COMPUTER HISTORY

COMPUTER HISTORY
• The computer as we know it today had its beginning
with a 19th century English mathematics professor
name Charles Babbage.
He designed the Analytical Engine and it was this
design that the basic framework of the computers of
today are based on.
• Generally speaking, computers can be classified
into three generations. Each generation lasted for a
certain period of
time,and each gave us either a new and improved
computer or an improvement to the existing
computer.
• First generation: 1937 – 1946 - In 1937 the first
electronic digital computer was built by Dr. John V.
Atanasoff and Clifford Berry. It was called the
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). In 1943 an
electronic computer name the Colossus was built for
the military. Other developments continued until in
1946 the first general– purpose digital computer, the
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
(ENIAC) was built. It is said that this computer
weighed 30 tons, and had 18,000 vacuum tubes
which was used for processing. When this computer
was turned on for the first time lights dim in sections
of Philadelphia. Computers of this generation could
only perform single task, and they had no operating
system.
• Second generation: 1947 – 1962 - This generation of
computers used transistors instead of vacuum tubes
which were more reliable. In 1951 the first computer
for commercial use was introduced to the public; the
Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC 1). In 1953
the International Business Machine (IBM) 650 and 700
series computers made their mark in the computer
world. During this generation of computers over 100
computer programming languages were developed,
computers had memory and operating systems.
Storage media such as tape and disk were in use
also were printers for output.
• Third generation: 1963 - present - The invention of
integrated circuit brought us the third generation of
computers. With this invention computers became smaller,
more powerful more reliable and they are able to run many
different programs at the same time. In1980 Microsoft Disk
Operating System (MS-Dos) was born and in 1981 IBM
introduced the personal computer (PC) for home and office
use. Three years later Apple gave us the Macintosh
computer with its icon driven interface and the 90s gave us
Windows operating system.
• As a result of the various improvements to the development
of the computer we have seen the computer being used in
all areas of life. It is a very useful tool that will continue to
experience new development as time passes.
CHARLES BABBAGE
•We could argue that the first computer was
the abacus or its descendant, the slide
rule, invented by William Oughtred in 1622.
But the first computer resembling today's
modern machines was the Analytical
Engine, a device conceived and designed
by British mathematician Charles Babbage
between 1833 and 1871.
ATANASOFF-BERRY COMPUTER
• The Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) was the first automatic electronic digital
computer, an early electronic digital computing device that has remained
somewhat obscure. The ABC's priority is debated among historians of computer
technology, because it was neither programmable, nor Turing-complete.[1]
• Conceived in 1937, the machine was built by Iowa State College mathematics
and physics professor John Vincent Atanasoff with the help of graduate
student Clifford Berry. It was designed only to solve systems of linear
equations and was successfully tested in 1942. However, its intermediate result
storage mechanism, a paper card writer/reader, was not perfected, and when
John Vincent Atanasoff left Iowa State College for World War II assignments,
work on the machine was discontinued.[2] The ABC pioneered important
elements of modern computing, including binary arithmetic and electronic
switching elements, [3] but its special-purpose nature and lack of a
changeable, stored program distinguish it from modern computers. The
computer was designated an IEEE Milestone in 1990.[4]
ATANASOFF-BERRY COMPUTER
KINDS OF FIRST
COMPUTERS
COLOSSUS COMPUTER
• Colossus was a set of computers developed by British codebreakers in
the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher.
Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to
perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus is thus
regarded[3] as the world's
first programmable, electronic, digital computer, although it was
programmed by switches and plugs and not by a stored program.[4]
• Colossus was designed by research telephone engineer Tommy Flowers to
solve a problem posed by mathematician Max Newman at the Government
Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. Alan Turing's use of
probability in cryptanalysis (see Banburismus) contributed to its design. It has
sometimes been erroneously stated that Turing designed Colossus to aid
the cryptanalysis of the Enigma.[5] Turing's machine that helped
decode Enigma was the electromechanical Bombe, not Colossus
COLOSSUS COMPUTER
ENIAC
• ENIAC was formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania on February 15,
1946 and was heralded as a "Giant Brain" by the press.[11] It had a speed on the
order of one thousand times faster than that of electro-mechanical machines;
this computational power, coupled with general-purpose programmability,
excited scientists and industrialists alike. The combination of speed and
programmability allowed for thousands more calculations for problems, as
ENIAC calculated a trajectory in 30 seconds that took a human 20 hours
(allowing one ENIAC hour to displace 2,400 human hours).[12] The completed
machine was announced to the public the evening of February 14, 1946 and
formally dedicated the next day at the University of Pennsylvania, having cost
almost $500,000 (approximately $6,300,000 today). It was formally accepted by
the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in July 1946. ENIAC was shut down on November
9, 1946 for a refurbishment and a memory upgrade, and was transferred
to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947. There, on July 29, 1947, it was
turned on and was in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955.
ENIAC COMPUTER
MANCHESTER MARK1
• The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program
computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchesterfrom
the Manchester Baby (operational in June 1948). It was also called
the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine, or MADM.[1] Work
began in August 1948, and the first version was operational by April
1949; a program written to search for Mersenne primes ran error-free
for nine hours on the night of 16/17 June 1949.
• The machine's successful operation was widely reported in the
British press, which used the phrase "electronic brain" in describing it
to their readers. That description provoked a reaction from the head
of the University of Manchester's Department of Neurosurgery, the
start of a long-running debate as to whether an electronic computer
could ever be truly creative.
MANCHESTER MARK1