Khan, Salman D.

CE12KB1

CPE 001

November 19, 2014

History of Computer
Earliest Computing Device
Abacus known as the first invented manual data processing device.
John Napier Scottish mathematician who is known for his invention of logarithm in early
1600s, a technology that allows multiplication to be computed through addition.
Napiers Bone it consists of a set of eleven rods made of ivory sticks with numbers carved
on them. It can perform multiplication and division by simply placing the rods side by side.
William Oughtred mathematician who developed the slide rule. Oughtreds slide rule
consists of two movable rulers placed side by side and by sliding the rulers you can quickly
obtain the product and quotient of a number.
Blaise Pascal French mathematician and scientist who invented the Pascaline as an aid
for his father who was a tax collector.
Pascaline is a device that could perform addition and subtractionof numbers of up to eight
digits. It is consisted of gears and cylinders which rotated to display the numerical result.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz a German scientist who invented the Leibnizs
Calculator; a modified version of Pascaline, it can perform the four basic functions and
extract square roots of a number.
Charles Babbage an English mathematician who proposed a steam-driven calculating
machine. He was considered as Father of the Modern Computer.
Babbages Differential Engine machine would be able to compute tables of
numbers, such as logarithm tables and was designed to automate a standard
procedure for calculating roots of polynomial. It was never finished because it was
very complicated and expensive.
Babbages Analytical Engine the device had two pain parts, the Store and the
Mill. These two main p[arts in modern computer are called memory unit and
central processing unit.
Augusta Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace suggested to Babbage, writing a plan for how the
Analytical engine might calculate the Bernoullu numbers. This plan is now regarded as the
first computer program. Many refer to her as the First Programmer.
Herman Hollerith invented the machine that would help process the results of the 1890
census.
Holleriths Punched card an electromagnetic counting machine that use punch
cards to sort the data. It has a card reader which senses the holes in the card, a
gear driven mechanism for counting, and displays the results on a large wall of dial
indicators.
Early Developments in Electronic Data Processing
1. Mark I developed by Howard Aiken; theofficial name is Automatic Sequence Controlled
Calculator. Approximately 50 ft long and 8 ft high. Could locate information stored in tabular
form and multiply three eight-digit numbers in one second. Process numbers up to 23 digits.

2. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) developed by John Presper

Eckert jr. and John Mauchly. The first large scale vacuum tube computer. It was originally
built for US military to calculate ballistic tables to aim their big guns. It is consisted of over
18,000 vacuum tubes. It was thousand times faster than the best mechanical calculators.
Could store 20 ten-digit numbers.
3. EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) developed by John von
Neumann. Employed binary arithmetic. Had a permanent wiring sets of instructions within
the computer and these operations were placed under a central computer.
4. EDSAC(Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) built by Maurice V. Wilkes and
his team. It was one of the first stored-program machine computers and one of the first to
use binary digits. Consisted of 512 36-bit words of liquid mercury delay lines memory, and its
input and output were provided by paper tape.
5. UNIVAC(Universal Automatic Computer) developed by George Gray in Remington
Rand Corporation. Manufactured as the first commercially available first generation
computer. UNIVAC was designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly.
6. IBM(International Business Machine) was the dominant force in the market of large
mainframe computers. IBM 650 as its first general purpose computer. IBM 701, first
commercial business computer and the first computer to make a meaningful profit.
Computer Generations

First Generation (1951-1959)

- Consisted of vacuum tubes for storing data in memory and used strored program.
- Vacuum tubes consume lots of electrical power and are prone to burning out.
Second Generation (1959-1963)
- Consisted of solid-state Transistors and diodes. Developed by William Shockley at
Bell labs. Transistors are solid-state semiconductor device typically made of silicon or
germanium. It was much smaller, much more reliable, and consumed much less
energy than vacuum tube.
Third Generation (1963-1975)
- Integrated circuit was invented by Jack Kirby and Robert Noyce. An integrated
circuit incorporates many transistors and other electrical components. Allowed
computers to become even smaller, with the whole central processing unit of the
computer fitting onto one circuit board.
Fourth Generation
- Microprocessors, multiprocessing, multiprogramming, time-sharing, operational
speed, and virtual storage.
Fifth Generation
- Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Expert System. Deals with intelligent
behavior, learning, and adaptation in machines.
- Concerned with producing machines to automate tasks requiring intelligent behavior.