The Wonderful World of Computers Larry Holder The University of Tennessee at Martin

It all began with the ABC in the 1930’s

Followed by the ENIAC in the 40’s and the Univac in the 50’s The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes and 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed about 30 tons, was 8 × 3 × 100 feet in size, occupied an area of 1,800 square feet, and used 150 kW of electricity.

The Transistor: perhaps the most important development of the 20 th century The transistor is the fundamental building block of modern electronic devices. First practically implemented in 1947 by American physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley, the transistor revolutionized the field of electronics, and paved the way for smaller and cheaper radios, calculators, and computers, among other things. The transistor is on the list of IEEE milestones in electronics, and Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their achievement

But the real revolution began in the 70’s

Not to mention the Internet’s beginnings in 1969 (no thanks to Al Gore)

Remember any of these Micros?

The Very Basics… It all boils down to… INPUT OUTPUT Processing

And Bits and Bytes 0 1 Everything in the computer is stored as: 8 bits (Binary Digits) = 1 Byte 1,024 Bytes = Kilobyte (KB)1,024 1,024 KB = Megabyte (MB)1,048,576 1,204 MB = Gigabyte (GB)1,073,741,824 1,204 GB = Terabyte (TB)1,099,511,627,776 1,204 TB = Petabyte (PB)1,125,899,906,842,624 1,024 PB = Exabyte (EB)1,152,921,504,606,846,976 1,024 EB = Zettabyte (ZB)1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424 1,024 ZB = Yottabyte (YB) 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 A TRILLION x TRILLION … Wow, that’s a Yotta bytes!!!

Binary is found in Nature Electricity Magnetism Light

The processing is handled by the CPU (Central Processing Unit)

CPU’s are rated in Gigahertz Giga = Billion Hertz = Cycle Gigahertz = Billions of Cycles per Second

The Machine Cycle

And it needs lots of RAM! (Memory)

How much RAM? 1990 – 4 MB (about 4 million bytes) at $50 per MB = $ – 4 GB (about 4 BILLION bytes) = $20 4 GB at 1990’s prices? 4 GB = 4,096 MB x $50/MB = $204,800

Memory vs Hard Drive RAM Hard Drive Typical 1 to 3 TB Paging File (Virtual Memory)

The Layers of Computing Hardware (the nuts and bolts) Systems Software (Windows, MacOS, Linux) The “User” (you) Application Software (the “apps”)

Storing our Data

Connecting our Stuff USB (Universal Serial Bus) Ethernet (for Internet) HDMI (for display to TV, etc)

Everything’s a Computer!!!

And the Internet has changed the world What did we do before: Amazon Travelocity Airbnb Facebook YouTube Twitter Google Gmail Wikipedia … etc. etc. etc. …

Percentages of Computers in Household and Internet Use at Home between 1984 and 2011

Internet Users Worldwide First graphical web browser, NCSA Mosaic, released in 1993

larryholdermusic.org threechordsandacapo.wordpress.c om … etc. etc. etc. … This presentation is purely for non-profit educational purposes. Any images taken from various websites are used under Fair Use. Additional credits or removal of images will be done upon request.