History of Computer
First, why should we spend time on recounting the events of the past Why we not talk about what is happening today and what will happen in future.? Why?
If you do not learn from the history, you may 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
Vacuum Tube - 1904
John Fleming, an English Physicist, developed the very first one
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 graduation 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?
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 General purpose
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 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
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 second; 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
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
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
Continue..
It could analyze 300 billion chess moves just in 3 minutes.
Can Computer Think?
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
What is he next major Milestone?1. Mechanical computing
2. Electro-mechanical computing
3. Vacuum tube computing
4. Transistor computing(the current state-of the-art)
5. Quantum computing
QUANTUM MECHANICS is the branch of physics which describes the activity of subatomic particles, i.e. the particles that make up atoms
Generation of Computer
First Generation Second Generation Third Generation Fourth Generation Fifth Generation
First Generation(1945 – 1956)
• Main processing device : Vacuum tubes
First generation computer Advantages : . It was only electronic device . First device to hold memory Disadvantages : . Too bulky i.e large in size . Vacuum tubes burn frequently . They were producing heat . Maintenance problems . Cooling is required . Not portable. (Because of Bulky Size) . Very Expensive
To Bulky in Size
Vacuum tubes burn frequently
Second Generation Computer (1956 – 1963)
• Main processing device : Transistor
Second Generation Computer… Advantages : . Size reduced considerably . The very fast . Very much reliable Disadvantages : . They over heated quickly . Maintenance problems . Cooling was still required. . Although size was reduced but still not
portable. . Expensive
Third Generation Computer(1964-1971)
Main processing device : IC (integrated circuit)
Advantages : . ICs are very small in size . Improved performance . Production cost cheap Disadvantages : . ICs are sophisticated
Fourth Generation Computer(1971-upto Now)
Main processing device : ICs with VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration)
Fourth Generation Computer…
Advantages : . It is a compact . Less power consumption . Production cost is cheap . Portable Disadvantages : . No artificial intelligent.
Fifth Generation Computer(present & future)
• Main processing device : ICs with parallel processing
Fifth Generation Computer…
Voice recognition Artificial intelligence Quantum computing Bio computing Nano technology Learning Natural languages
Question
Can we live with out Computer?