1 Week 1: The History of Computing (PART II) READING: Chapter 1

2 2 First Generation ( ): Vacuum tubes Primary storage device was a magnetic drum that rotated under a read/write head The vacuum tubes generate a lot of heat, so heavy-duty air-conditioning was required Commercial electronic computers in the first generation were built using vacuum tubes to store information. The vacuum tubes were used as switches

3 3 Second Generation ( ): Transistor Replaced vacuum tubes as the main component Transistor is a semiconductor device and it is much smaller, more reliable, faster and cheaper than the vacuum tubes Magnetic disk was also developed in this generation as a new auxiliary storage device Unlike the magnetic tape, the magnetic disk is faster and is organized so that each piece of data is accessible

4 4 First “pocket radio” in 1954

5 5 Third Generation ( ): Integrated Circuit (ICs) Jack Kilby invented Integrated Circuits (ICs) in ICs are solid pieces of silicon that contained the transistors and their connections Much smaller, cheaper, and more reliable than printed circuit boards pocket calculator in the 1970s

6 6 Intel 4004 Microprocessor (1972) This technology made the personal computer (PC) possible Contained 2300 transistors, max clock rate at 740 kHz First commercially available micro- processor – first used in a programmable calculator

7 7 Radio Shack TRS-80 (1978) Very successful Very affordable The first plug and play personal computer (PC) available at retail

8 8 The Apple II (1978) Initially sold to Wall St. bankers who wanted the Spread-sheet program called Visicalc which ran on the Apple II The first commercially available Apple

9 9 The Osborne 1 (1981) Came with lot’s of software bundled Only weighed about 40 lbs and sold for $1795 Note the large 5” screen! The first “portable” personal computer

10 Apple MacIntosh (1984) First PC with GUI interface Adopted from the work that was done at Xerox Designed to be a computer appliance for “Real People”

11 In 1965, Gordon Moore (one of the co-founders of Intel) predicted that the number of transistors that can be integrated on a die would double every 18 to 24 months (i.e., grow exponentially with time). Amazing visionary – million transistor/chip barrier was crossed in the 1980’s transistors, 1 MHz clock (Intel 4004) Million, 2 GHz clock (Intel P4) Million transistor (HP PA-8500) Moore’s Law

12 Moore’s Law

13 Moore’s Law P6 Pentium ® proc Year Frequency (Mhz) 2X every 2 years Courtesy, Intel Lead microprocessors frequency doubles every 2 years

14 Today’s Price/Performance Over 3 Billion operations per second costs less than $1000 Memory is measured in Megabytes/Gigabytes….not Kilobytes Communications speeds are measured in Megabits per second, not Kilobits or even lower

15 Video Video: “The Machine that Changed the world” Primary Website: