Dannelly's Very Short History of Computing CSCI 101

In the beginning… Pascal created a calculator in 1652 able to add and subtract photos from en.wikipedia.org

Charles Babbage ( ) Math Tables Problem Difference Engine and Analytical Engines  Abilities add subtract loop (repeat instructions over and over) compare two numbers etc…  instructions and data were on punched cards

Harvard Mark 1 Mechanical, not electrical completed in 1943 used to compute artillery tables instructions on paper tape storage = 72 numbers

Digital Electronics 101 Transistors can perform AND, OR, NOT, etc Example - Half Adder: AND XOR Apple's iPad uses the A4 system chip with 177 million transistors

First Generation based on vacuum tubes ENIAC  Univ of Pennsylvania  programmed via wires EDVAC  based on ENIAC  program stored in memory UNIVAC  1951  first commercial machine

Second Generation based on transistors Bell Labs Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley Noble Prize in 1956 This IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unit held 2.8 MB of data. Lease = $2100 per month

Third Generation based on Integrated Circuits mainframes and minicomputers  IBM 360 First offered in 1964 equally suited for business or science from 8K to 8M of memory

Fourth Generation based on VLSI  VLSI = Very Large Scale Integration  thousands of transistors per chip microcomputers  IBM PC released in 1981 photo from Microsoft in 1978

Fifth Generation massively parallel computers  supercomputers still not in everyone's home Possible Revision of "5 th Generation"  maybe it was the internet-ization of every device  maybe it was mobile-ization of every device, thanks to Lithium-Ion batteries allowing smaller devices

Moore's Law computing power doubles every two years

Computers Sold Annually Units = 1000 graph from

The Future The Cloud Even more Ubiquitous Computing ?

Next Class… Computer Guts  Components of a modern computer  What to look for when buying a computer Operating Systems  Differences in Windows and Linux