A Brief History
of Computers
The Prehistoric
Era
15,000,000,000 BC - 409 BC
When man learned to count
The Prehistoric Era
 300,000 BC
 Everything had to be
portable in order to
survive……….
 50,000BC to 20,000 BC
 But once man decided to
settle, they started to
collect things…. And
started to count
The Prehistoric Era continued
 The first thing man used to
count with were
Fingers
 Latin word “Digit” refers to
a finger or toe….. It also
refers to a numerical
quantity.
 As man collected more
things he had to represent
them different ways….. The
word calculate is from the
Latin word “calculus” which
means
pebble
The Prehistoric Era continued
 3000 BC
 The acabus
 1900 BC
 Stonehenge as
a possible calendar
The Prehistoric Era continued
 1500 BC
 The first clocks known as
water clocks
the oldest found in Egypt
 300 BC
 Buddists used the first written symbols for
numbers
The Prehistoric Era continued
 The first recorded use
of the number “0” was
at 600 AD
 Interestingly Egyptians
already used fractions
in 5500 BC
The eye of Horus, an
Egyptian deity of this time.
This was used to show
fractions of hekat (appr.
4.8 liters) a unit used to
measure grain.
The Era of Antiquity
1620 - 1671
The era of calculator devices
The Era of Antiquity 1620 - 1671
 Had multiple calculator devices that had no
memory and no means to output the results
other than dials or indicators
Ruler with logarithmic scales made by Gunter
First calculator with rotating
gears to increase the tens
position
First logarithmic slide rule
The Pre Industrial Era
1886-1899
Calculators that have single predefined
purposes.
Extra important inventions and discoveries
The Pre Industrial Era 1886-1899
 Alexander Graham Bell makes first sound
recording 1886
 1887 The first key driven
adding machines were created
 1888 The first calculator
which does addition,
subtraction, multiplication
and division
The Pre Industrial Era 1886-1899
 1892 First adding machines
that also print out
 Electromechanical adding
and sorting machine
(used punch cards)
The Pre Industrial Era 1886-1899
 1898

Valdemar Poulsen invents a magnetic wire on
which data can be recorded.


The principles of this invention lead to magnetic
tapes and hard disk drives
Sir Joseph John Thomson discovers the
electron.
The Industrial Era
(1947-)
The start of “Real” computers
The Industrial Era (1947-)
 1947 the first transistors
were created
 The first generation of
modern programmed
electronic computers
was built with functioning
RAM
The Industrial Era (1947-)
 Computers required more than one floor and
were huge!!!

Transistors

Burnt out often
The Industrial Era (1947-)
 1953 First mass produced computer by IBM

Had 1 kB of RAM
The Industrial Era (1947-)
 1958 the first integrated circuit was built
This replaced transistors on computers.
 1972 the first video arcade game was created
by Atari created the game Pong.
The Industrial Era (1947-)
 1981 The first portable personal computers
were available
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Price $3000
IBM 5150 PC
4.77 MHz 8 bit
8088 CPU from Intel
64KB RAM,
40KB ROM,
one 5.25-inch floppy drive (160KB capacity)
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates
The Industrial Era (1947-)
8” floppy disk (’71 – 79.7kB)
 Companies that existed 1981…..

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
Apple
IBM
MicroSoft
Xerox
5.25” floppy disk (’76 – 87.5kB)
Sun, Compaq and
Epson started in 1982
Microsoft flight
simulator 1982

3.5” floppy by Sony (’82 – 280kB)
The Industrial Era (1947-)
 IBM generation of computers (CPU)
 8088
 80286 with 8086 chip
 80386
 80486
$4000 in
1993
Pentium
P2, P3, P4
Dual Core
Tri & Quad Core
etc
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The Industrial Era (1947-)
 1985: Windows 1.0
 First popular programming language in
schools (1981/82) Basic
Resource
http://www.thocp.net/timeline/timeline.htm