HISTORY

OF
COMPUTER
Thing that Changed the World
 WHO INVENTED THE COMPUTER ?
• It is not a question with a simple answer.
The real answer is that many inventors
contributed to the history of computers and
that a computer is a complex piece of
machinery made up of many parts, each of
which can be considered a separate
invention. 
 In the Beginning…

Do you know?

•Computing began with things like:

Bones Finger Counting

 The first computers were people

• Computers were given this name because they

performed the work that had previously been
assigned to people. "Computer" was originally
a job title.

• It was used to describe those human beings

(predominantly women) whose job it was to
perform the repetitive calculations required to
compute.
• So imagine you had a job where hour after
hour, day after day, you were to do nothing
but compute multiplications. Boredom would
quickly set in, leading to carelessness, leading
to mistakes. And even on your best days you
wouldn't be producing answers very fast.
Therefore, inventors have been searching for
hundreds of years for a way to mechanize
this task.
 4 Basic Periods of Computer
Characterized by a principal technology used to solve
the input, processing, output and communication
problems of the time:

Pre-mechanical

Mechanical

Electro-mechanical

Electronic
I. THE PRE-MECHANICAL AGE:
3000 B.C. – 1450 A.D.

Man's invention of the computer resulted from

man's need to quantify, to do mathematic
calculations, man was inventing easier and faster
ways of calculating.
 1. WRITING AND ALPHABETS-- COMMUNICATION
A. First humans communicated only through speaking and
simple drawings known as petroglyths - signs or simple figures
carved in rock
• Pictographs - pictures or sketches that visually resemble that
which is depicted.
E.g., prehistoric petroglythic imagery from
Western U.S.:

E.g., cave painting from Lascaux,

France, c. 15,000-10,000 BC
 • Ideographs - symbols to represent ideas or concepts. (Geometric
signs (dots, squares, etc.) with no apparent depicted object)
B. First development of signs corresponding to spoken sounds,
instead of pictures, to express words.
• Starting in c. 3100 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (southern
Iraq) devised cuneiform -- the first true written language and the
first real information system.

Early pictographic tablet (3100 B.C.).

 • Pictographs were turned on their sides (2800 B.C.) and then
developed into actual cuneiform symbols (2500 B.C.).

Pictographs for star (which also meant

heaven or god), head, and water (on the
left) were turned on their side (in the A cuneiform table (c. 2100 B.C.)
middle), and eventually became cuneiform listing expenditures of grain and
symbols (on right). animals.
C. Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols
that expressed single syllables and consonants (the first true
alphabet).
D. The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added
vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create
the alphabet we use today.
 2. PAPER AND PENS--
INPUT TECHNOLOGIES
A. Sumerians input technology was a stylus that could scratch
marks in wet clay.
B. About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians wrote on the papyrus plant

C. Around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on

which modern-day papermaking is based.
 3. BOOKS AND LIBRARIES—
OUTPUT TECHNOLOGIES
(PERMANENT STORAGE DEVICES)
A. Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books“

B. The Egyptians kept scrolls.

C. Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of

papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.
 4. THE FIRST NUMBERING SYSTEMS
1. Egyptian system:
• the numbers 1-9 as vertical lines;
• the number 10 as a U or circle;
• the number 100 as a coiled rope; and
• the number 1,000 as a lotus blossom.
2. The first numbering systems similar to those in use today
were invented between 100 and 200 A.D. by Hindus in
India who created a nine-digit numbering system.
3. Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.
 5. THE FIRST CALCULATOR:
THE ABACUS

•The Abacus was man’s first recorded adding machine. It was 500 B.C. when
the abacus was invented in Babylonia, then popularized in China.
•The Abacus is an ancient computing device constructed of sliding beads on
small wooden rods, strung on a wooden frame.
•You can call the abacus as the First Calculator.

One of the very first information processors.

II. THE MECHANICAL AGE:
1450 - 1840
 1. First Information Explosion

• JOHANN GUTENBERG invented the movable

metal-type printing process in 1450.
 2. The First General Purpose
“Computers”
Actually, people are the one who held the job title “computer”: one who
works with numbers.
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1614 LOGARITHMS
Logs allow multiplication and division to be
reduced to addition and subtraction.

1617 JOHN NAPIER NAPIER’S BONES

- Baron of Merchiston, A special version of the multiplication tables
Scotland on a set of four-sided
wooden rods, allowing
users to multiply and
divide large numbers
and find square and
cube roots.
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1623 SCHICKARD CALCULATOR
The first mechanical calculator;
It can work with six digits, and carries digits
across columns.

WILLIAM SCHICKARD
- Professor at the
University of Tubingen,
Germany

1625 SLIDE RULE

A mechanical
calculator consisting
of a ruler with a
sliding section, both
bearing logarithmic
scales.

WILLIAM OUGHTRED
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1642 PASCALINE
A mechanical calculation machine that is made
out of clock gears
and levers, and
could solve basic
mathematical
problems like
addition and
BLAISE PASCAL subtraction.
- French mathematician

1671 STEPPED RECKONER

A machine that could multiply 5 digit and 12
digit numbers yielding up to 16 digit number.

GOTTFRIED WILHELM
VON LEIBNIZ
- German mathematician
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1801 JACQUARD LOOM
A loom with punched cardboard cards
for controlling woven patterns.

JOSEPH-MARIE JACQUARD

1820 ARITHMOMETER
The first mass-produced calculator that can
perform the same type of computations

CHARLES XAVIER THOMAS

DE COLMAR
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1821 DIFFERENCE ENGINE

The first modern

computer design: a steam
powered adding machine.

1832 CHARLES BABBAGE ANALYTICAL ENGINE

“Father of Computers”

A mechanical adding
machine that tool
information from
punched cards to solve
and print complex
mathematical
operations.
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1842 ADA PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
The first program for Babbage’s Analytical
Engine.
Ada Lovelace is the first computer
programmer.

AUGUSTA ADA KING

- Countess of Lovelace
III. THE ELECTROMECHANICAL
AGE: 1840 - 1940
The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key
advance made during this period. Knowledge and
information could now be converted to electrical impulses.

•For the first time electricity was used in the operation of

computers, but computers still had many mechanical
components.
• Programming a computer did not involve software. Rather,
the programmer actually rewired the paths of electricity
through the machine in order to change its mode of
operation
 1. The Beginning of
Telecommunication
A. VOLTAIC BATTERY
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1800 VOLTAIC PILE
The first electric
battery consists of a
stack of alternating
discs of zinc and
copper or silver
separated by felt
soaked in brine.
They provided, for
the first time, a
simple source of
stored electrical
energy that didn’t
ALESSANDRO VOLTA rely on mechanical
means.
B. TELEGRAPH
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1832- ELECTROMAGNETIC TELEGRAPH
1835 Morse conceived of his version of
electromagnetic telegraph in 1832 and
constructed experimental version in 1835. he did
not construct a truly practical system until 1844,
when he built a line from Baltimore to
Washington.

SAMUEL MORSE
C. TELEPHONE AND RADIO
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1876 TELEPHONE

Bell developed the first

working telephone and
transmitted his now famous
quotation: “Watson, come
here, I want you.”

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

1894

He discovered that electric waves travel

through space and can produce an effect far from
the point at which they originated.

MARCHESE MARCONI
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1852

BOOLEAN ALGEBRA
A binary algebra that became important in
the 20th century when binary computers were
developed.

GEORGE BOOLE
 2. Electromechanical Computing
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1853 TABULATING MACHINE
It is capable of processing fifteen-digit
numbers, printing out results, and rounding off
to eight digits.

PEHR GEORG SCHEUTZ

1885 COMPTOMETER
A key-driven adding and
subtracting calculator.
1889

DORR FELT
COMPTOGRAPH
Containing built-in printer.
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1890 PUNCHED CARD

Hollerith is the
first person to
successfully use
punched cards –
specifically for
census taking.
HERMAN HOLLERITH
“Father of Information
Processing”

1893 OTTO SHWEIGER MILLIONAIRE

- Swiss engineer
The first efficient
four-function
calculator.
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1906 VACUUM TUBE
It is important because it provided an
electrically
controlled switch;
a necessity for
digital electronic
computers.

LEE DE FOREST
IV. THE ELECTRONIC AGE:

1941 - Present
This era development is often referred to in
reference to the different generations of
computing devices. Each generation of computer is
characterized by a major technological
development that fundamentally changed the way
computers operate, resulting in increasingly
smaller, cheaper, more powerful and more
efficient and reliable devices.
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1941 Z3
The first
programmable
computer because it is
capable of following
instructions. It is the
first computer
designed to solve
complex engineering equations, rather than basic
KONRAD ZUSE arithmetic problems.

1942 MARK 1
The first stored program computer. 8 feet tall,
51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weighed 5 tons, used
about 750,000 parts, 500 miles of wires, 3-5
seconds per calculation.

HOWARD AIKEN
YEAR INVENTOR INVENTION
1942 ABC (ATANASOFF-BERRY COMPUTER)
The first electronic computer, it is the first
computer to use electricity in the form of vacuum
tubes to help make electric computation possible.
The ABC was used for solving complex
systems of equations.

JOHN ATANASOFF

CLIFFORD BERRY