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A Brief History of Computers Bernard John Poole University of Pittsburgh
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From Counting on fingers to pebbles to hash marks on walls to hash marks on bone to hash marks in sand Pre-Mechanical Computing: From Counting on fingers to pebbles to hash marks on walls to hash marks on bone to hash marks in sand Interesting thought: Do any species, other than homo sapiens, count?
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Mechanical computers From The Abacus c. 4000 BCE to Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine (1812)
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Mechanical computers: The Abacus (c. 3000 BCE)
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Napier’s Bones and Logarithms (1617) Picture courtesy IBM
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Oughtred’s (1621) and Schickard‘s (1623] slide rule
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Blaise Pascal’s Pascaline (1645)
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Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz’s Stepped Reckoner (1674)
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Joseph-Marie Jacquard and his punched card controlled looms (1804)
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Charles Babbage (1791-1871) The Father of Computers Inventor: cowcatcher, standard railroad gauge, dynamometer, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, heliograph opthalmoscope.
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Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine
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Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine
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Lady Augusta Ada Countess of Lovelace Lady Augusta Ada Countess of Lovelace Lady Augusta Ada Countess of Lovelace Lady Augusta Ada Countess of Lovelace - Documented Babbage’s discoveries - programmed his machines
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Electro-mechanical computers From Herman Hollerith’s 1890 Census Counting Machine to Howard Aiken and the Harvard Mark I (1944)
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Herman Hollerith and his Census Tabulating Machine (1884)
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A closer look at the Census Tabulating Machine
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The Harvard Mark I (1944) aka IBM’s Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) Howard AikenPhysics at Harvard Howard Aiken Physics at Harvard supported by IBM supported by IBM mechanical relays (switches) 35 tons with 500 miles of wiring
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The first computer bug Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper
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Electronic digital computers From John Vincent Atanasoff’s 1939 Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) to the present day
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Alan Turing 1912-1954 Alan Turing 1912-1954 Alan Turing 1912-1954 Alan Turing 1912-1954 The Turing Machine Aka The Universal Machine 1936
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John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995) John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995) John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995) John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995) Physics Prof At Iowa State University 1937: idea of the first modern computer
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Clifford Berry (1918-1963) Clifford Berry (1918-1963) Clifford Berry (1918-1963) Clifford Berry (1918-1963) PhD student of Dr. Atanasoff’s 1939: paper documenting their design
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1939 The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) The ABC was the first electronic digital computer, invented by John Vincent Atanasoff
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1943 Bletchley Park’s Colossus The Enigma Machine
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1946 The ENIAC John Presper Eckert (1919-1995) and John Mauchly (1907-1980) of the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Engineering
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The ENIAC: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer 30 tons 18000 vacuum tubes
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Programming the ENIAC programming = rewiring
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ENIAC’s Wiring! John Von Neumann came up with the bright idea of using part of the computer’s internal memory (called Primary Memory) to “store” the program inside the computer and have the computer go get the instructions from its own memory, just as we do with our human brain. John Von Neumann
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1951 Univac Typical 1968 prices—excluding maintenance & support!
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Vacuum Tubes (1941 – 1956) First Generation Electronic Computers ABC and ENIAC used Vacuum Tubes, invented by Lee de Forrest in 1907 Vacuum tubes are glass tubes with circuits inside. Vacuum tubes have no air inside of them, which protects the circuitry.
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Transistors (1956-1963) Second Generation Computers Uses Silicon developed in 1948 by William Shockley and his team at Bell Labs (Nobel prize) on-off switch Speed, in electronic terms, is essentially a function of space. The transistor was a fraction the size of a vacuum tube and thus enabled significant advances in computing speed.
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Integrated Circuits (1963-1971) Third Generation Computers used Integrated Circuits (chips). Integrated Circuits are transistors, resistors, and capacitors integrated together into a single “chip”
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Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit (VLSI), 1971-today Kilby and Noyce, who founded Intel Corporation, invented the semiconductor in 1958. They are the equivalent of a transistor, but layered onto a thin sliver of silicon using photomasking techniques INTEL 4004 Microprocessor (by Hoff) 2,250 transistors four-bit chunks (four 1’s or 0’s) 108Khz Called “Microchip”
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Personal Computers (1) MITS Altair - 1975 256 byte memory 2 MHz Intel 8080 chips Just a box with flashing lights cost $395 kit, $495 assembled
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PCs (2) IBM PC – 1981 IBM-Intel-Microsoft joint venture First wide-selling personal computer used in business 8088 Microchip - 29,000 transistors 4.77 Mhz processing speed 256 K RAM standard One or two floppy disk drives
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PCs (3) Apple II released 1977 widely used in schools Macintosh (left) released in 1984, Motorola 68000 Microchip processor first commercial computer with graphical user interface (GUI) and pointing device (mouse)
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Summary: Evolution of modern computers
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