7

Information & Communications

Technology
Internet & Computing

History of the Computers

1
 PRE- ASSESSMENT

MULTIPLE CHOICE

Directions: Read each statement carefully and choose the letter of the correct answer.
Write your answers on a separate sheet of paper.

1. The first mechanical computer.

a. Analytical Engine c. IBM PC
b. Napier’s Bone d. None of the choices

2. The first known counting device.

a. Abacus c. Napier’s Bone
b. Leibniz Machine d. Slide Rule
3. Who send the first royal email message?
a. Prince Charles c. Prince Harry
b. Queen Elizabeth II d. Prince William

4. A device that was operated by 8 movable dials, which could add numbers up to 8
figures long.
a. Pascaline Calculator c. Leibniz Calculator
b. Abacus d. Jacquard's Automatic Loom

5. He is a French mathematician that invented the Pascaline calculator.

a. Blaise Pascal c. Howard H. Aiken
b. Charles Babbage d. Gottfried Leibniz

6. A device that can add, subtract, multiply or even find the square root of a number.
a. Pascaline Calculator c. Leibniz Calculator
b. Abacus d. Jacquard’s Automatic Loom

7. Who invented the Jacquard’s Automatic Loom?

a. Charles Babbage c. Joseph Mauchly
b. Howard H. Aiken d. Joseph-Marie Jacquard

8. This is called the Harvard-IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.

a. Difference Engine c. Mark 1
b. Analytical Engine d. ENIAC

9. This invention was invented by John von Neumann that had a Central Processing
Unit (CPU), which allowed all computer functions to be coordinated through a single
source.
a. ENIAC c. EDVAC
b. Analytical Engine d. Mark 1

10. This machine has a punch card reader & had the capacity to store and process data.
a. Difference Engine c. UNI VAC 1
b. Analytical Engine d. Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine

11. The first generation computers?

a. Transistors c. Artificial Intelligence
b. Vacuum Tubes d. Integrated Circuits

12. A computer language being introduced on 1956 together with the two additional
languages.
a. FORTRAN c. LISP
b. COBOL d. ASSEMBLY

13. A machine that was powered by steam & as large as a locomotive, and had the
capacity to perform calculations & print the results.
a. Difference Engine c. ENIAC
b. Analytical Engine d. EDVAC
 14. The third-generation computers.
a. Microprocessors c. Artificial Intelligence
b. Transistors d. Integrated Circuits

15. The second-generation computers.

a. Microprocessors c. Artificial Intelligence
b. Transistors d. Integrated Circuits

REVIEW LESSON

WORD SEARCH

Directions: Using the word search form below, use your understanding on naming the uses
of computer. Copy the word search format on a separate sheet of paper and
locate the words horizontally, vertically and diagonally.

SOCIAL
GRAPHICS
COMPUTER
BUSINESS
ENTERTAINMENT
EDUCATION
ROBOTICS
COMMUNICATION
BANKING

INFORMATION SHEET

History Timeline of Computers

5000 BC Abacus was invented by Babylonians, an early aid for mathematical

computations.
1617 Mathematician John Napier uses wooden rods for calculating. This calculation
method was called Napier’s Bones.

1642 Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline. An adding and subtracting machine
which consists of wheels, gears and cylinders.

1673 Gottfried Leibniz, a German mathematician & philosopher, enhanced the

Pascaline by creating a device that could also multiply.

1801 Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a Frenchman, invented the Jacquard’s loom which

used punch card to program pattern that were outputted as woven fabrics by
the loom.

1837 Charles Babbage, known as the father of computer, invented the first
mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex electronic designs,
though all the essential ideas of modern computer are to be found in Babbage’s
Analytical engine.

Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general –purpose computer. It

was incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional
branching and loops and integrated memory.

Difference Engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate

polynomial functions. The name derives from the method of divided differences,
a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial
coefficients.

1890 Herman Hollerith invented the Tabulating Machine, an electromechanical

machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched
cards, use to help process data for the 1890 US Census.

1906 Inventor Lee De Forest patents the vacuum tube triode. It was used as an
electronic switch in the first electronic computer systems.

1937 John V. Atanasoff creates what is considered the official first electronic
computer. It is known as the Atanasoff Berry Computer, or simply ABC.

1943 During World War II, Alan Turing develops the Colossus, a top-secret British
code-breaking computer. It was built to decode German secret messages.

1945 John von Neumann outlines the architecture of the modern stored program
computer system.

1946 An electronic computing machine called ENIAC is built by John Mauchly and
Presper Eckert.
1947 The semiconductor revolution is blasted off when William Shockley, John
Bardeen, and Walter Brattain invent and test what is called a point contact
transistor.

1949 At Cambridge University, Maurice Wilkes assembles the first practical stored
program computer called the EDSAC.

1950 The ERA 1101 is built by the Engineering Research Associates of Minneapolis.
It is one of the first commercially produced computer systems.

1952 The UNIVAC used by the U.S. Census Bureau becomes the first commercial
computer to attract substantial public attention.

1953 IBM ships its first electronic computer system called the 701.

1954 Gordon Teal from Texas Instruments perfects a silicon-based junction transistor
which brings a tremendous reduction in costs to build a computer.

IBM’s 650 magnetic drum calculator is also established as the first mass-
produced computer. In the ’50s, 450 computers were mass-produced, if you
can believe that.

1955 The first fully-transistorized computer TRADIC is announced by Bell

Laboratories.

1956 The TX-0 is built by MIT researchers. It is the first general purpose,
programmable computer that is built using transistors.

Also, the era of magnetic disk storage is about to blossom when IBM ships a
305 RAMAC to Zellerbach Paper in San Francisco, California.

1958 The first integrated circuit is created by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments. This
proved that both resistors and capacitors could exist on the same
semiconductor material.

1959 IBM’s 7000 series mainframes become its first transistorized computer.
Also in 1959 Robert Noyce’s integrated circuit allows printing of electrical
conducting channels directly on a silicon surface.

1960 The first commercial modem called Dataphone is designed by Bell Labs. It was
designed specifically for converting digital computer data to analog signals for
transmission across a long-distance network.

1961 According to Datamation magazine, IBM has approximately an 81.2 percent

share of the computer market. IBM also introduced the 1400 Series computer
system in this year.
1964 IBM announces a family of six mutually compatible computers and 40
peripherals that work together called the System/360.

Seymour Cray’s CDC supercomputer performs up to three million instructions

per second which literally is a processing speed three times its closest
competitor, IBM’s Stretch system.

Also in 1964, IBM’s SABRE reservation system is also setup up for American
Airlines.

1965 Digital Equipment Corporation introduces the first commercially successful

minicomputer called the PDP-8.

1966 Hewlett-Packard enters the all- purpose computer business with its release of
the HP-2115. The HP-2115’s computing power is that which is formerly found
only in far larger computer systems before it.

1968 Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, by Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and
Andrew Grove.

1970 The computer-to-computer communication revolution expands when the U.S.

Department of Defense establishes four devices on the ARPAnet. Two of
these nodes reside at University of California campuses including one in
Santa Barbara and another in Los Angeles. Another sits at University of Utah
and the fourth resides at SRI International.

1971 The 8-inch floppy disk is invented by a team at IBM’s San Jose Laboratories.

One of the first personal computers called the Kenbak-1 is advertised for $750
in Scientific American magazine.

Also in 1971, the first advertisement for a microprocessor appears for the Intel
4004 in Electronic News.

1972 Intel’s 8008 microprocessor makes its debut.

Hewlett-Packard announces the HP-35.

Steve Wozniak builds his blue box which is a tone generator to make free
phone calls.

1973 At the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Robert Metcalfe devices the
Ethernet method of networking.

Using the Intel 8008 processor, Micral becomes the earliest commercial non-
kit personal computer system based on a microprocessor.
 Also 1973, the TV Typewriter was designed by Don Lancaster. It provided the
first display of alphanumeric information on an ordinary television.

1974 Researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center design the Alto which is
the first workstation with a built-in mouse for input.

Also, in 1974, Scelbi advertises the 8H computer. What makes the 8H special
is the fact that it is the first commercially advertised U.S. computer based on a
microprocessor. It used the Intel 8008 computer processor.

1975 Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975.
The first commercial packet switching network called Telenet is created. It is
the civilian equivalent of ARPAnet.

The January edition of Popular Electronics features on its cover the Altair
8800 computer, which uses the Intel 8080 microprocessor.

1975 also was the year of the visual display module prototype. Designed by
Lee Felsenstein, it was the first implementation of a memory-mapped
alphanumeric video display for personal computer systems.

1976 Apple is established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and
Ronald Wayne to sell a single board computer called the Apple I.

The 5 ¼-inch flexible disk drive and disk is introduced by Shugart Associates.

The Cray I make its name as the first commercially-successful vector

processor also in 1976.

1977 Apple Computer introduces the Apple II computer system.

The TRS-80 is also introduced by Tandy Radio Shack.

Commodore also introduces the PET, or Personal Electronic Transactor.

1978 The VAX 11/780 from Digital Equipment Corporation features the capability to
address up to 4.3GB of virtual memory. This provided hundreds of times the
capacity of most minicomputers of the time.

1979 Motorola introduces the 68000 microprocessors.

1980 The first hard drive for microcomputers, called the ST-506, is created by
Seagate Technology.

Also, in 1980 the first optical data storage disk contains 60 times the capacity
of a 5 ¼-inch floppy disk.
 Another sweet kick-off for the ’80s is the invention of the computer “worm” by
John Shoch from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. This so-called worm
is a short program that searches a network for idle processors.
1981 IBM introduces its Personal Computer (PC), kicking off the fast growth of the
personal computer market and revolution.

Xerox also introduces the Star which is the first personal computer with a
graphical user interface (GUI).

The first portable computer is also completed by Adam Osborne. Like many
inventions of the day, it gets its name from the inventor; hence, it’s called the
Osborne I which weighed in at 24 pounds and sold for $1795 dollars at the
time.

Also, in 1981 Sony Corporation introduces and ships the first 3 ½-inch floppy
disk drive and disks.

1983 Apple introduces its Lisa computer incorporating a GUI very similar to that
first introduced on the Xerox Star.

Compaq Computer Corporation introduces its first PC clone that uses the
same software as the IBM PC.

1984 Apple Computer launches the Macintosh, which is the first successful mouse
driven computer with a GUI. It was launched, in fact, with a single $1.5 million
commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl.

Also, in 1984 IBM releases the PC-AT, which is three times faster than
original PC’s. Its speed came from its usage of the Intel 286 processor.

The PC-AT also introduced a new computer bus called the 16-bit ISA bus.

1985 Philips introduces the CD-ROM.

1986 Compaq announces the Deskpro 386, which is the first computer on the
market to use Intel’s new 386 chip.

1987 IBM introduces its PS/2 computers making the 3 ½-inch floppy disk drive and
VGA video standard for PC’s.

Also introduced with the PS/2 was its inclusion of the first plug-and-play
computer bus for PC’s called MicroChannel Architecture (MCA).

1988 After leaving Apple, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs unveils his own company
called NeXT.
 Also, in 1988 Compaq and other PC makers develop a new computer bus
called the Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture (EISA). What was
especially unique about this bus was that unlike MicroChannel, EISA
remained backward compatible with the ISA bus.

1989 Intel releases the 486 microprocessor which contains more than one million
transistors. Intel also introduces alongside it the 486 motherboard chipsets.

1990 The World Wide Web (WWW) is born after researcher Tim Berners-Lee
develops HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language.

1993 Intel releases the Pentium processor, leaving behind its old numbered naming
convention in the process as they realized it’s impossible to trademark a
number. Intel also releases motherboard chipsets and for the first time
completes motherboards.

1994 Yahoo is founded by two Stanford graduate students named Jerry Yang and
David Filo. (Fun Fact: Yahoo originally started out with the name, Jerry’s
Guide to the World Wide Web.)

1995 Microsoft releases the first mainstream 32-bit operating system Windows 95
in huge numbers.

Intel releases the first processor in their P6 family called the Pentium Pro
processor.

1997 Intel releases the Pentium II processor and AMD introduces the K6, which is
compatible with the Intel Pentium.

1998 Google is co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they are students
at Stanford University. The company is first incorporated as a privately held
company in September of 1998.

Microsoft releases Windows 98.

Intel releases their Celeron processor, which is basically a low-cost version of

the Pentium II processor of the time.

1999 Intel releases their Pentium III processor and AMD introduces their Athlon line
of processors.

2000 Microsoft releases Windows Millennium Edition or Me, and Windows 2000.
The 1GHz milestone is hit when both Intel and AMD introduce processors
running at 1GHz.
The main five generations of computers:

First Generation – 1946-1959

First generation of computers started with using vacuum tubes as the basic
components for memory and circuitry for CPU (Central Processing Unit).
Some computers of this generation were:
• ABC (Atanasoff – Berry Computer) • UNIVAC
• Colossus • IBM-701
• ENIAC • IBM-650
• EDVAC

Second Generation – 1959-1965

This generation using the transistor were cheaper, consumed less power, more
compact in size, more reliable and faster than the first-generation machines made of
vacuum tubes.
Some computers of this generation were:
• IBM 1620 • CDC 3600
• IBM 7094 • UNIVAC1108
• CDC 1604

Third Generation – 1965-1971

The third generation of computer is marked by the use of Integrated Circuits (IC's) in
place of transistors. The IC was invented by Jack Kilby. This development made
computers smaller in size, reliable and efficient.
Some computers of this generation were:
• IBM-360 series • IBM-370/168
• Honeywell-6000 series • TDC-316
• PDP (Personal Data Processor)

Fourth Generation – 1971-1980

The fourth generation of computers is marked by the use of Very Large Scale
Integrated (VLSI) circuits. VLSI circuits having about 5000 transistors and other
circuit elements and their associated circuits on a single chip made it possible to
have microcomputers of fourth generation.
Some computers of this generation were:
• DEC 10 • CRAY-1 (Super Computer)
• STAR 1000 • CRAY-X-MP (Super Computer
• PDP 11

Fifth Generation – 1982-onwards

In the fifth generation, the VLSI technology became ULSI (Ultra Large-Scale
Integration) technology, resulting in the production of microprocessor chips having
ten million electronic components. This generation is based on parallel processing
hardware and AI (Artificial Intelligence) software.
Some computers types of this generation are:
• Desktop • UltraBook
• Laptop • ChromeBook
• NoteBook

10
 ACTIVITY SHEET

IDENTIFICATION

Directions: Identify the timeline of each of the following events. Write the correct year on a
separate paper.

1.Apple Computer launches the Macintosh, which is the first successful

mouse driven computer with a GUI.

2.Microsoft releases Windows Millennium Edition or Me, and Windows

2000.

3.An inventor named Blaise Pascal introduces to the world the digital
adding machine referred to as the Pascaline digital adding machine.

4.Charles Babbage shines forth the Difference Engine and the Analytical
Engine which is considered a real general purpose computing
machine.

5.The UNIVAC used by the U.S. Census Bureau becomes the first
commercial computer to attract substantial public attention.

6.According to Datamation magazine, IBM has approximately an 81.2

percent share of the computer market.

7.Apple Computer introduces the Apple II computer system.

8.The World Wide Web (WWW) is born after researcher Tim Berners-
Lee develops HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language.

9.Inventor Lee De Forest patents the vacuum tube triode. It was used as
an electronic switch in the first electronic computer systems.

10. At Cambridge University, Maurice Wilkes assembles the first

practical stored program computer called the EDSAC.

GENERALIZATION

Computers are already an important part of ones’ daily lives, but there was a time
when computers did not exist. Computers are one of the few inventions that do not have one
specific inventor. Many inventors have contributed to the production and technology of
computers. Some of the inventions have been different types of computers, while the others
were parts needed for the computer to function effectively.
WORD SEARCH

Directions: Using the word search form below, use your understanding on naming the uses
of computer. Copy the word search format on a separate sheet and locate the
words horizontally, vertically and diagonally.

ENIAC
MICROPROCESSOR
ABACUS
BABYLONIA
UNIVAC
FORTRAN
TRANSISTORS
VACUUM TUBE
EDVAC
PASCALINE

PERFORMANCE TASKS

Directions: On a short size bond paper, create the History Timeline of Computers using the
choices given in the box. Follow the arrow to trace the timeline.

Blaise Pascal Microprocessors 2nd Generation

Babylonians Abacus Tabulating Machine
Artificial Intelligence 1st Generation 5th Generation
Pascaline Difference Engine Herman Hollerith
Charles Babbage Analytical Engine Vacuum Tubes
Transistors 3rd Generation 4th Generation
Integrated Circuit
 SELF – CHECK

I. TRUE OR FALSE

Directions: Write T if the statement is TRUE and F if the statement is false. Write your
answers on a separate sheet.

1. Blaise Pascal invented the Napier’s Bones.

2. The first known counting device is Abacus.
3. Philips introduced the CD-ROM on 1985.
4. The first-generation computers were microprocessors.
5. The father of modern computer is Charles Babbage.

MATCHING TYPE

Directions: Match Column A to Column B. Write your answers (letter only) on a separate
paper.
A B

6. Babylonians a. Vacuum Tubes

7. Blaise Pascal b. Napier’s Bones

8. Charles Babbage c. Transistors

9. John Napier d. Tabulating Machine

10. Fourth Generation e. Pascaline

11. Second Generation f. Artificial Intelligence

12. Herman Hollerith g. Microprocessors

13. Fifth Generation h. Integrated Circuits

14. Third Generation i. Abacus

15. First Generation j. Slide Rule

k. Analytical Engine