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Computer History
Evaluation of Computer
Long ago, when computer was not there, Computer word was used as a job title. People who used
to do the repetitive calculations in many fields, were coming under this job title. They were using
hands, fingers, pebbles etc for the calculations. People used to do calculations for hours and hours
and leading to mistakes. Calculations used to take long time also. Inventors from hundreds of years
have been searching for a way to mechanise this task. The first counting device developed was
Abacus.
The Abacus: Abacus was invented by Egyptians in 450 BC. It is a rectangular wooden frame
having rods on it and beeds or pebbles or shells slide freely over the rods. It was used for addition
and subtraction problems.
It works as follows:
The value assigned to each beed (pebble or shell) is determined by its position: one beed on a
particular line represents 1; two beeds together have the value of 2. A beed on the next line,
represents 10, and a beed on the third line represents100 and so on. Therefore, three properly
placed beeds--two with values of 1 and one with the value of 10--represent 12. Thus the Abacus
works on place value principle.
After the Abacus, for long time there was not much progress made to automate the counting. There
were many formulae and theorems developed by Greeks, but all the calculations were done by
hands.
Napier Bones: In 1617 the Scotish Mathmatician John Napier discovered a concept of
logarithams, which were the technology used to perform multiplication via addition. He invented a
tool called Nepier Bones. It is a multiplication table using numbered rods. These rods were carved
either from wood or bones.
By using Napier Bones, multiplication can be performed for any number by 2to 9.
Using Napier's Logarithams concept, Slide Rule was developed by English Mathmatician in 1921.
Slide rule was very popular and was used for long time.
The Pascaline: In 1642, a french mathmatician Blaise Pascal invented first mechanical digital
calculator using gears. It was called Pascaline. This machine could perform addition and
subtraction. The basic principle of his calculator is still used today in water meters and modern-day
odometers.
It had eight movable gears that added upto eight figured long sum and carrying of 10's , 100's, and
1000's etc. Each gear had 10 teeth. When a first gear with ten teeth moved one rotation(ten teeth)the second gear shift one tooth to represent 10 and when second gear moved 10 rotation, the third
gear shift one tooth to represent one hundred and so on.
Difference Engine: In 1822, an english mathmatician Charles Babage designed a calculating
machine called difference Engine. It was steam driven, fully automatic and commanded by fixed
instruction program. This machine was used to calculate and print mathmatical tables. He made
another machine called Analytical Engine which had a punched card input, storage and arithmetic
unit. It was the first machine which had almost all the parts which modern computer has( input
storage, processor and output). Charls Babage is called the father of Computer.
in 1890 by Herman Hollerith developed a device which could automatically read data which had
been punched onto card. It was called tabulating machine. As a result of his invention, reading
errors were reduced, work flow was increased, and, more important, stacks of punched cards could
be used as storage of almost unlimited capacity; furthermore, different problems could be stored on
different batches of cards and worked on as needed. Hollerith's tabulator became so successful that
he started his own firm to market the device; this company eventually became International
Business Machines (IBM).
In the Hollerith machine, punch cards could not be used for complex computations.
Further work was going on and in 1944, IBM and Harvard with a partnership made a first
programmable digital computer called Harvard MarkI in US. But it was not fully electronic
computer.
Further, The transistor was invented. The first programmable digital computer was developed.
First Generation Computer: (1951-1959),
 The first computer UNIVAC I designed and sold commercially.
 The programming language FORTRAN was designed by IBM,

First integrated circuit or chip ( which is a collection of many small transistors) was made.
Second Generation computer(1959-1965):
 Mainframe computers were developed: the first general-purpose digital computers to use
intergrated circuits.
 COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) programming language was developed.
 The first minicomputer was developed.
 BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language
developped.
Third Generation Computer (1965-1971):
 The Internet is started. Pascal programming language was developed.

First Intel microprocessor chip was developed.
 Intel released the first microprocessor, a specialized integrated circuit which was able to
process four bits of data at a time. It also included its own arithmetic logic unit.
Fourth Generation (1975-present):
 The first microcomputer was designed and developed.
 William gated and Paul Allen developed BASIC Compiler, from that time Microsoft was
born.
 First Apple computer was developed.
 In 1980, MSDOS was developed for IBM PC . IBM PC was introduced with a 16-bit
microprocessor.
 Macintosh computer was introduced, which incorporated a unique graphical interface,
making it easy to use. Unix and Windows operating systems were introduced.
 In 1992 The World-Wide Web, one of the most significant advances in the development of
the Internet, is released. Linux Operating system was releases. Technology grew and grew
and now we are with latest models of computers with lot of advanced softwares and
features.