1.2.1 History of Computers

 

3000 B.C. Abacus

Abacus is the first manual calculating device developed by the Chinese in 3000 BC. It consists of a rectangular frame having a series of vertical rods on which a number of wooden beads are allowed to slide freely. A horizontal beam of mid bar separates the frame into two sections, known as upper deck and the lower deck. On the upper deck of each rod are two beads and on the lower deck five beads are. Each bead in the upper deck has a value of five; each bead in the lower deck has a value of one.

1617 Napier's Bone

John Napier,a Scottish Mathematician and an astronomer, played a key role in the history of computing. He developed the system of logarithms in 1614 AD. The invention of logarithms was an important breakthrough in the development of mathematics and computing devices. He also invented a small instrument called Napier's Bone in 1617 AD, which consisted of multiplication tables inscribed of a set of 10 rods, which were further divided into 9 diagonal numbered parts. These bones helped a lot in multiplication and division involving large numbers.

1620 Slide Rile

William Ought red, an English mathematician constructed slide rule in 1620 AD. He used the principles of bones and logarithms. The slide rule had two movable marked rulers kept side by side, one of which slides over the other. Multiplication and division, finding of powers and roots, and other more complicated calculations may be performed with a slide rule. It is considered as the first analog computing device.

1642 Pascaline

Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, invented the first mechanical adding machine called Pascaline in 1642 AD. It consisted of dials, gears and wheels.  This machine was capable of performing additions and subtractions only supporting as many as 8 digits while multiplication and division operations were done by repeated additions and subtractions respectively. A programming language "Pascal" was later named to honor his contribution.

1801 Jacquard's Loom

Joseph-Marie Jacquard. a French silk-weaver, invented a mechanical loom in 1801 AD. It was the first machine to use punched cards to control the weaving of patterns in fabric. Thus, Jacquard's loom paved the way for the modern storage mechanism on punched cards and the binary coding system.

1823 Difference Engine 

Charles Babbage, an English mathematician, designed and built an automatic, mechanical calculator called Difference Engine in 1823 AD., designed to tabulate polynomial functions. This machine was based on the principle that the difference between certain values of the expression to be steam-powered. It was created to calculate a series of values automatically. It was controlled by fixed instructions program.

1833 Analytical Engine

Analytical engine was the first fully-automatic calculating machine constructed by British computing pioneer, Charles Babbage in 1833 A.D. The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetical unit, control flow in the form of memory, making it the first Turing-complete design for a general-purpose computer. The basic plan proposed for the Analyti8cal Engine by Charles Babbage completely matches with the input, process, and output concept of the modern computers. That is why Charles Babbage is called "Father of Computing". His engines were not actually completed, largely because of funding problems and personality issues.

Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, was one of the most picturesque characters in computer history. She was known as the enchantress of numbers" who collaborated with Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first mechanical thinking/calculating machine. Ada Lovelace devised a method of using punch cards to calculate Bernoulli numbers, becoming the first computer programmer. In her honor the U.S. Department of Defense named its computer language "Ada" in 1979 A.D.

1887 Tabulating Machine

Herman Hollerith, an American census statistician, developed a mechanical tabulating machine in 1887. The purpose of the tabulating machine was to speed up the process of assimilating census data into a usable form that would meet the needs of a country that was experiencing a significant growth in population from one decade to the next. Hollerith established the tabulating Machine Company in 1896 AD to manufacture his inventions. This company later merged with other companies to form the giant International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation.

1937 Mark-I

Howard Aiken, an American computer engineer and mathematician. In collaboration with engineers at IBM, undertook construction of an electro-mechanical computer called Mark I in 1937 AD. The Mark-I became operational in 1944 AD

1939-42 ABC

Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and his graduate student Clifford Berry build the world's first Computer at Iowa State University during 1939-1942 AD. Vacuum tubes ware used in this computer for storing and for arithmetic logic functions. It incorporated several major innovations in computing including the use of binary arithmetic. Separation of memory and computing functions.

1946-1955 ENIAC

John William Mauchly and John Presper Eckert Jr., at the Moore school of Electrical Engineering University of Pennsylvania, constructed the first general-purpose electronic computer, The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). It became operational in February 1946 AD and was used until October 1955 AD. ENIAC used 18000 vacuum tubes to process data. It was 10 ft. tall, occupied 1500 ft2 of floor-space, weighed approximately 30 tons and consumed 150 kilowatts of electric power.

1949 EDSAC

Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England invented the first practical stored-program electronic computer, called Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer in May, 1949 AD. It used John Von Neumann concept of 'stored program'. The computer contained mercury delay lines for memory and vacuum tubes for logic. It had 3000 vacuum tubes and used 30 kilowatts of electric power. It consisted of five units: arithmetical, central control, memory, input and output. Programs were input using paper tape and output results were passed to a teleprinter.

1951 UNIVAC-I

Universal Automatic Computer-I was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer designed for business application. It was produced by Universal Accounting Company set up by John Mauchly and J.P. Eckert in 1951. It became operational at the Census Bureau in early 1951 AD for use in census taking. It was also based on the EDVAC design. It was 8 ft. high, 15 ft. long weighed 5 tons and consumed about 100 kilowatts of electric power. It consisted of magnetic tape for data input and output.

1960 PDP-I

The PDP-I (Programmed Data Processor-I) was the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1960 AD. It used punched paper tape as its primary storage medium. The PDP-I was also the original hardware for playing history's first computerized video game, Steve Russell's Space war.

1971 Intel 4004

The Intel 4004 was a 4-bit central processing unit released by Intel Corporation in 1971 AD. It was the first complete CPU on one chip, and also the first commercially available microprocessor. The Intel 4004 contained 2300 transistors (Compared with 5.5 million in the 1996 Pentium Pro) and was intended for use in a calculator. The chief designers of the chip were Federico Faggin and Ted Hoff of Intel, and Masatoshi Shima of Busicom.

1975 MITS ALtair 8800 

MITS ALtair 8800 was a microcomputer introduced in 1975 AD by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems of New Mexico. It was based on a 2 MHZ Intel 8080 with 256 bytes standard RAM and interfaced with the user through the octal front panel switches. It is considered to be the first successful "personal" computer.

1976 Apple-I

The Apple-I was an early personal computer. It was built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs for personal use. The Apple I was Apple's first product, demonstrated in April 1976 AD. At the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California. It was based on MOS technology 6502 microprocessor. Apple-I was a fully assembled circuit board containing about 30 chips.

1981 IBM-PC

IBM introduced its first personal computer, the IBM PC. IBM model number 5150 was introduced on August 12, 1981 AD. It was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. The IBM PC was powered by a 4.77 MHZ Intel 8088 processor.

1993-200 Pentium

Pentium processor is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1993. The Pentium was the fifth generation of the 'x86' line of microprocessors from Intel, the basis for the IBM PC and its clones. The Pentium quickly became the processor of choice for personal computers. It was superseded by faster and more powerful processors, the Pentium Pro (1995), the Pentium II (1997), the Pentium III (1999), and the Pentium 4 (2000). The Pentium 4 was used on a wide range of high-end desktop and laptop computers.

1994-2006 Power Mac

Power Mac, was a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers base on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 AD until August 2006 AD. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100, 7100 and 8100.

2006 Intel Core

Intel Core is a brand name used for various mid-ranges to high-range consumer and business microprocessors made by Intel. The Core brand was launched on January 6, 2006 AD by the release of the 32-bit Yonah CPU – Intel's first dual-core mobile (low-power) processor. The current Lineup of Core Processors includes the latest Intel Core i7, Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i3 and the older Intel Core 2 Solo, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Intel Core 2 Extreme lines.

2007 iPhone

The iPhone is a Smartphone made by Apple in January 9, 2007 AD that combines an iPod, a tablet PC, a digital camera and a cellular phone. The device includes Internet browsing and networking capabilities. The display areas is a 3.5 inch wide screen multi-touch interface with unusually high resolution (160 pixels per inch)

2011 Watson

Watson is an artificial intelligence compute system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, developed in IBM's DeepQA project by a research team led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named for IBM's first president, Thomas J. Watson. Watson beat the two best human Jeopardy players in a three day event with a score greater than the two human players combined on February 16, 2011 AD.

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