Definition of a Computer
- Information Processor
- Input and Output
- Inputs, outputs, processes and stores information
- Physical: Keyboard, monitor, etc. – are these necessary components?
Abacus (3000 B.C.)
- beads on rods to count and calculate
- still widely used in Asia!
Slide Rule
- Slide Rule 1630
- based on Napier’s rules for logarithms
- used until 1970s
Jacquard Loom (1801)
- first stored program - metal cards
- first computer manufacturing
- still in use today!
Charles Babbage - 1792-1871
- Difference Engine c.1822
*** huge calculator, never finished
- Analytical Engine 1833
*** could store numbers
*** calculating “mill” used punched metal cards for instructions
*** powered by steam!
*** accurate to six decimal places
Vacuum Tubes - 1941 - 1956
- First Generation Electronic Computers used Vacuum Tubes
- Vacuum tubes are glass tubes with circuits inside.
- Vacuum tubes have no air inside of them, which protects the circuitry.
UNIVAC - 1951
- first fully electronic digital computer built in the U.S.
- Created at the University of Pennsylvania
- ENIAC weighed 30 tons
- contained 18,000 vacuum tubes
- Cost a paltry $487,000
Grace Hopper
- Programmed UNIVAC
- Recipient of Computer Science’s first “Man of the Year Award”
First Computer Bug - 1945
- Relay switches part of computers
- Grace Hopper found a moth stuck in a relay responsible for a malfunction
- Called it “debugging” a computer
First Transistor
Uses Silicon
developed in 1948
won a Nobel prize
on-off switch
Second Generation Computers used Transistors, starting in 1956
– Computers began to incorporate Transistors
- Replaced vacuum tubes with Transistors
Third Generation – 1964-1971
- 1964-1971
- Integrated Circuit
- Operating System
- Getting smaller, cheaper
The First Microprocessor – 1971
Intel 4004 Microprocessor
- had 2,250 transistors
- four-bit chunks (four 1’s or 0’s)
- 108Khz
- Called “Microchip”
What is a Microchip?
- Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit (VLSIC)
- Transistors, resistors, and capacitors
- 4004 had 2,250 transistors
- Pentium IV has 42 MILLION transistors
- Each transistor 0.13 microns (10-6 meters)
4th Generation – 1971-present
MICROCHIPS!
Getting smaller and smaller, but we are still using microchip technology
5th Generation (present)
- Artificial Intelligence
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Lesson 2: History of Computer
Ancient History
Abacus
- 3000 BCE, early form of beads on wires, used in China
- From semitic abaq, meaning dust.
Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
- Born: December 26, 1791
- son of Benjamin Babbage a London banker
(part of the emerging middle class: property, education, wealth, and status)
- Trinity College, Cambridge [MA, 1817]
with John Herschel and George Peacock, produced a translation of LaCroix’s calculus text.
Born: December 26, 1791
son of Benjamin Babbage a London banker
(part of the emerging middle class: property, education, wealth, and status)
Trinity College, Cambridge [MA, 1817]
with John Herschel and George Peacock, produced a translation of LaCroix’s calculus text.
A vision of calculating by steam:
My friend Herschel, calling upon me, brought with him the calculations of the computers, and we commenced the tedious process of verification. After a time many discrepancies occurred, and at one point these discordances were so numerous that I exclaimed, “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.” 1821
Importance of the Difference Engine
1. First attempt to devise a computing machine that was automatic in action and well adapted, by its printing mechanism, to a mathematical task of considerable importance.
2. An example of government subsidization of innovation and technology development
3. Spin offs to the machine-tool “industry”
Ada Augusta Byron, 1815-1852
- born on 10 December 1815.
- named after Byron's half sister, Augusta, who had been his mistress.
- After Byron had left for the Continent with a parting shot -- 'When shall we three meet again?' -- Ada was brought up by her mother.
- Translated Menebrea’s paper into English
- Taylor’s: “The editorial notes are by the translator, the Countess of Lovelace.”
- Footnotes enhance the text and provide examples of how the Analytical Engine could be used, i.e., how it would be programmed to solve problems!
- Myth: “world’s first programmer”
Herman Hollerith
- Born: February 29, 1860
- Civil War: 1861-1865
- Columbia School of Mines (New York)
- 1879 hired at Census Office
- 1882 MIT faculty (T is for technology!)
- 1883 St. Louis (inventor)
- 1884 Patent Office (Wash, DC)
- 1885 “Expert and Solicitor of Patents”
Manchester Mark I (1948)
- Freddy Williams and Tom Kilburn
- Developed an electrostatic memory
- Prototype operational June 21, 1948 and machine to execute a stored program
- Memory: 32 words of 32 bits each
- Storage: single Williams tube (CRT)
- Fully operational: October 1949
- Ferranti Mark I delivered in February 1951
EDSAC
- Maurice Wilkes, University Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge University
- Moore School Lectures
- Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, EDSAC operational May, 1949
- J. Lyons Company and the LEO, Lyons Electronic Office, operational fall 1951
Alan Turing (1912-1954)
- On Computable Numbers with an application to the Entscheidungs-problem
- Code breaker
Remington Rand UNIVAC
- 43 UNIVACs were delivered to government and industry
- Memory: mercury delay lines: 1000 words of 12 alphanumeric characters
- Secondary storage: metal oxide tape
- Access time: 222 microseconds (average)
- Instruction set: 45 operation codes
- Accumulators: 4
- Clock: 2.25 Mhz
Abacus
- 3000 BCE, early form of beads on wires, used in China
- From semitic abaq, meaning dust.
Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
- Born: December 26, 1791
- son of Benjamin Babbage a London banker
(part of the emerging middle class: property, education, wealth, and status)
- Trinity College, Cambridge [MA, 1817]
with John Herschel and George Peacock, produced a translation of LaCroix’s calculus text.
Born: December 26, 1791
son of Benjamin Babbage a London banker
(part of the emerging middle class: property, education, wealth, and status)
Trinity College, Cambridge [MA, 1817]
with John Herschel and George Peacock, produced a translation of LaCroix’s calculus text.
A vision of calculating by steam:
My friend Herschel, calling upon me, brought with him the calculations of the computers, and we commenced the tedious process of verification. After a time many discrepancies occurred, and at one point these discordances were so numerous that I exclaimed, “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.” 1821
Importance of the Difference Engine
1. First attempt to devise a computing machine that was automatic in action and well adapted, by its printing mechanism, to a mathematical task of considerable importance.
2. An example of government subsidization of innovation and technology development
3. Spin offs to the machine-tool “industry”
Ada Augusta Byron, 1815-1852
- born on 10 December 1815.
- named after Byron's half sister, Augusta, who had been his mistress.
- After Byron had left for the Continent with a parting shot -- 'When shall we three meet again?' -- Ada was brought up by her mother.
- Translated Menebrea’s paper into English
- Taylor’s: “The editorial notes are by the translator, the Countess of Lovelace.”
- Footnotes enhance the text and provide examples of how the Analytical Engine could be used, i.e., how it would be programmed to solve problems!
- Myth: “world’s first programmer”
Herman Hollerith
- Born: February 29, 1860
- Civil War: 1861-1865
- Columbia School of Mines (New York)
- 1879 hired at Census Office
- 1882 MIT faculty (T is for technology!)
- 1883 St. Louis (inventor)
- 1884 Patent Office (Wash, DC)
- 1885 “Expert and Solicitor of Patents”
Manchester Mark I (1948)
- Freddy Williams and Tom Kilburn
- Developed an electrostatic memory
- Prototype operational June 21, 1948 and machine to execute a stored program
- Memory: 32 words of 32 bits each
- Storage: single Williams tube (CRT)
- Fully operational: October 1949
- Ferranti Mark I delivered in February 1951
EDSAC
- Maurice Wilkes, University Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge University
- Moore School Lectures
- Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, EDSAC operational May, 1949
- J. Lyons Company and the LEO, Lyons Electronic Office, operational fall 1951
Alan Turing (1912-1954)
- On Computable Numbers with an application to the Entscheidungs-problem
- Code breaker
Remington Rand UNIVAC
- 43 UNIVACs were delivered to government and industry
- Memory: mercury delay lines: 1000 words of 12 alphanumeric characters
- Secondary storage: metal oxide tape
- Access time: 222 microseconds (average)
- Instruction set: 45 operation codes
- Accumulators: 4
- Clock: 2.25 Mhz
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