2. Facts Cited in DVD “Computers”

3. Computing Speed Current personal computers can do 100 million calculations per second. The most powerful computer, like ASCI White, can reach 12 trillion calculations per second.

4. Mechanical Computers Charles Babbage designed the first mechanical computer, which was composed of gears and shafts, in early 1800s to compute the chart of logarithm. Herman Hollerith built a machine to process ‘punch cards’ of the population census in 1890. Hollerith later founded IBM.

5. Early Electronic Computers (1) Collossus: Built by Allan Turing in British in WWII, which was specially for breaking the code of German army. ENIAC: Built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert in University of Pennsylvania in 1945, three months after WWII, for calculating artillery-firing tables.

6. Early Electronic Computers (2) ENIAC: Electronic and Numeric Integrator And Computer. ENIAC: 100 foot long, 30 tons, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches,18,000 vacuum tubes, $500,000.

7. Fundamental Idea of Modern Computers John van Neuman initiated the logic map of architecture of modern computer: –Processor; –Internal memory storing commands and data; –Input and output devices.

8. First Commercial Computer UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer): Built by Eckert and Mauchly, which was used to analyzed the polls and successfully predicted the victory of Eisenhower in the presidential election in 1952.

9. Efforts of Miniaturization and Personalization (1) Computers were elite’s machines before personal computers. Three in Bell Lab invented transistor, 1947. Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby independently invented integrated circuits, 1959. In 1969, computers with integrated circuits made it possible for human (Neil Armstrong) landing on the moon.

10. Efforts of Miniaturization and Personalization (2) Ted Hoff of Intel made the first microprocessor in 1969. Doug Englebart in 1968 put forward the idea of mouse, hypertext, and graphic interface on a conference in San Francisco. Xerox’s Alto computer in 1973 was the first computer using a mouse, with a graphic interface. Price: $18,000.

11. Efforts of Miniaturization and Personalization (3) Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made their Apple I in 1975. Their Apple II was put into market in 1977, which has 4,000 kilo-bytes memory and priced at $1,200. IBM PC came to market in 1981.

12. Efforts of Miniaturization and Personalization (4) Macintosh came to market in 1984, which has a user-friendly operating system of graphic interface. Operating system MS DOS went with each IBM PC and its compatibles in 1980s and early 1990. Internet went popular in 1990s. Internet vs. personal computers resemble streets vs. cars.

13. Miscellaneous Facts A chip contains up to 100 million transistors. 700 million computers were sold in 1999. Computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1990s.

14. Non-Electronic Computers in Future Molecular computer DNA computer Biological computer

15. The Computer Era Computing speed has increased 100 million times in the past 50 years. It is expected to increase 100 million times in the coming 50 years. “The age of computer is still at its beginning.” “We are still in the dark age.”