history of computers (2023)

The ancient Romans developed an abacus, the first "machine" for calculating. Although it predates the Chinese abacus, we don't know if it was the ancestor of that abacus. Counters in the bottom groove are 1 x 10ⁿ, which in the top groove are 5 x 10ⁿ

Napier invented logarithms, Edmund Gunter invented the logarithmic scales (lines etched on metal or wood), but it was William Oughtred in England who invented the sliderrule. Using the concept of Napier's bones, he wrote logarithms on strips of wood and invented the calculating machine, which was used until the mid-1970s when calculators and microcomputers first appeared.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented differential and integral calculus independently of Sir Isaac Newton, who is usually given sole credit. He invented a calculating machine known asThe wheel of Leibnizor thestep calculator.It could add and subtract like Pascal's machine, but it could also multiply and divide. This was done by repeated addition or subtraction, as mechanical adding machines did in the mid to late 20th century. Leibniz also invented something essential for modern computersbinary arithmetic.

1725 - The Bouchon loom
Basile Bouchon, the son of an organ builder, worked in the textile industry. At that time, fabrics with very elaborately woven patterns were all the rage. However, to weave a complex pattern required somewhat complicated manipulations of the threads in a loom, which often became tangled, snapped, or slipped. Bouchon observed the rolls of paper with punched holes that his father made to program his game organs and adapted the idea to "program" a loom. The paper ran over a section of the loom and where the holes appeared certain threads were lifted. As a result, the pattern could be repeatedly woven. This was the first paper punched, stored program. Unfortunately, the paper is torn and was difficult to advance. So Bouchon's loom never really caught on and eventually ended up in the back room collecting dust.

Charles Babbage is considered the father of the modern computer (although none of his computers worked or were even fully built). He first designed blueprints, which he called thatAutomatic difference engine. It was designed to help create mathematical tables for navigation. Unfortunately, the technical limitations of the time made it impossible to build the computer. His next project was much more ambitious.

As a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University (where Stephen Hawkin is now), a position he never actually held, he proposed building what he called a machineAnalytical engine. It should have a punch card input, a storage unit (calledbusiness), an arithmetic unit (called themill), automatic printout, sequential program control and a precision of 20 decimal places. In fact, he had devised a plan for a computer that was 100 years ahead of its time. Unfortunately it was never completed. It had to wait for manufacturing technology to catch up with its ideas.

During a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoirs on Charles Babbage's Analytic Engine. In her translation, she included a series of notes that specified in detail a method for calculating the Bernoulli numbers with the engine. Historians now recognize this as the world's first computer program and honor her as the first female programmer. Too bad she named such a poorly received programming language after her.

After the census, Hollerith turned to commercial use of his tabulating machines and founded the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896, which later merged with other companies to form IBM. His contribution to the computer, then, is the use of punch card data storage. Incidentally, the punch cards in computers were the same size as those in Hollerith's machine. And Hollerith chose the size he chose because that was the same size as the $1 bill at the time and so he could find many boxes that were just the right size for the cards.

dr John Vincent Atanasoff and his research assistant Clifford Barry built the first truly electronic computer, called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer or ABC. Atanasoff said the idea came to him while sitting in a small roadside tavern in Illinois. This computer used a circuit with 45 vacuum tubes to do the calculations and capacitors for storage. This was also the first computer to use binary mathematics.

1943 Colossus I

The first truly successful electronic computer was built at Bletchley Park, England. It was capable of only one function, that of code-breaking during WWII. It could not be reprogrammed.

1944 Mark I - Howard Aiken (1900-1973) und Grace Hopper (1906-1992)

In 1944, Dr. Howard Aiken of Harvard constructed the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, popularly known as the Mark I. It contained over 3000 mechanical relays and was the first electromechanical computer capable of making logical decisionsif x==3 then do thatnot howIf it's raining outside, I have to take an umbrella with me.It could do an addition in 3/10 seconds. Compare that today to something on the order of a few nanoseconds (billionths of a second).

The important contribution of this machine was that it was programmed with punched tape and the instructions could be changed. In many ways, Mark I was the realization of Babbage's dream.

One of the main programmers for Mark I was Grace Hopper. One day the Mark I malfunctioned and didn't read its paper tape entry properly. Ms. Hopper checked the reader and found a dead moth in the mechanism, its wings blocking the reading of the holes in the paper tape. She removed the moth, taped it in her log, and noted...Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in the relay. First actual error case found.
she haddebuggtthe program, and while the wordInsectused to describe defects since at least 1889, she is credited with coining the wordDebuggingto describe the work to fix bugs.

It was Howard Aiken who made the rather short-sighted comment on this in 1947The computer is a wonderful machine, but I can see that six such machines would suffice to meet all the computing needs of the entire United States.

The first fully electronic computer was theElectrical numerical integrator and calculator,known asENIAC. It was designed by J. Prosper Eckert and John W. Mauchly of the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was the first general purpose electronic computer, although it was very difficult to reprogram. It was primarily used for computing aircraft courses, shell trajectories, and code cracking during World War II.

ENIAC occupied a 20 x 40 foot space and used 18,000 vacuum tubes. ENIAC could never be switched off either. If so, too many tubes have burned out when you turn it back on. It had a very limited memory capacity and was programmed by jumper wires plugged into a large circuit board.

1948 There Transistor

In 1948 an event occurred that would forever change the course of computers and electronics. The three scientists John Bordeen (1908-1991) (left), Waltar Brattain (1902-1987) (right) and William Shockly (1910-1989) (seated) worked at Bell Labs and invented the transistor.

The transition from tube circuits to transistor circuits occurred between 1956 and 1959. With that came the second generation of computers based on transistors. The first generation were mechanical computers and tube computers.

1951 UNIVAC

The first practical electronic computer was built by Eckert and Mauchly (of ENIAC fame) and was known asUNIVAC(Universal automatic computer). The first UNIVAC was used by the Bureau of Census. The unique feature of the UNIVAC was that it was notuniqueComputer. It was mass-produced.

1954 IBM 650

In 1954, the first business electronic computer was installed at the General Electric Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky. The IBM 650 was also commissioned in Boston that year. This comparatively inexpensive computer gave IBM the lead in the computer market. Over 1000 650 were sold.

From 1957-1959 the IBM 704 computer appeared, for which the Fortran language was developed. At that time, the state of the art in computers allowed 1 component per chip, i.e. individual transistors.

1958 - 1962 programming languages

From 1958-1962 many programming languages ​​were developed.

FORTRAN(PROvonTRANSslator)
COBOL(COmmonBbusinessÖorientedLLanguage)
THE LISPEL(LIStPProcessor)
ALGOL(SOMErithmischLLanguage)
BASIC(BBeginnerAll purposeSsymbolicIInstructionsCOde)

1964 saw the beginning of the third generation of computers with the introduction of the IBM System/360. Thanks to the newhybridcircuits (the nasty looking orange thing on the board on the right), the state of the art in computer technology allowed 10 components per chip.

1965 - PDP-8

In 1965, the first integrated circuit computer appeared, the PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corporation. (PDP stands for Programmable Data Processor) After that, the real revolution in the cost and size of computers began.

1970 - Integrated Circuits

In the early 1970's the state of the art in computer technology allowed 1000 components per chip. To get an idea of ​​how much the size of electronic components had shrunk by this point, look at the image to the right. The woman peers through a microscope at an integrated circuit with 16K RAM memory. ThatStandShe has her microscopy on a 16K vacuum tube memory circuit from about 20 years ago.

1975 Altair 8800

The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics contained an article, the first, describing the Altair 8800, the first low-cost microprocessor computer to become commercially available.

Late 1970s to early 1980s The microcomputer explosion

During this time, many companies that manufactured a variety of products came and wentmicrocomputer(They were summonedMicroto distinguish them from themainframewhat some people refer to asrealcomputers). There was the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Commodore 64, the Atari, but...

1977 - The Apple II

The most successful of the early microcomputers was the Apple II, designed and built by Steve Wozniak. Together with their computer genius and enterprising friend Steve Jobs, they founded Apple Computer in 1977 in Woz's garage. Less than three years later, the company earned over $100 million. Not bad for a couple of college dropouts.

clickhereto see an interesting article from March 2016
Smithsonian Magazine issue about Woz and the Apple I.

1981
In 1981 IBM produced its first microcomputer. Then the clones started to appear. This microcomputer explosion lived up to their sloganComputers to millions for millions.Compared to ENIAC, early 80's microcomputers:
Were 20 times faster (Apple II ran at a speed of ¼ megahertz).
Had up to 16 times larger storage capacity (Apple had 64K).
Were a thousand times more reliable.
Consumed the power of a lightbulb instead of a locomotive.
Were 1/30,000 the size.
Costs 1/10,000 as much in comparable dollars
(An Apple II with a full 64K of RAM was $1200 in 1979.
Equivalent to about $8,000 to $10,000 in today's dollars)

1984-1989

In 1984 the Macintosh was introduced. This was the first mass-produced, commercially available computer with a graphical user interface. In 1989 Windows 1.0 was introduced for the PC. It wassomehowMac-like, but significantly inferior. Macintosh owners sarcastically referred to it asAGAM-84Almost as good as Macintosh 84.

1990er
Compared to ENIAC, microcomputers of the 90's:
Were 36,000 times faster(450 megahertz was the average speed)
Had a storage capacity 1000 to 5000 times larger(average was between 4 and 20 megabytes)
Were 1/30,000 the size
Costs 1/30,000 as much in comparable dollars(A PC was still around $1500, equivalent to around $2500 in 2008)