Introduction to Computing

Lecture
1&2
Evolution of Computing
 Today’s Goal

To learn about the evolution of computing

To recount the important milestones and the key

events

To learn about the steps that took us from

Babbage’s idea of the Analytical Engine to
today’s ultra-smart hand held computers
But first, why should we spend time
on recounting the events of the past

Why not just talk about what is

happening in computing now and
what is going to happen in the future?

Why?
• If you do not learn from the history,
your condemned to repeat it

• Recounting the events of the past

provides an excellent opportunity to:
– learn lessons
– discover patterns of evolution, and
– use them in the future

• If we learn from history well, we will:

– neither repeat the mistakes of the past
– nor would we waste time re-inventing
what already has been invented
 Early Computing devices
People used sticks, stones, and bones as counting tools before
computers were invented. More computing devices were
produced as technology advanced and the human intellect
improved over time. Let us look at a few of the early-age
computing devices used by mankind.
1. Abacus
• Abacus was invented by the Chinese around 4000 years
ago. It’s a wooden rack with metal rods with beads
attached to them. The abacus operator moves the beads
according to certain guidelines to complete arithmetic
computations.
2. Napier’s Bone
• John Napier devised Napier’s Bones, a manually operated
calculating apparatus. For calculating, this instrument used 9
separate ivory strips (bones) marked with numerals to
multiply and divide. It was also the first machine to calculate
using the decimal point system.
3. Pascaline
• Pascaline was invented in 1642 by Biaise Pascal, a French
mathematician and philosopher. It is thought to be the first
mechanical and automated calculator. It was a wooden box
with gears and wheels inside.
4. Stepped Reckoner or Leibniz wheel
• In 1673, a German mathematician-philosopher named Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz improved on Pascal’s invention to create this apparatus. It was a
digital mechanical calculator known as the stepped reckoner because it used
fluted drums instead of gears.
5. Difference Engine
• In the early 1820s, Charles Babbage created the Difference Engine. It was a
mechanical computer that could do basic computations. It was a steam-
powered calculating machine used to solve numerical tables such as
logarithmic tables.
6. Analytical Engine
• Charles Babbage created another calculating machine, the Analytical Engine,
in 1830. It was a mechanical computer that took input from punch cards. It
was capable of solving any mathematical problem and storing data in an
indefinite memory.
7. Tabulating machine
• An American Statistician – Herman Hollerith invented this machine in
the year 1890. Tabulating Machine was a punch card-based
mechanical tabulator. It could compute statistics and record or sort
data or information. Hollerith began manufacturing these machines in
his company, which ultimately became International Business
Machines (IBM) in 1924.
8. Differential Analyzer
• Vannevar Bush introduced the first electrical computer, the
Differential Analyzer, in 1930. This machine is made up of vacuum
tubes that switch electrical impulses in order to do calculations. It was
capable of performing 25 calculations in a matter of minutes.
9. Mark I
• Howard Aiken planned to build a machine in 1937 that could conduct
massive calculations or calculations using enormous numbers. The
Mark I computer was constructed in 1944 as a collaboration between
IBM and Harvard.
 Early History of Computer
• Since the evolution of humans, devices have been used for calculations for
thousands of years. One of the earliest and most well-known devices was
an abacus. Then in 1822, the father of computers, Charles Babbage began
developing what would be the first mechanical computer. And then in 1833 he
actually designed an Analytical Engine which was a general-purpose
computer. It contained an ALU, some basic flow chart principles and the
concept of integrated memory.
• Then more than a century later in the history of computers, we got our first
electronic computer for general purposes. It was the ENIAC, which stands
for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The inventors of this
computer were John W. Mauchly and J.Presper Eckert.
• And with time the technology developed and the computers got smaller and
the processing got faster. We got our first laptop in 1981 and it was introduced
by Adam Osborne and EPSON.
 Generation of Computers
• 1st Generation: This was from the period of 1940 to 1955. This was when
machine language was developed for the use of computers. They used vacuum
tubes for the circuitry. For the purpose of memory, they used magnetic
drums. These machines were complicated, large, and expensive. They were
mostly reliant on batch operating systems and punch cards. As output and
input devices, magnetic tape and paper tape were implemented. For example,
ENIAC, UNIVAC-1, EDVAC, and so on.
• 2nd Generation: The years 1957-1963 were referred to as the “second
generation of computers” at the time. In second-generation computers,
COBOL and FORTRAN are employed as assembly languages and
programming languages. Here they advanced from vacuum tubes to
transistors. This made the computers smaller, faster and more energy-efficient.
And they advanced from binary to assembly languages. For instance, IBM
1620, IBM 7094, CDC 1604, CDC 3600, and so forth.
• 3rd Generation: The hallmark of this period (1964-1971) was the
development of the integrated circuit. A single integrated circuit (IC) is made
up of many transistors, which increases the power of a computer while
simultaneously lowering its cost. These computers were quicker, smaller, more
reliable, and less expensive than their predecessors. High-level programming
languages such as FORTRON-II to IV, COBOL, and PASCAL PL/1 were
utilized. For example, the IBM-360 series, the Honeywell-6000 series, and the
IBM-370/168.
• 4th Generation: The invention of the microprocessors brought along the
fourth generation of computers. The years 1971-1980 were dominated by
fourth generation computers. C, C++ and Java were the programming
languages utilized in this generation of computers. For instance, the STAR
1000, PDP 11, CRAY-1, CRAY-X-MP, and Apple II. This was when we started
producing computers for home use.
• 5th Generation: These computers have been utilized since 1980 and continue
to be used now. This is the present and the future of the computer world. The
defining aspect of this generation is artificial intelligence. The use of parallel
processing and superconductors are making this a reality and provide a lot of
scope for the future. Fifth-generation computers use ULSI (Ultra Large Scale
Integration) technology. These are the most recent and sophisticated
computers. C, C++, Java,.Net, and more programming languages are used. For
instance, IBM, Pentium, Desktop, Laptop, Notebook, Ultrabook, and so on.
Babbage’s Analytical Engine - 1833
• Mechanical, digital, general-purpose

• Was crank-driven

• Could store instructions

• Could perform mathematical calculations

• Could store information permanently in punched cards

 Punched Cards - 1801
• Initially had no relationship with computers

• Invented by a Frenchman named Joseph-Marie

Jacquard for storing weaving patterns for automated
textile looms (“khuddian”)

• Their value for storing computer-related information

was later realized by the early computer builders

• Punched cards were replaced my magnetic storage

only in the early 1950s
 Protests Against Jacquard’s Invention
• Hand weavers saw the automatic loom as a
threat to their livelihood

• They burned several of the new machines

• A few weavers even physically assaulted

Jacquard
 Turing Machine - 1936
• Alan Turing of Cambridge University presented his
idea of a theoretically simplified but fully capable
computer, now known as the “Turing Machine”

• The concept of this machine, which could theoretically

perform any mathematical computation, was very
important in the future development of the computer

• You will learn about the details of the “Turing Machine”

in your advanced Computer Science courses
Another contribution by Alan Turing
• The “Turing test”

• A test proposed to determine if a computer has

the ability to think

• So far no one has built a computer that can

pass that test – there is cash prize of
US$100,000
 Terminal

Human

Terminal

Interrogator

Machine
on its own
 Turing Test
• An interrogator is connected to one person
and one machine via a terminal, therefore
can't see her counterparts

• The interrogator’s task is to find out which of

the two candidates is the machine, and which
is the human only by asking them questions.
If the machine can "fool" the interrogator, it
passes the “Turing Test”.
 Vacuum Tube - 1904
• John Fleming, an English Physicist, developed the
very first one

• These electronic devices consist of 2 or more

electrodes encased in a glass or metal tube

• They along with electric relays were used in the

construction of earlier computers

• These tubes have now been almost completely

replaced by more reliable and less costly transistors
 ABC - 1939
• Attanasoff-Berry Computer

• John Attanasoff & Clifford Berry at Iowa State College

• World’s first electronic computer

• The first computer that used binary numbers instead

of decimal

• Helped grad students in solving simultaneous linear

equations
 Harvard Mark 1 - 1943
• Howard Aiken of Harvard University

• The first program controlled machine

• Included all the ideas proposed by Babbage for the

Analytical Engine

• The last famous electromechanical computer

 ENIAC – 1946
• Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer
• World’s first large-scale, general-purpose
electronic computer
• Built by John Mauchly & John Echert at the
University of Pennsylvania
• Developed for military applications
• 5,000 operations/sec, 19000 tubes, 30 ton
• 9’ x 80’
• 150 kilowatts: Used to dim the lights in the City
of Philadelphia down when it ran
 Transistor - 1947
• Invented by Shockly, Bardeen, and Brattain at
the Bell Labs in the US

• Compared to vacuum tubes, it offered:

– much smaller size
– better reliability
– much lower power consumption
– much lower cost

• All modern computers are made of

miniaturized transistors
• Tubes replaced mechanicals

• Transistors replaced tubes

• What is going to replace the

transistors?
 EDVAC – 1948
• Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer

• Built by Echert & Mauchly and included many design

ideas proposed by Von Neumann

• The first electronic computer design to incorporate a

program stored entirely within its memory

• First computer to use Magnetic Tape for storing

programs. Before this, computers needed to be re-
wired each time a new program was to be run
 Floppy Disk - 1950
Invented at the Imperial University in Tokyo
by Yoshiro Nakamats

Provided faster access to programs and data

as compared with magnetic tape
 Compiler - 1951
• Grace Hopper of US Navy develops the very
first high-level language compiler

• Before the invention of this compiler,

developing a computer program was tedious
and prone to errors

• A compiler translates a high-level language

(that is easy to understand for humans) into a
language that the computer can understand
 UNIVAC 1 - 1951
• UNIVersal Automatic Computer
• Echert & Mauchly Computer Company
• First computer designed for commercial apps
• First computer that could not only manipulate
numbers but text data as well
• Max speed: 1905 operations/sec
• Cost: US$1,000,000
• 5000 tubes. 943 cu ft. 8 tons. 100 kilowatts
• Between 1951-57, 48 were sold
 BASIC - 1965
• Beginner All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

• Developed by Thomas Kurtz & John Kemeny at

Dartmouth College

• The first programming language designed for the non-

techies

• The grand-mother of the most popular programming

language in the world today – Visual BASIC
 Computer Mouse - 1965
• Invented by Douglas Englebart

• Did not become popular until 1983, when

Apple Computers adopted the concept
 ARPANET - 1969
• A network of networks

• The grand-daddy of the today’s global Internet

• A network of around 60,000 computers

developed by the US Dept of Defense to
facilitate communications between research
organizations and universities
 Intel 4004 - 1971
• The first microprocessor

• Microprocessor: A complete computer

on a chip

• Speed: 750 kHz

 Altair 8800 - 1975
• The commercially available 1st PC

• Based on the Intel 8080

• Cost $397

• Had 256 bytes of memory; my PC at home

has a million times more RAM (Random
Access Memory)
 Cray 1 - 1976
• The first commercial supercomputer

• Supercomputers are state-of-the-art machines

designed to perform calculations as fast as the current
technology allows
• Used to solve extremely complex tasks: weather
prediction, simulation of atomic explosions; aircraft
design; movie animation
• Cray 1 could do 167 million calculations a send; the
current state-of the-art machines can do many trillion
(1012) calculations per second
 IBM PC & MS DOS - 1981
• IBM PC: The tremendously popular PC;
the grand-daddy of 95% of the PC’s in
use today

• MS DOS: The tremendously popular

operating system that came bundled
with the IBM PC
 TCP/IP Protocol - 1982
• Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

• The communications protocol used by the

computer networks, including the Internet

• A communication protocol is a set of rules that

governs the flow of information over a network
 Apple Macintosh - 1984
• The first popular, user-friendly, WIMP-
based PC

• Based on the WIMP (Windows, Icons,

Menus, Pointing Device) ideas first
developed for the Star computer at
Xerox PARC (1981)
 World Wide Web -1989
• Tim Berners Lee – British physicist

• 1989 – At the European Center for Nuclear

Energy Research (CERN) in Geneva

• 1993 - The 1st major browser “Mosaic” was

developed at the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications at the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Deep Blue -vs- Kasparov - 1997
It could analyze up to 300 billion
chess moves in three minutes

In 1997 Deep Blue, a supercomputer

designed by IBM, beat Gary Kasparov, the
World Chess Champion

That computer was exceptionally fast, did

not get tired or bored. It just kept on
analyzing the situation and kept on
searching until it found the perfect move
from its list of possible moves
 Mobile Phone-Computer
• A small computer, no bigger than the hand set
of desktop phone

• Can do whatever an Internet-capable computer

can plus can function as a regular phone

• First consumer device formed by the fusion of

computing and wireless telecommunication