated between 600 and 500
BC, either in China or Egypt. Round
beads, usually made of wood, were
slid back and forth on rods or wire to
perform addition and subtraction.
The abacus is still used in many
cultures today.
Napier’s Bones
In the early 1600s, a
Scottish mathematician
named John Napier
invented a tool called
Napier's Bones. These
were multiplication tables
inscribed on strips of
wood or bone.
The Pascaline
Blaise Pascal invented the first digital calculator to
help his father with his work collecting taxes. The user
would dial the numbers he wanted to add together and
the machine would automatically add them. The result
would be shown through six small windows at the top
of the machine.
The Leibniz Wheel
Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz took the Pascaline one step
further and invented a similar machine to add, subtract,
multiply and divide. The Stepped Reckoner, as Leibniz
called his machine, used a special type of gear called a
Stepped Drum or Leibniz Wheel, which was a cylinder with
nine bar-shaped teeth of incrementing length running
parallel to the cylinder’s axis. The drum is rotated using a
crank. This movement is then translated by the device into
multiplication or division depending on which direction the
stepped drum is rotated.
The Jacquard Loom
Punched cards guided Jacquard's Loom in making
complex woven patterns of flowers and leaves into a
large cloth. Similarly, Babbage's Analytic Engine would
use punch cards to program data "input" into the
machine, automating the mechanical steps of
calculating numbers, resulting in an "output" on a
printed printed page.
The Analytical Engine
Babbage worked on his Analytical
Engine from around 1830 until he died,
but sadly it was never completed. It is
often said that Babbage was a hundred
years ahead of his time and that the
technology of the day was inadequate
for the task. The organization of the
Analytical Engine is virtually identical
to that of modern computers having an
input section, a central processor that
performs arithmetic and logical
operations, a memory unit to store
information, and an output section to
make the results available to the user.
Herman Hollerith
Herman Hollerith combined the
old technology of punched
cards (used in the Jacquard
Loom) with the, then, new
electrical technology of vacuum
tubes, to produce a sorting and
tabulating machine. In this
machine, wires poked through
the holes in the punched cards
then into cups of Mercury,
which completed an electrical
circuit and registered the data
on the card. The 1880 census
took over 7 years to complete.
With the help of this machine,
the 1890 census was completed
in six weeks.
IBM
In addition to solving the census problem, Hollerith's
machines proved themselves to be extremely useful
for a wide variety of statistical applications, and some
of the techniques they used were to be significant in
the development of the digital computer. In 1896
Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company,
forerunner of Computer Tabulating Recording
Company (CTR). He served as a consulting engineer
with CTR until retiring in 1921. In 1924 CTR changed
its name to IBM - the International Business Machines
Corporation.
The Enigma Machine
In today's computer world, many of us use
encryption technology to keep our data safe
from others. But in the 1930's, encryption was a
life-or-death matter.
As Nazi Germany made war on Europe, its generals and
admirals had a secret weapon. It wasn't a bomb or a gun; it
was a code machine. The Enigma machine was one of
thousands deployed by the Nazis so they could send and
receive encoded messages. The wooden box contained
dials and wheels that could be set with the day's code
instructions. Then, anything transmitted would be in code.
But while the war raged on, British
intelligence officers were capturing the
encoded transmissions and building a
computer called Colossus to decipher them.
They eventually cracked Enigma's secrets
and helped turned the war's tide.
Betchley Park and Colossus
Bletchley Park was Britain's best kept secret 50 years ago. But
without Bletchley Park, World War II would probably have
lasted another two years. It was at Bletchley that code-breakers
monitored and read the top secret communications between
members of the German High Command during the Second
World War. It was at Bletchley that Colossus was built. This was
Britain's first - and, if the historians at Bletchley are to be
believed, the world's first - electronic computer.
Americans claim to have been
first with ENIAC, but experts
insist that Colossus beat this by
two years. The reason it isn't in
most of the history books is
because it was a secret.
the hut used by the enigma team
ENIAC
Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator
The ENIAC was a largescale, general purpose
digital electronic computer.
Built out of some 17,468
electronic vacuum tubes,
instead of switches and
relays, ENIAC was in its
time the largest single
electronic apparatus in the
world.
ENIAC was a secret World War II military project to speed
up the tedious mathematical calculations needed to
produce artillery firing tables for the Army.
UNIVAC
Universal Automatic Calculator
The Universal Automatic Computer or UNIVAC was a
computer milestone achieved by Dr. J. Presper Eckert and
Dr. John W. Mauchly, the team which invented the ENIAC
computer. In 1946, Eckert and Mauchly were contracted by
the United States Census Bureau to build a computer to
help with the increase in population. They were given
$300,000 to build the machine. In 1951, the machine was
finally built at a final cost of over one million dollars.
UNIVAC was the world's first electronic general purpose
data processing computer.
The IBM 650
The IBM 650 was the first computer to be mass produced.
The 650 only used about 500 vacuum tubes in its central
processing unit, and was therefore much smaller and more
dependable than the UNIVAC. Because IBM developed a
marketing strategy that discounted rentals of the machine to
universities, the 650 became the computer around which the
new academic discipline of computer science evolved.
Minicomputers
In 1957a company called Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
was formed. Their original objective was to grab a slice of IBM's
business market and sell million-dollar mainframes. Financial
realities prevailed, however, and a new plan emerged--build a
slightly scaled down computer and sell it for $125,000 to scientific
and engineering markets. DEC computers proved successful
even in other markets, and by 1969--during the era of miniskirts
and miniseries--these computers were universally referred to as
"minicomputers.“ Digital Equipment Corporation merged with
Compaq in 1998. Today's minicomputer vendors include IBM,
Digital/Compaq, and Hewlett Packard.
Programming Languages
In 1957, the first of the major languages appeared in
the form of FORTRAN. Its name stands for FORmula
TRANslating system. The language was designed at
IBM for scientific computing.
Although FORTAN was good at handling numbers, it
was not so good at handling input and output, which
mattered most to business computing. Business
computing started to take off in 1959, and because
of this, COBOL (Common Business-Oriented
Language) was developed.
Integrated Circuits
In 1959, the first integrated circuit was created. Jack
Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of
Fairchild Semiconductor, two separate inventors,
unaware of each other's activities, invented almost
identical integrated circuits at nearly the same time. An
integrated circuit is an assembly of electronic
components fabricated in a single unit.
This is the PDP-1 – the first digital minicomputer with
video display. It was Digital Equipment Corporations
first computer.
Supercomputers
In 1964, IBM introduced the System/360, the first large
"family" of computers to use interchangeable
software and peripheral equipment. Rather than
purchase a new system when the need and budget
grew, customers now could simply upgrade parts of
their hardware. It was a bold departure from the
monolithic, one-size-fits-all mainframe.
1971: 4004 Microprocessor
The 4004 was Intel's first
microprocessor. This
breakthrough invention
powered the Busicom
calculator and paved the way
for embedding intelligence in
inanimate objects including the
personal computer.
In 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs form Apple
Computer and show off the Apple I at the Homebrew
Computer Club at Stanford University.
The 80’s
In July of 1980, IBM representatives meet for the first time with
Microsoft's Bill Gates to talk about writing an operating system for
IBM's new hush-hush "personal" computer. The first IBM PC ran
on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor. The PC came equipped
with 16 kilobytes of memory (expandable to 256k), one or two 160k
floppy disk drives, an optional color monitor and a price tag starting
at $1,565.
Apple Computers
The Macintosh debuts in 1984. It features a
simple, graphical interface, uses the 8-MHz, 32bit Motorola 68000 CPU, and has a built-in 9-inch
B/W screen.
Microsoft Windows
As its name implies, Windows 3 was not the first release
of Microsoft's Windows graphical user interface for PC's.
Windows had originally been released in 1985. However, in
the past Windows had looked ugly, run slowly and had
very little support from third party software developers.
Most important of all, however, was that at its big launch
in May 1990, Microsoft was able to parade an impressive
lineup of major software vendors with applications which
ran under Windows 3. Among these were versions of the
Microsoft Word word processor and Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet, which went on to dominate the personal
word processing and spreadsheet markets on both
Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh.
The bottom line was that a PC running Windows 3 was
now almost as easy to use as an Apple Macintosh.
Because of this, Windows swept through the PC world
like wildfire, and within a year nearly everyone was
running it on their PC's
Apple Sues Microsoft
Apple actually began court proceedings against Microsoft in 1988, when
Microsoft released Windows 2. However it wasn't until Windows 3 was
released, and Apple immediately expanded its claim to include Windows
3, that the media began to pay major attention to this case. In essence,
Apple was arguing that Microsoft Windows breached copyright by being
too similar to the Macintosh user interface.
The case ended up taking many years and going through several appeals.
The final decision, announced in early 95, was that copyright had not
been breached. Some people saw this as a good decision because it
promoted competition, while others saw it as a terrible decision because
it reduced the incentive to develop new innovative technology. This
fundamental question is still under debate today, and probably will be
forever.