Augusta Ada King,Countess of Lovelace
● Charles Babbage’s patron, assistant, and chronicler
● Daughter of Lord Byron, the poet
● Wrote sets of instructions for the Analytical Engine
● World’s first computer programmer
● U.S. Department of Defense named itsprogramming langauge Ada after her
1815-1852
”The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom
weaves flowers and leaves”
Jacquard loom
Herman Hollerith
● Developed a tabulating machine for the U.S. census of 1890
● Stacks of punched cards served as a permanent memory
● Cut census time from 10+years to 6 weeks
● Not programmable
● Started a company to markethis machine which merged with others to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (eventually known as... )
Herman Hollerith
John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry
● American physicists at Iowa State College
● Berry was Atanasoff’s grad student
● Built ABC machine in late 1930s
● Special-purpose calculator for finding solutions to systems of equations
● All-electronic design using vacuum tubes for switching elements
● Never completed, due to insufficient funding
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (replica)
Konrad Zuse
● German engineer under the Third Reich
● Built Z1, Z2, Z3, and Z4 in late 1930s and early 1940s with Helmut Schreyer
● Electromechanical design with relays for switching elements
● General-purpose computing device
● Controlled by perforated celluloid strips(like punched cards)
● First machine to use binary number system
● Never completed, due to insufficient funding from the Nazi government
1100101011000100011011111000010110010010111101010
Howard Aiken
● American physicist and applied mathematician
● Built Mark I at Harvard in collaboration withGrace Hopper and IBM engineers in 1944
● Inspired by Babbage’s Analytical Engine
● Electromechanical design with relays for switching elements
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
Howard Aiken
● Handled 23-digit numbers, logarithms, trigonometric functions
● Controlled by punched paper tape
● Fully automatic but slow(3-5 seconds per multiplication)
● Remained in use at Harvard until 1959
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
The First Bug
● Grace Hopper found the first actual computer bug while working on the Mark II in 1945
Alan Turing
● English mathematician and first true computer scientist
● Invented a mathematical model of a computer called a Turing Machine
● Proved fundamental theorems about the limitations of computers
● Wrote groundbreaking papers in many different fields
– Theory of computation (1936)
– Artificial intelligence (1950)
– Self-organizing chemical reactions (1952)
Alan Turing
● During World War II, he secretly worked for the British government to crack German Enigma codes
● Helped develop the British electronic code-breaking computer called Colossus
● Enabled Allies to read German military transmissions from 1942 on
● Persecuted by British government after the war for being homosexual
● Forced to undergo hormone “therapy”
● Committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 41
ENIAC● Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator
● Developed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania in1945
● First general-purpose all-electronic digital computer
● Filled a 30 x 50 ft. room
● Weighed 30 tons
● Dissipated 150,000 wattsof energy
● Performed calculations forthe atomic bomb projectat Los Alamos
ENIAC● Used 19,000 vacuum tubes
ENIAC● ...which tended to burn out frequently
Hmm...maybe it’sthis one? Nope...
How about this one?Nope...
ENIAC● Reprogramming required physically rewiring the machine
ENIAC● ...which was a tedious and error-prone process
Hold on... I think theblue one and the redone are supposed to
be reversed...
ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC
John von Neumann● Hungarian mathematician, computer
scientist, cyberneticist, all-around genius
● Worked on atomic bomb project in WW II
● Invented game theory and developed theory of self-replicating automata
● Originated key concept ofstored-program computerin 1945
● Program instructions = data
● Easily reprogrammable
● Von Neumann architectureis still the universal standard
EDVAC● Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer
● Designed by Mauchly, Eckert, and Von Neumann
● Stored-program design
● Used binary instead ofdecimal to representinformation
● Version called UNIVAC Iwas the first commerciallyavailable computer system
● Sold to the U.S. CensusBureau in 1951
First Generation Computers● Mid 1940s to late 1950s
● Stored-program design with ~ 1000 words of RAM
● Used vacuum tubes, but required less space than ENIAC
● Punched cards for input and output
● Vacuum tube or magnetic core memoryfor data storage
● Programmed directlyin binary machinelanguage
● Included EDVAC andUNIVAC
First Generation Computers
Transistors
● Invented at Bell Labs in 1947 byWilliam Shockley, John Bardeen,and Walter Brattain
● Generated far less heat thanvacuum tubes
● Required far less power
● Much faster, smaller, cheaper,and more reliable
Transistors● Incorporated into Second Generation computers in the late
1950s and early 1960s
Integrated Circuits● Invented in the late 1950s by Jack Kilby of Texas
Instruments
● Many transistors etched on a single silicon chip as a single electronic circuit
● Faster due to decreased distance between transistors Incorporated into Third Generation computers in the mid 1960s to early 1970s
VLSI Technology● Very Large Scale Integration
● Thousands or millions of transistors per chip
● First microprocessor chip: Intel 4004 (1971)
● Designed by Ted Hoff for Japanese calculator company
● Followed by Intel 8008 and 4040 (1972) and 8080 (1974)
● Entire computer packaged as a single integrated circuit chip
● Like having an Analytical Engine the size of a shirt button
VLSI Technology● Incorporated into Fourth Generation computers from the
mid 1970s to the present
VAX minicomputer from Digital Equipment Corporation (early 1980s)
MITS Altair 8800 (1975)● First popular and affordable microcomputer ($375)
● Based on Intel 8080 chip
● 256 bytes of RAM (that’s bytes, not kilobytes or megabytes)
● Programmed by manually flipping switches on front panel
● Output in the form of blinking lights
● No softwareavailable
● MITS couldn’tsell them fastenough!
MITS Altair 8800 (1975)● Some assembly required
MITS Altair 8800 (1975)● Some assembly required
● Bill Gates and Paul Allenpromised MITS a BASICinterpreter for the Altair,leading to the creation ofMicrosoft in 1975
Ha, ha, I’m richer than you!
Other Early Developments
● IMSAI 8080 microcomputerwas similar to the Altair 8800
● Doug Engelbart invented the mouse at SRI in 1964
● Xerox PARC Alto computer (1974) used mouse, graphics, menus, and icons
Apple Computer, Inc.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak The original Apple I
Apple II (1977)● color graphics● BASIC, 4K RAM● cassette tape data storage● $1300● VisiCalc released in 1979
Apple Computer, Inc.● Sales went from $2.5 million to $583 million in six years
● Fortune 500 by 1982
● Steve Jobs visits Xerox PARC in 1979
● Apple Macintosh introduced in 1984
● First widely available microcomputer with GUI
The Personal Computing Era is Born
TRS-80 Model II
Radio ShackTRS-80 Model I
affectionatelyknown as the“Trash 80”
Commodore PET (1977)
IBM PC (1981)
reverse-engineered by Compaq in 1985
The Internet and the World Wide Web● ARPANET created in 1969 by connecting together 4
computers at UCSB, UCLA, Utah, and SRI
● World Wide Web conceived at CERN in Switzerland in late 1980s by Tim Berners-Lee
● First Web browser written in 1990by Tim Berners-Lee using a NeXTcomputer
The Internet and the World Wide Web● Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina at the University of Illinois
develop Mosaic Web browser
● Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark found Netscape Communications, Inc. in 1994
● Netscape goes public on August 9, 1995 andis worth $3 billion by the end of the day
Marc Andreesen
The Future . . . ?
● “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” —Thomas J. Watson Chairman of IBM, 1943
● “If automotive technology had progressed as fast as computer technology between 1960 and today, the car today would have an engine less than a tenth of an inch across, would get 120,000 miles per gallon, have a top speed of 240,000 miles per hour, and would cost $4”
—Rick Decker and Stuart Hirshfield The Analytical Engine
● Other predictions, anyone?
For Further Reading
One of the best available historiesof the personal computer revolution is
Fire in the Valley: the Making of the Personal Computerby Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine
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