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Contents page
Page no. Titles
1 Contents
Summary
Introduction
In The Beginning
6 Introduction Of Electricity And The Generations That Follows
6 First-Generation Computers
7 Second-Generation Computers
8 Third-Generation Computers
8 Fourth-Generation Computers
11 Fifth-Generation (present and beyond)
1 Conclusion
1 Bibliography
Summary
Computers where did they come from and where are they going? These are the questions that hopefully will be answered. ooo years ago the need to hold calculations on a machine was solved with the abacus. This machine was purely used to calculate simple sums. The need to find easier and more efficient methods of calculating simple and more complicated equations became greater and eventually technology allowed the beginning of computer development. The report takes us through from the beginning through all five generations and looks into the future. No body knows what the future holds for human and computer relations but understanding where they came from is just as important as looking into the future.
Introduction
Modern life would not be what it is without computers. For better or worse computers are parts of everything in today's society. Today's machines do much more than compute equations shop scanners automatically calculate the bill while also keeping a precise inventory of stock; and cash machines let us do all our banking transactions almost any where in the world. Where did all this technology come from and will it ever stop. To understand the machines of today we need to look at where did it start and the development from then to now.
The impact on every day life that computers have is very much taken for granted. To understand what life would be like without computers, we need to understand what computers actually did for us throughout its development. If computers were not helpful to us would the extreme development that occurred actually happen?
In the beginning
5000 years ago, the first computer like machine was the abacus. This system allows the user to perform calculations using a system of sliding beads arranged on a rack. Early traders used the abacus to keep trading transactions. It took nearly twelve centuries for the next significant advance into computing.
In 164, an 18-year-old son of a tax collector called Blaise Pascal invented a rectangular box called the Pascaline or the Numerical Wheel Calculator. This machine used a system of eight movable dials, which gave it ability to reach numbers of eight figures long. The dials worked on a base of ten, when the first dial reached ten it would move the second dial once and so on. The only floor in the design was that it was limited to addition only.
In 164, a German mathematician and philosopher, Gottfried Wilhem Von Leibniz improved Blaises designs of the pascaline by creating a machine that could not only add but it could multiply as well. It used a system of dials and gears. However it was not until 180 when mechanical calculators gained widespread use. A French man called Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar invented a machine that could perform the four basic mathematical functions. It was called the Arithometer, many people used it widely and it did not become obsolete until the First World War. Although many inventors refined the arithometer, its first design helped define the age of mechanical computers.
The real beginning to computers, as we know them, was in the mind of an English maths professor called Charles Babbage. Babbage frustrated by the many errors he found while examining calculations for the Royal Astronomical Society, Babbage declared "I whish to god these calculations had been performed by steam". By 181 Babbage had noticed that machines were best at performing tasks repeatedly without any mistakes. The production of maths tables, often required simple repetition of steps, the only problem Babbage had to overcome was simply to apply this ability to a machine. It wasn't until 18 when Babbage designed a machine to perform differential equations, it was called the Difference Engine. It was powered by steam and it was the size of a locomotive. The machine would have a stored program and could perform calculations while printing the results automatically. After 10 years of work on the Difference Engine, Babbage was inspired to begin work on the first general purpose computer, which he called the Analytical Engine. Babbage's assistant, daughter of the English poet Lord Byron, was instrumental to the design. Lady Lovelace's understanding of the machine helped her to create the instruction routines that would be fed into the computer, this made her the first female computer programmer. In the 180s the U.S defence department called the programming language ADA in her honour.
Babbages steam-powered machine, although ultimately never constructed, may seem primitive but it outlined the basic elements of modern general-purpose computers of today.
In 188, an American inventor Herman Hollerith applied most of the concepts of Babbages machine. His first task was to find a more efficient way to compute the U.S census. The previous census in 1880 took nearly seven years to count and with the ever-growing population, the bureau feared it would take over ten years to count the latest census. Unlike Babbage's idea of instructing the machine with perforated cards, Hollerith used the cards as a method of storing the information, which would then be fed into a machine that compiled his results mechanically. As many as 80 variables could be stored on one card, so instead of the calculated ten years to finish the U.S census, Holleriths machine did it in a staggering six weeks.
Hollerith brought his punch card reader into the business world, founding the Tabulating Machine Company in 186, which later became International Business Machines (I.B.M) in 14 after a series of merges. Businesses and the government for data processing up until the 160s used Hollerith's punch cards.
In the years following, several engineers made other significant advances; one of the more significant developments was by Vannevar Bush. Bush developed a calculator for solving differential equations in 11. The machine could solve these complex problems, which for years had baffled mathematicians, however the machine was massive with hundreds of gears and shafts. These were required to represent the numbers and their relationships with each other.
A professor at Iowa State University, John V. Antanasoft and his graduate student Clifford Berry envisioned an all-electric computer that applied Boolean algebra to computer circuitry.
Antanasoft's approach was based on the mid 1-cetury work of George Boole who worked out that the binary system could be used with algebra. Boole stated that any equation could be stated as either true or false. Using this concept in an electronic form simply means the results will be either on of off. By 140 they had developed the first all electric computer, however lack of funding meant that their project was overshadowed by similar developments by other scientists.
Introduction Of Electricity And The Generations That Follow.
First generation
With the run up to the Second World War, governments realised how important computers could be and begun heavy development. The idea was to exploit their potential strategic importance. The first major development came from a German engineer in 141. His name was Konrad Zuse. Zuse developed a computer that helped design German airplanes and missiles. Two years later the allied forces developed a code-braking computer called Colossus, this was a major break through as it could break all codes the Germans used. The Colossus however did not make much of an impact on the general development of computers, primarily it was not a general-purpose computer, and also its existence was top secret until decades after the war.
In 144 Howard H. Aiken who at the time worked with I.B.M, succeeded in producing an all-electronic calculator. The one drawback was its size, it was about half the length of a football field and contained over 500 miles of wiring. The mark 1 as it was known could perform basic arithmetic as well as more complex equations. However not just its size was a problem, it also was very slow, even most basic problems would take between three to five seconds.
The U.S government joined forces with Pennsylvania University to develop a computer called ENIAC. The machine consisted of 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors and over 5 million soldered joints. The computer was massive and the electric power it consumed was just as big. Unlike its predecessors (colossus and Mark 1) the ENIAC was a general-purpose computer, it was also 1000 times faster than the Mark 1.
In 145 Von Neumann designed the EDVAC which had a memory that could hold both a stored program as well as data. This allowed the computer to be stopped at any time and resume again when convenient. The key to his invention was the central processing unit, which allowed all functions to be coordinated through one single source.
151 saw the introduction of the ‘UNIVAC 1', which became the first commercially available computer to take advantage of the advances so far. The U.S census Bureau and General Electric owned UNIVAC's. The first impressive achievement the machine had was predicting the winner of 15 presidential election, where Dwight D. Eisenhower came to power.
The first generation computers were categorised by the fact most was limited to there one and only program. These machines were not versatile and they were very slow. The use of the vacuum tubes caused these machines to be gigantic.
Second-generation machines
By 148, computer development had drastically changed and it was the transistor that was responsible for this. These revolutionary components were designed to replace the cumbersome vacuum tubes. As a result of the transistor, computers and other electronic equipment reduced in size dramatically. The advances in magnetic-core memory, combined with the transistors meant the second generation computers were smaller, faster, and more reliable and more energy efficient.
The first machines to take advantage of this technology were developed for atomic energy laboratories. The downfall with these machines was they were too costly and far too powerful for general use in the business sector.
Through the 160s, there were a number of successful nd generation computers used in businesses, universities and the government from companies such as Honey Well and I.B.M. These computers contained everything we associate with today's computers printer, disc storage and memory. The I.B.M. 1401 was the real beginning for a general-purpose computer in the commercial world.
The nd Gen. Computers gave birth to completely new careers such as programmers, analysts and computer system experts. These machines are also responsible for the initiation of the software industry.
Third generation computers
The transition from vacuum tubes to transistors was clearly a great improvement, however transistor generated a great deal of heat which in time damaged other components. The introduction of quarts rock eliminated this problem. In 158 an engineer called Jack Kilby developed the integrated circuit (IC). The IC combined three electronic components on a small silicon disc, which was made of quartz. With further development more components were added on to a single chip, these were called semiconductors.
Fourth generation computers
After Kilbys design of the integrated circuit, there was only one direction for the development, which was smaller. By the 180s IC's had been designed to hold millions of components on them, this ability of fitting so many components on something the size of a twenty pence piece brought not only the size of the computer but the price as well. The machines power, efficiency and reliability also improved with these new designs. Intel in 171 had designed a chip that improved on the IC even further, the chip held all the computer components like central processing unit; memory; and input output controls. The main advantage to this chip was that it could be used for any application, not like its predecessors that differed for different uses. These new chips were mass-produced and then programmed for use in allsorts of different household items, such as microwaves, televisions and also electronic fuel systems in cars.
This power in such small packages meant that the computers were not only accessible to big businesses but to the general public as well. These user friendly computers came with word processing and spread sheet programs, however the appearance of computer games like pack man combined with the home video game systems like the Atari 600, ignited the publics interest for more sophisticated and programmable home computers.
181 saw I.B.M. release its first personal computer (P.C), the advantages with these machines were that they were small and affordable enough to be used in schools, offices and at home. When the machines were released, that year I.B.M. sold only million. The year following the amount of machines had more than doubled to over 5.5 million. I.B.M. made a great success out of the P.C, after 10 years of being on the market there were more than 65 million machines worldwide. Development of these machines did not stop there, the computers became more powerful and even smaller. From desktop size these machines progressed to laptop computers (which could fit into a briefcase), then to palmtop computers (able to fit into a breast pocket). IBM's main rival was Apple Mackintosh, which in the early years of this development offered an operating system, which allowed the user to move screen icons instead of typing instructions. Users controlled the screen cursor by using a device called a mouse. The device mimicked the exact movements of the users hand and portrayed it on to the computer screen.
Computers became widespread in most workplaces and as they were getting more powerful businesses started using networks. Networks are many computers linked up to each other, this system allows the computer to use a combined shared memory, software, information and the ability to communicate with each other. This was found to be more advantageous than one large mainframe computer sharing it vast memory. The first method of a network is called local area network (L.A.N), this is set up with direct wiring i.e. an office with multiple computers all linked up to each other. The second method of networks is called the World Wide Web. This system uses telephone lines and any computer connected to a phone line has the ability to be on this global network. This network is called the Internet and allows any user to collect huge amounts of information from any corner of the world. One of the most popular uses of the Internet, is the ability to send another user a message, this is called E-mail. The internet system is becoming more useful in every day life as well, such as buying groceries from a supermarket, the user logs onto the supermarket address chooses what he or she wants, pays for it using a credit card and receive the goods two days later on the door step of the users home.
Fifth Generation (present and beyond)
There is no real definition of this generation because it is still in its infancy. The likes of HAL000 from Arthur C. Clarke's novel, 001 A Space Odyssey, was capable of every function which is currently envisioned for future fifth generation machines. Even though Hall000 was completely fiction, many of its said functions are not. Recently computers have been designed to accept spoken word instructions (voice recognition), some machines also have some ability to translate some foreign languages. This feat may seem very basic, however human understanding relies mainly on the context and meaning in the sentences, it is not just simple translation of words. Other huge advances in the fifth generation computers of today are parallel processing, which replaces Von Neumann's single processing unit with a design that joins many CPU's together. The other main advance is the use of superconductors, which enables electricity to flow with little or no resistance greatly improving the speed of information flow. There is a sign of much more advanced computers, such as a machine that helps diagnose illnesses using problem-solving steps from the basic information it is fed. However this technology will take several years until development allows it to be used worldwide.
Conclusion
The development of computers started thousands of years ago, with the abacus, it has not stopped developing even to the present day. The development speed was much greater when electricity was introduced to what were then simple problem solving machines. Development of today is so advanced that once a machine is brought within 4 to 6 months most of the hardware and software either needs updating or is completely obsolete. There are that many different companies producing these computers it is in there advantage to hold back there new designs as much as possible so Joe Bloggs will buy his up to date computer and later that year he will have to buy an updated piece of hardware from that same company to keep his PC up to date.
In the future it could be anyone's guess how far computers develop, they will certainly have a great effect on the general work place bringing more atomised systems into factories and other businesses.
Bibliography
Address Date Title
www.intel.com/pressroom 1/10/00 The History Of Intel
www.fht-esslingen.de/studentisches 1/10/00 The History Computers
www.digitalcentury.com 4/0/00 Computers
www.islandnet.com 4/0/00 Chronology of P.C.s
www.ciof.org/reports-rls.htm 10/06/001 Computers In Our Future
www.quuxuum.org/~evan/bgnw.html 7/10/00 Bill Gates Net Worth
www.microsoft.com/museum 7/10/00 Microsoft Museum
www.microsoft.com/billgates 1/10/00 Bill Gates' Web Site
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