The History of Computing From the earliest mechanical computers through the first electronic computers to today's microprocessors

The Early Years The Abacus is generally considered to be the first mechanical computer.

Early Software The Algorithm is related to a 12th century Tashkent scholar: Muhammad ibn Musa Al'Khowarizmi

The First Floating Point Unit 1612 - John Napier (of the Netherlands) made the first documented use of the FP and invented the logarithm. 1622 - William Oughtred created the slide rule based on Napier's logarithms that was to be the primary calculator of engineers through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

More Stepping Stones 1642 - Blaise Pascal created an adding machine with automatic carries from one position to the next. 1673 - Gottfried Leibniz built a calculator capable of multiplication

First Industrial Use In France, Joseph- Marie Jacquard invented an automatic loom using punched cards for the control of the patterns in the fabrics. The introduction of these looms caused the riots against the replacement of people by machines.

Charles Babbage - “Father of the Computer” 1822 - Designed the Difference Engine for the purposes of computing the entries in navigational and other tables (even received the first government grant for computer research). 1833 - Designed the Analytical Engine that had the basic components of a modern computer. Unfortunately due to poor documentation most of his ideas were lost.

The World’s First Programmer? 1842 - Ada Augusta King, Countess of Lovelace, translates Menabrea's pamphlet on the Analytical Engine, adding her own notes, and becomes the world's first programmer. 1847 - 1849 - Babbage continues working on the 2nd version of the Difference Machine and draws plans for it. In 1991 the Science Museum in Kensington, England build the 2nd version (using 19th century technology).

More Milestones (אבני דרך ) 1854 - George Boole describes his system for symbolic and logical reasoning that becomes later the basis for computer design. 1890 - Herman Hollerith won the competition for the delivery of data processing equipment to assist in the processing of the data from the 1890 US Census (מפקד אוכלוסין ). The company he founded, Hollerith Tabulating Company (HTC), was merged with 2 other companies to become CTR (1914) and was renamed International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924. This set the trend for 3 letter names in the computer industry.

Another end to WW2? 1935 - 1938 Konrad Zuse, in Berlin, Germany, developed his Z-1 computer using binary arithmetic, in his parent's living room. He continued with the Z-2 in 1938 with the help of Helmut Schreyer. During World War II he applied to the German Government for assistance in building his machines, but he was turned down on the basis that it would take longer to complete his work than the government expected the war to last.

The ABC 1936 - 1939 - John Vincent Atanasoff, with John Berry, developed the the ABC -- the Atanasoff- Berry Computer -- at Iowa State University, USA as a special purpose machine for the solution of sets of linear equations in Physics. Perhaps the earliest example of an electronic calculator, the ABC contained concepts that would appear later in "modern computers" -- the ALU and rewriting memory. But this computer (as Zuse’s) is still not considered by most as the true first electronic computer.

Computerized Warfare 1943 - The Colossus built in England by a team led by Alan Turing, was a special purpose computer used to break the German code ULTRA encrypted using the ENIGMA machines. Breaking the German code was one the the keys to the success of the D-Day invasion. 1944 - The Harvard Mark I (and later II, III and IV) were general purposed electromechanical calculators (sponsored by the US Navy) to compute artillery and navigation tables - the same purpose as intended by Babbage for the Difference Engine.

The First Bug 1945 - Grace Murray Hopper, at Harvard University on the Mark II computer, found the first computer bug beaten to death in the jaws of a relay. She glued it into the logbook of the computer.

ENIAC, The 1st Electronic Computer 1943 - Work on ENIAC was started in at the University of Pennsylvania, with John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert responsible for its implementation. The US Army liaison (קישור ) was Herman Goldstine. 1946 - ENIAC was unveiled in Philadelphia (having being a secret during the war). ENIAC was programmed through the rewiring of the interconnections between the various components. ENIAC was later to be modified into a stored program machine

More About ENIAC ENIAC was a general purpose computer used for computing artillery tables. It was U shaped, 25m long, 2.5m high and 1m wide ENIAC used 18,000 vacuum tubes. Programming was done by plugging cables and setting switches. Data was entered by punched cards. Programming for typical calculations took from half a hour to a day. ENIAC was 2 magnitudes (סדר גודל ) larger and 4 magnitudes slower than modern computers (1900 adds per sec).

Photo of the ENIAC

Another Photo of the ENIAC

The von Neumann Computer 1944 - John von Neumann joined the ENIAC project. The idea of storing programs as numbers was proposed. 1945 - von Neumann wrote a memo proposing a stored-program computer called EDVAC. Goldstine distributed the memo, put von Neumann’s name on it and omitted Eckert’s and Mauchly’s names. Most computer historians agree the von Neumann received far more credit than he deserved. The most prestigious (יוקרתי ) award in the field of Computer Architecture is the Eckert-Mauchly award.

The Transistor 1947 - William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain invent the "transfer resistance" device, later to be known as the transistor that will revolutionize the computer and give it the reliability that could not achieved with vacuum tubes.

Late 40s, Early 50s 1948 - T.J. Watson Sr ordered the building of the Selective Sequence Control Computer (SSEC) for IBM. 1949 - the first large-scale, fully functional, stored-program electronic digital computer was developed by Maurice Wilkes and the staff of the Mathematical Laboratory at Cambridge University. It was named EDSAC. 1951 - UNIVAC I built by Remington-Rand and designed by Eckert and Mauchly was sold to the US government for 1,000,000$. 48 systems were built and sold.

The 1950s IBM comes out with a series of computers (701, 702, 650, 305, 704). Jean Amdahl is IBM’s chief architect. Memory is upgraded to core memory and magnetic tapes to disks with movable read/write heads. 1957 - Fortran, one of the first prgramming languages in introduced. 1958 - Integrated Circuit invented. 1959 - Seymour Cray starts working at CDC as its chief architect.

The 1960s 1962 - First IC computer built by Fairchild. 1963 - ASCII code invented. 1964 - IBM/360 introduced. 1965 - Digital Equipment Corporation introduced the PDP-8, the first TRUE minicomputer. 1969 - Work on ARPAnet (the predecessor of the Internet) begins.

The 1970s (1st half) 1971 - First microprocessor: The Intel 4004. First Floppy disk as well. These 2 inventions are the roots of personal computing. 1973 - Ethernet invented at Xerox. 1974 - First ATM ( כספומט ) 1975 - First PC. the MITS Altair 8800. $375, 256 bytes of memory (not 256k),but had no keyboard, no display, and no auxiliary storage device. Later, Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote their first product for the Altair -- a BASIC compiler (named after a planet on a Star Trek episode).

The 1970s (2nd half) 1976 - Cray-1. First Super Computer announced. 1976 - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak produced the Apple II that was assembled and complete with its own keyboard and monitor.

The IBM PC Introduced 1981 - IBM entered the field in with the IBM "PC" and supported by the DOS operating system developed under an agreement that gave Microsoft all the profits in exchange for the development costs having been borne by Microsoft. The PC’s microprocessor was the Intel 8086. 1982 - Computer chosen as Man of the Year by Time magazine.

Apple’s Macintosh 1984 - Based on the Alto by Xerox the Macintosh is introduced. The mouse and the icon became the major tools for computer interaction.

Cray’s Supercomputers From 1976 until it was purchased by SGI (Silicon Graphics) in 1995, Seymour Cray and his company were the leaders in the field of supercomputers. Shown is the CRAY X-MP with 4 processors.

RISC and Workstations In the early 80s two groups at Berkeley (led by David Patterson) and at Stanford (led by John Hennesy) invented the concept of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers). The microprocessors which emerged from these 2 projects the MIPS and SPARC are used in most modern workstations. Coupled with the UNIX operations system these systems are the main tool of engineers in these days.