Unit 1
PC Literacy &
Systems Design
Lesson 1
History of
Computing
Lesson 1
 Write
 Why
in your notebooks.
do you think computers
were invented? How have they
helped us? Do you think
they’ve hindered us in any
way?
 Understand
the events that
lead to modern-day
computing.
 Recount the history of
personal computers.
 Identify the early pioneers of
computing.
 Electronic
digital computer is an
invention of the 20th century
 Computer-like
functions have
been around for years
 Abacus
Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard
 Automated a loom that operated by
dropping needles through holes
punched in cards
 Needles were either up or down
(binary numbers)
 Jacquard Loom is considered a true
digital computer


Charles Babbage

Difference Engine

Performed complicated calculations
using levers and gears
Mechanical/Metal & complexity
 Performance hurt by expansion &
contraction of metal components
 Imprecision
 Quality of the materials
 Technology of the day wasn’t up t the
demand of Babbage’s design
 Short Video





Herman Hollerith
1890 US Census
Punched card machine to process census
Later, he founded Hollerith Tabulating
Company, which eventually became IBM


1940’s UPenn
ENIAC credited as the first
modern computer

Programmed only by rewiring

Vacuum tubes

ENIAC used to help the
military calculate weapons’
trajectories for WW II
Measurement
ENIAC
150 mHz Pentium
Speed
5,000 additions per second
300,000,000
Memory
200 digits
16,000,000
Elements
18,000 vacuum tubes
10,000 capacitors
1,500 relays
6,000 switches
70,000 resistors
4,000,000 transistors (CPU)
Size
10 feet tall x 1,800 square
feet
9” X 12” X 3”
Weight
30 tons
6 pounds



Grace Hopper was a
programmer hired to
work on the Mark 1 and
Mark II at Harvard
University
1945 found a dead
moth causing the
machine to malfunction
Term Debugging was
born



TRANsfer reSISTOR
John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter
Brattain of Bell Laboratories
Faster, more reliable, smaller, and much
cheaper to build than a vacuum tube

One transistor equivalent to 40 vacuum tubes

Computer technology during 1959 - 1964

Packs a huge number of transistors
onto a single wafer of silicon

Robert Noyce (Fairchild Corporation) &
Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments)

Circuit boards/Motherboards

1965 - 1970

Single chip that can do all the
processing of a full-scale computer

Tedd Hoff (Intel)

1971 - Present

ENIAC programming was tedious, timeconsuming

Couldn’t be transferred from one
computer to another

Programming languages

Computer applications

Commodore, Atari
Apple Corporation founded in 1976
 Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak


VisiCalc (1st spreadsheet program)

The PC revolution was on
 1981
Microsoft (Bill Gates) bought
DOS (Disk Operating System) and
sold to IBM
 IBM
PC took over the PC
revolution begun by Apple
 Students
before 1985 seldom had
access to PC’s

You may work in pairs or by yourself on
the following assignment:
Directions

Due Thursday 9/11