1. A History of the Computer
Stage
Pre-History
Electronics
Mini
Micro
Network
c.300 B.C. –Abacus
1947 – Transistor
1991 – World Wide Web
1981 – IBM PC
1977 – Apple
1968 – Intel
Last Updated: April 16, 2017

2. Pre-History I Stones & pebbles (Greek) are counting aids
c.50 B.C. - Abacus (Babylonia)
spreads through Europe.
c.800 B.C. - al-Khwarizmi introduces the Hindu decimal system and the zero into Arabic mathematics. Resulting Indo-Arabic system is what we use today.
John Napier (Scotland) develops natural logarithms. His multiplication "rods" can be considered an ancestor of the slide rule.

3. Pre-History II
Wilhelm Schickard (Germany) builts first mechanical calculator. It can work with six digits.
Blaise Pascal builds a mechanical calculator. It has the capacity for eight digits, but has trouble carrying and its gears tend to jam.
Antonius Braun (Austria) develops the first calculator with basic calculations: add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents an automatic loom controlled by punch cards.

4. Pre-History III
Charles Babbage conceives of a "Difference Engine". It is a massive steam-powered mechanical calculator designed to print astronomical tables.
Babbage has an idea for the Analytical Engine - a mechanical computer. It uses punch cards and can perform simple a conditional operation.
Augusta Ada Byron joins Babbage and outlines the fundamentals of computer programming.
including data analysis, looping and memory addressing.

5. Pre-History VI
Konrad Zuse (Germany) constructs the Z1 in his bedroom.The machine becomes so large that it occupies his parent's living room.
1941- Zuse completes the first general purpose programmable calculator. He pioneers the use of binary math and Boolean logic in electronic calculation.
Grace Hopper invents the first compiler. During the Mark-I project, she discovers the first computer "Bug".

6. Electronics I World War II was a Time of Technological Advancement
Colossus, a British computer used for code-breaking.
the world's first electronic digital computer, Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC), was developed by Army Ordnance to compute WWII ballistic firing tables. It was developed by the Ballistics Research Laboratory in MD. ENIAC filled an entire room, weighed thirty tons and consumed 200 kilowatts of power.

7. Electronics II The Most Important Invention of the 20th Century
Bell Labs is the birthplace of the transistor, inventing the device that led to a communications revolution. Walter H. Brattain, William Shockley and John Bardeen earned the Nobel prize in 1956 for this invention. A transistor regulates current or voltage flow and acts as a switch or gate for electronic signals.

8. Electronics III The World's First Commercially Available Computer
1951 – Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC)
was used to predict the 1952 presidential election and was delivered to the Census Bureau.
UNIVAC weighed 16,000 lbs,
used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and could perform about ,000 calculations/sec. It can store 12,000 digits in random access mercury-delay lines.

9. Electronics VI A Very Simple Binary Computer
1952 – Electronic Discrete Variable Computer (EDVAC) is the successor of the ENIAC. EDVAC is built by the Moore School of Electrical Engineering under the sponsorship of the U.S. Army.
It is a very simple binary computer,
with automatic addition, subtraction, and multiplication, programmed division. Memory capacity of ,000 words is implemented with mercury delay lines.

10. Electronics V All Computers Started to be Made Using Chips
Texas Instruments and Fairchild
semiconductor both announce the integrated circuit (IC). Two separate inventors, Jack Kilby and Robert N. Noyce,
invented almost identical ICs at nearly the same time.
An IC is a small electronic device made out of a semiconductor material.
All computers can now be made using chips instead of individual transistors.

11. Electronics VI The Standard Institutional Mainframe Computer
IBM 360 is a $5 billion R&D project. The first "family" of compatible computers sets a standard that's been followed for 40 years.
By the mid-80s, the 360 and its descendents generate
more than $100 billion in revenue for IBM.

12. Mini I The First Graphical Communication System
Ivan Sutherland demonstrates "Sketchpad" on a TX-2 mainframe at MIT's Lincoln Labs which allows interaction with a computer by drawing on the display surface with a light pen. His group developed the first algorithms to remove "hidden lines" in drawings of 3D objects.
Doug Engelbart’s most famous invention is the computer mouse. He pioneers collaborative hypermedia, knowledge management, community networking, and organizational transformation.

13. Mini II
Moore’s Law
1965 – An IC that cost $1000 in 1959 now costs < $ Gordon Moore predicts that the no.of components in an IC will double every year. This is known as Moore's Law.
The World’s First CPU
1968 – Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Intel.
Intel The processor’s speed is ,000 operations/sec. It consists of 2, transistors and has a 10mm2 area.
Robert Noyce invents the microprocessor.
Intel introduces the 8008, the first 8-bit microprocessor

14. Mini III The Architecture of Information
Xerox creates Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC). Its mission is to explore the "architecture of information."
The First Popular Video Game
Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn wheeled a strange apparatus into Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, CA.
The game is called "Pong".

15. Micro I Genesis of Personal Computer (70’s)
Bill Gates and Paul Allen form Traf-O-Data to sell their computer traffic-analysis systems. Each time a car crossed the hose, the box increased its count.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are building and selling "blue boxes" in South California, making long distance phone calls.
Gary Kildall writes the first SW for a microprocessor, and then created a disk operating system for it. He writes PL/M (Programming Language/Microprocessor) to run on IBM 360 and CP/M (Control Program/Monitor), a simple OS in his PL/M language.

16. Micro II The First Generation of Microcomputer (70’s)
The Mark-8 "Your Personal Minicomputer" (based on the Intel CPU) is designed by grad student Jonathan Titus. The DIY design is published in Radio –
Electronics (Jul74).
Popular Electronics (Jan75) features the Altair 8800 on its cover. It is (also) hailed as the first "personal" computer. Thousands of orders for the rescue MITS from bankruptcy.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates develop BASIC for the Altair Microsoft is born.

17. Micro II The Second Generation of Micro Computer (70’s)
the second generation is known as home computer.
It became affordable for the general public due to the mass production of the silicon chip microprocessor.
Software Arts develops the first spreadsheet program, Visicalc. It is an immediate success. Copies shipped per month rise from 500 to 12,000 between and 1981.

18. Micro III
1980 – Microsoft is approached by IBM to develop BASIC for its personal computer project. The IBM PC is released in August, 1981.
Designed by Bob Yannes, the Commodore 64 is a home computer with 64 kilobytes of RAM that was popular in the 1980s. It offered sound and graphics.
The total estimation of sales vary between 17 and million computers and still remains the best selling computer model of all time. It targeted department stores and toy stores.

19. World Wide Web I
Early Timesharing, the concept of linking a large numbers of users to a single computer via remote terminals, is developed at MIT.
Paul Baran of RAND develops the idea of distributed, packet-switching networks.
ARPANET goes online. It is designed to provide efficient communication for scientists. ARPANET later becomes the Internet.
Four host computers in Santa Barbara, Utah, UCLA and Stanford.

20. World Wide Web II
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf develop the basic ideas of the Internet.
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) is established as the standard for ARPANET
1991- Tim Berners-Lee develops the World Wide Web. CERN releases the first Web server.

21. Sources http://www.thocp.net/index.htm