1

History of Computers• Source – IEEE 50th anniversary of modern

computing timeline• http://www.computer.org/history/development/index.html

• Up to 50 years ago

2

History of Computing

• 1612 – John Napier made the first

printed use of the decimal point

• 1622– William Oughtred created

the slide rule (originally circular) based on Napier's logarithms that was to be the primary calculator of engineers through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

3

1642• Blaise Pascal created

an adding machine with automatic carries from one position to the next.

4

1822• Charles Babbage

– design the Difference Engine for computing the entries in navigation and other tables.

• Users did not have to understand underlying algorithm

5

1833• Babbage realizes difference engine is

special purpose

• Begins work on Analytic Engine – Has basic components of a modern computer

• BUT– Did not document well– Ideas unaccepted due to lack of

communication

6

1935-1938• Conrad Zuse

– developed his Z-1 computer in his parent's living room, a relay computer, using binary arithmetic.

• Didn’t get funding.

7

1943• John Mauchly and J.

Presper Eckert

• Worked on ENIAC at Penn– Electronic Numerical

Integrator and Calculator

• First general purpose computer

8

1944• Harvard Mark I

• First large scale, automatic, general purpose, electromechanical calculator

• Same purpose as Babbage’s machine

9

1946 - ENIAC

10

ENIAC• Eckert on left

and Goldstine (army liason) on right, holding an arithmetic unit from the ENIAC

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ENIAC• Eckert and Mauchly

• represented a stepping stone towards the true computer

• not the ultimate in the state-of-the-art technology

• BUT … construction was completed

• programmed by rewiring interconnections

12

1948• EDSAC

– Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer

• Stored program computer

• Four others being built at the same time

13

von Neumann• Von Neumann, Burks,

and Goldstine wrote memos/drafts on the first logical design of computers

• Didn’t credit Mauchly and Eckert

• Basic architecture is still widely used 50 years later

14

The Mark I computer