1. History of Computers Ghulam Murtaza CSCS100 - Fall 2008
Forman Christian College
*Several of these slides have been adapted and modified from LUMS CS101 course (Dr Sohaib Khan and Dr Arif Zaman), VU CS101 slides (Dr. Altaf A. Khan) and Peter Norton’s supplementary material.

2. “If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.”
Pearl Buck

3. Goals
To look at how computers evolved to take the form that they have today.
To discuss key milestones in the history of computers to:
Learn lessons from the successes, as well as failures
Discover patterns of evolution
Draw inspiration for the future
Explain why it is important to go over the history and evolution of computers

4. Abacus – Computer? Not really a computer, but rather a computing aid
Highlight the fact that the abacus is a mathematical tool for performing arithmetic operations. Since it is not programmable (stored program concept), it does not qualify as a computer according to our definition, but it can still be considered a basic computing aid.

5. Charles Babbage ( )
Charles Babbage was born in 1791, just as the industrial revolution was getting into its swing, by the time he died in 1871 the UK had transformed into most industrialized country the world had ever seen.
Babbage was at the heart of the scientific and technical development during that period.
Babbage is best known for his 'Calculating Engines', or rather the plans for the engines as they were not built in his lifetime.

6. Babbage’s Analytical Engine - 1833
First Mechanical, Digital, general-purpose computer
Crank-driven
Store instructions
Perform mathematical calculations
Store information permanently in punched cards
Components: input, memory, processor, output
A portion (completed 1910) of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Only Partially built at the time of Babbage's death in 1871, this portion contains the “mill” (functionally analogous to a modern computer's central processing unit) and a printing mechanism.
The analytical engine was to be powered by a steam engine and would have been over 30 metres long and 10 metres wide. The input (programs and data) was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. It employed ordinary base-10 fixed-point arithmetic.
There was to be a store (i.e., a memory) capable of holding 1,000 numbers of 50 digits each. An arithmetical unit (the "mill") would be able to perform all four arithmetic operations, plus comparisons and optionally square roots. Initially it was conceived as a difference engine curved back upon itself, in a generally circular layout,[2] with the long store exiting off to one side. (Later drawings depict a regularized grid layout.)[3] Like the central processing unit (CPU) in a modern computer, the mill would rely upon its own internal procedures, to be stored in the form of pegs inserted into rotating drums called "barrels," in order to carry out some of the more complex instructions the user's program might specify.[4] (See microcode for the modern equivalent.)
Image credits: copyright©

7. Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-52)
Babbage: the father of computing Ada: the mother?
Wrote a program for computing the Bernoulli’s sequence on the Analytical Engine - world’s 1st computer program
Ada?
A programming language specifically designed by the US Dept of Defense for developing military applications was named Ada to honor her contributions towards computing
Babbage and Ada – gambling story It is not known how and when Ada became involved in her clandestine and disastrous gambling ventures. No evidence has ever been produced that Babbage had anything to do with introducing Ada to what was to be her lifelong secret vice. For a time, Lord Lovelace shared Ada's obsession, but after incurring significant losses he stopped. She continued, clandestinely.
Babbage became deeply involved in Ada's gambling toward the end of her life. For her part, Ada helped Babbage in more than one scheme to raise money to construct the Analytical Engine. It was a curious mixture of vice, high intellectual adventure, and bizarre entrepreneurship.
At one point, Ada and Babbage--never one to turn down a crazy scheme--used the existing small scale working model of the Difference Engine to perform the calculations required by their complex handicapping scheme. The calculations were based on sound approaches to the theory of handicapping, but as the artificial intelligentsia were to learn over a century later, even the best modeling programs have trouble handling truly complex systems. They lost big.

8. Type Writer (1876)
Christopher Sholes designs the original Remington "Type Writer" keyboard layout, commonly called QWERTY after the order of the first few letters on its top row.

9. Vacuum Tube – 1904 John Fleming, an English Physicist
Electronic devices, consist of 2 or more electrodes encased in a glass or metal tube
Used in the construction of earlier computers
Now replaced by transistors -more reliable and less costly.
Source:

10. Cathode Ray Tube based TV -1926
Television appeared to almost universal apethy, invented by John Logi Baird it laid down the basis for stareing at that little box in the corner of the room. Television (Latin Far Seeing) really took off in the late 1950's.

11. The World’s First Computer Colossus
Colossus was built at Bletchley Park during WWII.
Bletchley Park was a major code-breaking site. Alan Turing and others worked on cracking the German Enigma machine codes.
Colossus was built to decipher the Enigma codes.
Bletchley Park is open today as a museum. It includes a computer museum and a working replica of Colossus.

12. ABC – 1939
Attanasoff-Berry Computer (John Attanasoff & Clifford Berry at Iowa State College)
World’s first electronic computer
The first computer that used binary numbers
Used for solving equations

13. Harvard Mark 1 – 1943 Howard Aiken of Harvard University
The first program controlled machine
Included all the ideas proposed by Babbage for the Analytical Engine
The last famous electromechanical computer
Source:

14. ENIAC – 1946 Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer
World’s first large-scale, general-purpose electronic computer
Built by John Mauchly & John Echert at the University of Pennsylvania
Developed for military applications
5,000 operations/sec, tubes, 30 ton
9’ x 80’
150 kilowatts: Used to dim the lights in the City of Philadelphia down when it ran
Source:

15. Transistor – 1947
Invented by Shockly, Bardeen, and Brattain at the Bell Labs in the US
Compared to vacuum tubes:
much smaller size
more reliability
much lower power consumption
much lower cost
All modern computers are made of miniaturized transistors
For this discovery they won the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics.
IC on Intel chip:

16. Computing at Manchester after WW –II Mark I
The University of Manchester made a considerable contribution to the development of computing. They produced the first stored program computer, the first floating point machine, the first transistor computer and the first computer to use virtual memory.

17. The Transistor
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley discovered the transistor effect and developed the first device in December 1947, while the three were members of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956.
Developed as a replacement for bulky and inefficient vacuum tubes and mechanical relays, the transistor later revolutionized the entire electronics world.

18. From Tubes to Transistors and beyond
Tubes replaced mechanicals
Transistors replaced tubes
What is going to replace the transistors?
What's the next big thing?

19. Floppy Disk
Invented at the Imperial University in Tokyo by Yoshiro Nakamats
Provided faster access to programs and data as compared with magnetic tape

20. UNIVAC 1 - 1951 UNIVersal Automatic Computer
Echert & Mauchly Computer Company
First computer designed for commercial applications
First computer that could not only manipulate numbers but text data as well
Max speed: 1905 operations/sec
Cost: US$1,000,000
5000 tubes cu ft. 8 tons kilowatts
Between , 48 were sold

21. ARPANET - 1969 A network of networks
The grand-daddy of the today’s global Internet
A network of around 60,000 computers developed by the US Dept of Defense to facilitate communications between research organizations and universities

22. Intel
1950's: Shockley leaves Bell Labs to establish Shockley Labs in California. Some of the best young electronic engineers and solid-state physicists come to work with him. These include Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.
1969: Intel was a tiny start-up company in Santa Clara, headed by Noyce and Moore.
1970: Busicom placed an order with Intel for custom calculator chips. Intel had no experience of custom-chip design and sets outs to design a general-purpose solution.
1971: Intel have problems translating architectures into working chip designs - the project runs late.
Faggin joins Intel and solves the problems in weeks.
The result is the Intel 4000 family (later renamed MCS-4, Microcomputer System 4-bit), comprising the 4001 (2k ROM), the 4002 (320-bit RAM), the 4003 (10-bit I/O shift-register) and the 4004, a 4-bit CPU.

23. Intel 4004 - 1971 The first microprocessor Speed: 750 kHz
Introduced in 1971, the Intel 4004 "Computer-on-a-Chip" was a 2300 transistor device capable of performing 60,000 operations per second.
It was the first-ever single-chip microprocessor and had approximately the same performance as the 18,000 vacuum tube ENIAC. The 4-bit Intel C4004 ran at a Clock Speed of 108 KiloHertz.

24. Altair 8800 - 1975 The commercially available 1st PC
Based on the Intel 8080
Cost $397
Had 256 bytes of memory; my PC at home has a million times more RAM (Random Access Memory)

25. Cray 1 - 1976 The first commercial supercomputer
Supercomputers are state-of-the-art machines designed to perform calculations as fast as the current technology allows
Used to solve extremely complex tasks: weather prediction, simulation of atomic explosions; aircraft design; movie animation
Cray 1 could do 167 million calculations a second; the current state-of the-art machines can do many trillion (1012) calculations per second

26. Intel 8008
1972: Faggin begins work on an 8-bit processor, the Intel The prototype has serious problems with electrical charge leaking out of its memory circuits. Device physics, circuit design and layout are important new skills. The 8008 chip layout is completely redesigned and the chip is released.
There is a sudden surge in microprocessor interest.
Intel's 8008 is well-received, but system designers want increased speed, easier interfacing, and more I/O and instructions. The improved version, produced by Faggin, is the 8080.
Faggin leaves Intel to start his own company Zilog, who later produce the Z80.

27. Federico Faggin : Zilog
Zilog produced the 3.5MHz Zilog Z80 (a very popular processor taught in many universities)
… and, later, a 16-bit Z Another great design but Zilog struggled to provide good support, they were a new and inexperienced company and had only a few hundred employees; at this time Intel had over 10 thousand.

28. The Zilog Z80
The Z80 microprocessor is an 8 bit CPU with a 16 bit address bus capable of direct access of 64k of memory space.
It was based on the 8080; it has a large instruction set.
Programming features include an accumulator and six eight bit registers that can be paired as 3-16 bit registers. In addition to the general registers, a stack-pointer, program-counter, and two index (memory pointers) registers are provided.
It had a 40 pin DIP package manufactured in A, B, and C models, differing only in maximum clock speed. It was also manufactured as a stand-alone microcontroller with various configurations of on-chip RAM and EPROM.
It proves useful for low cost control applications.

29. Early Microcontrollers
1974: Motorola (originally car radio manufacturers) had introduced transistors in the 1950s and decided to make a late but serious effort in the microprocessor market. They announced their 8-bit processor. Though bulky, and fraught with production problems, their 6800 had a good design.
1975: General Motors approach Motorola about a custom-built derivative of the Motorola's long experience with automobile manufacturers pays off and Ford follow GM's lead.
1976: Intel introduce an 8-bit microcontroller, the MCS-48. They ship 251,000 in this year.
1980: Intel introduce the 8051, an 8-bit microcontroller with on-board EPROM memory. They ship 22 million and 91 million in 1983.

30. Early Computer Games
1972: The video game industry gets underway as Nolan Bushnell starts his own company, Syzygy, later renamed ATARI.
Bushnell had studied the first 8-bit microprocessors and uses them to duplicate an arcade version of the computer games he had used on his University's computers.
His first attempt at a video game, Computer Space, is 'too complicated' and fails. In his next attempt he decides to "build a game so mindless and self-evident that a monkey or its equivalent (a drunk in a bar) could instantly understand it".
Depressingly, PONG, the electronic equivalent of Ping-Pong, was a great success.

31. Early Computers
1975: An advert in Popular Electronics describes an $800 ready-to-build computer kit based on the Intel At this time the smallest commercial computers are selling for $30,000.
Steve Wozniak builds a computer in his garage with a $20 8-bit processor from MOS Tech. Inc. (absorbed by Commodore in 1977). This was the prototype for the Apple 1.
1978: Intel announces the 16 bit, 16-bit bus 8086, based on the 8080; it has 10 times the performance.

32. The Intel 8086 29,000 Transistors Clock Speeds: 5, 8 and 10 MHz
Introduced: June 8,1978
Approx. 10 times the performance of the 8080

33. The IBM PC
1981: IBM, having seen Apple's success recognise a new personal computer market. They choose Intel over Motorola and Zilog (and their own proprietary processors) because of Intel's long-term commitment to the 8086 line.
IBM selects the Intel 8088 for their PC, introduced in August.
Intel bring out the 16-bit for the IBM PC AT but it has weaknesses, most notably in virtual memory support. The newest 'killer' application software, Microsoft Windows, needs a more powerful processor.
IBM’s service to the computer industry was to make the PC 'open', this meant clone makers could compete with IBM-compatible PCs. New companies such as Compaq and Dell (both from Texas) fare well, as do South Korea's Leading Edge and Taiwan's Acer who produce PCs with AT performance at half the price.
1985: Intel announce the a 32-bit microprocessor, of 275,000 transistors. It was the world's best performing processor at this time.
1986 Compaq are the first company to bring out a 386 PC. IBM's 386 PC, the PS/2, does not come out for another year.

34. Moore’s Law Dr. Gordon E. Moore co-founded Intel in 1968.
His observation that number of transistors doubled every 2 years became known as “Moore’s Law”

35. Transistors per Processor

36. IBM PC & MS DOS
IBM PC: The tremendously popular PC; precursor of 95% of the PC’s in use today.
MS DOS: The tremendously popular operating system that came bundled with the IBM PC

37. Apple Macintosh - 1984 The first popular, user-friendly, WIMP-based PC
Based on the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing Device) ideas first developed for the Star computer at Xerox PARC (1981)

38. World Wide Web -1989 Tim Berners Lee – British physicist
1989 – At the European Center for Nuclear Energy Research (CERN) in Geneva
The 1st major browser “Mosaic” was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

39. Deep Blue -vs- Kasparov - 1997
In 1997 Deep Blue, a supercomputer designed by IBM, beat Gary Kasparov, the World Chess Champion That computer was exceptionally fast, did not get tired or bored. It just kept on analyzing the situation and kept on searching until it found the perfect move from its list of possible moves

40. The next milestone? Mechanical computing Electro-mechanical computing
Vacuum tube computing
Transistor computing
(the current state-of the-art)
Quantum computing

41. The Future – Quantum Computing?
QUANTUM MECHANICS is the branch of physics which describes the activity of subatomic particles, i.e. the particles that make up atoms
Quantum computers may one day be millions of times more efficient than the current state-of-the-art computers.
For example, finding the largest from a list of four numbers:
current computers require on average 2 to 3 steps to get to the answer
Whereas, the quantum computer may be able to do that in a single step
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