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PIONEERS • CHARLES BABBAGE- 1791-1871 - the father of digital computing. British mathematician, mechanical engineer and inventor. At Cambridge University (England) in 1812 he conceived the idea of a mechanical digital computer. The machine of his design proved to be too difficult to build and his machine was never completed. It would have weighed 15 tons and composed of 25,000 parts. • GEORGE BOOLE - 1848 British Mathematician develops binary algebra • ALAN MATHISON TURING. (1912 - 1954.) British Mathematician, elected Fellow at King's College, Cambridge at the age of 22. In 1934 he invented the abstract computing machine - now known simply as a Turing machine - on which all subsequent stored-program digital computers are modeled. • JOHN VON NEUMANN(1903 in Budapest - died 1957 in Princeton, NJ). He is generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians in modern history. In 1945 he wrote the first draft of a report describing a design architecture for an electronic digital computer with programming stored in RAM.
EARLY ELECTRONIC DIGITAL COMPUTERS Atanasoff-Berry Computer constructed in 1939-1942 at the Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, provided the basic ideas for an electronic digital computer, although it only solved systems of linear equations. However it did incorporate a primitive digital random access memory (DRAM), used binary digits, performed all calculations using electronics. Used a system in which computation and memory are separated. It was not patented and was described in a paper. Project was abandoned. Konrad Zuse created Z3, in Germany in 1941, the first fully-automated, program-controlled, and freely-programmable computer for binary floating-point calculations. It used telephone relays and punched 35mm film for input. He built a working model and obtained a patent but did not receive support from the Nazi government for further development. Colossus, built in 1943 at Bletchley Park, England, was the first electronic digital machine with programmability. However it had no internally stored programs or memory, and it was not a general-purpose machine, being designed solely for decoding German encrypted messages, involving counting and Boolean operations. Mark I, completed in February 1944, used over 1500 tubes; Mark II 2400 tubes.
ENIAC, completed February 1945 at University Of Pennsylvania for the U.S.Army Ordnance Dept. The first programmable electronic computer, 19,000 vacuum tubes, weighed 30 tons Programmed with switches and plug-in cables. Cost $500,000, designed by Dr. John Mauchly and Presper Eckert. EDVAC, was the first internally stored program computer to be built. Designed by Mauchly and Eckert with assistance of Dr. von Neumann. Was smaller and faster than ENIAC. Programs entered in punched cards and stored on magnetic tape. Built in 1949 by Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation in Philadelphia for U.S.Army Ballistics Research Laboratory. 6,000 vacuum tubes, 12,000 diodes, weighed 8 tons 5.5kB of RAM (in mercury delay lines) Cost $500,000 • ENIAC and EDVAC________________
FIRST COMMERCIAL DIGITAL COMPUTERS LEO, based on Cambridge University's EDSAC, funded by Lyons and Co, British catering and food manufacturing company, was first commercially funded and applied digital computer, commenced operation Sept 1951, running inventories and payroll UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States, design begun by Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corp, and completed after the company acquired by Remington Rand. First unit delivered to U.S.Census Bureau March 1951. First units delivered for commercial use to General Electric and Metropolitan Insurance in 1954. Contained 5,200 vacuum tubes, consumed 125kW power Weighed 13 tons. Mercury tube RAM stored 12 kiloBytes. Tape drives provided input and output IBM Model 701 introduced in 1953, used cathode-ray Williams tube RAM, later replaced by magnetic-core RAM doubling the speed and increasing capacity to 40kB. Price >$1,000,000. .
The first Transistor was made on December 16, 1947 by the team of William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen at Bell Laboratories in Nutley, NJ. For their work they were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics. Silicon Transistor development by Gordon Teal at Texas Instruments 1954 was stable and easy to manufacture and production took off. First used in Sony transistor radios. . Integated Circuit invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958. 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics, Enabled production of RAM, CPU and BIOS in single Chips and development of smaller computers Microprocessor chip Intel 4004 invented by Ted Hoff at Intel in 1971revolutionized the industry. 2300 transistors in space 3/4" x 1/4" x 0.16", first used in Busicom scientific calculator. Later models , faster and still more powerful made the Microcomputers of the 1980s possible. . THE TRANSISTOR REVOLUTION
MINICOMPUTERS • 1970s – Integrated Circuits and magnetic disc drives replaced tubes and tape drives reducing size and costs. Computers became affordable for small companies. • DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION (DEC) PDP8 first to offer high speed and large data capability for less than $25,000. Over 600,000 units were sold Programming languages, such as Fortran, COBOL, C and BASIC enabled users to write problem solutions independent of machine
PERSONAL MICROCOMPUTERS • Microprocessors such as Intel 8088 and Zilog Z80 and invention of floppy discs paved way for inexpensive personal computers in the 1980s. • Apple 1 – in kit form in 1976 for $666 • Apple 2 – 1977 with 2 5.25” floppy drives • Commodore PET – 1977, audiotape storage • IBM-PC in 1981, PC-DOS, $2400 - and applications such as WORDSTAR and VISICALC brought easy computing to every home and office
GUI - Graphic User Interface • XEROX – PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) developed graphical interface and use of mouse, hyperlinks and pull down menus in 1973. Several thousand Xerox Alto computers were built and interconnected over Ethernet. Xerox failed to develop commercial market. • APPLE developed these ideas further and introduced them in the first commercial GUI computer Macintosh in January 1984. • IBM introduced GUI operating system OS/2 in 1988. • MICROSOFT WINDOWS - first successful version 3.0 released October 1991, dominated market for GUI operating systems on personal computers.
WWW - World Wide Web • ARPANET first connections 1969 – UCLA, Stanford, Un. Utah, UC Santa Barbara. • Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP) established Sept 1981 – to enable communication between all computers. • ASCII 7-bit character encoding adopted 1981 as international standard for English alphabet, extended to 8-bit for all European languages. 1993 16-bit Unicode extended to all languages. • World Wide Web established 1993, providing hypertext links. • WorldWideWeb Consortium (W3C) established 1994 to standardize protocols and technologies, enabling direct communication by millions around the world.
PORTABLE - LAPTOP - COMPUTERS • GRID COMPASS 1982 - first clamshell laptop – 1982 – weight 11lbs – cost $10,000. 340kB magnetic bubble RAM, all drives external. Used by NASA & military. • PANASONIC Senior Partner 1983 - first IBM compatible “portable” - weight 31 lbs. - cost $2495. 2 – 5 1/4” 320kB disk drives. RAM 162kB, 4.7Mhz. Built in thermal paper printer. 9” green on black screen • ZENITH Supersport 286 1987 - first LCD 10” screen, blue with 8 degrees of shading - Weight with batteries 14 lbs. Cost ~ $3000. Early version with 2 – 3 1/2” 720kB disk drives, later version, 20MB hard drive. 640kB RAM 12 Mhz.
ACCESSORIES • PRINTERS The output of computers went to noisy high-speed printers using old typewriter technology. At Palo Alto Research Center, Xerox developed laser printers, which were first released in 1977. Widely available by 1980. • InkJet Printers were invented in1976, but the HP DeskJet was released in 1988 and made color printing available to everyone. • Scanners, cameras, video drives, storage drives extendedthe applications for computers. They and many other useful accessories all used different connectors and cables. Only desk-top computers had all the required connectors. • Universal Serial Bus – USB - 1998 made connection easy between devices. Laptops can now replace desktop computers. Docking stations allow many devices to connect, laptop easy to take away. • WiFi – 1993 Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, established the first campus-wide Wireless Internet network, doing away with the necessity of expensive cabling.