A Brief History of
Computers
Special Thanks to Prof. Bernard John Poole, Uni of Pittsburgh
1
Pre-Mechanical Computing:
From Counting
on fingers to pebbles (small stones)
to hash marks on walls
to hash marks on bone
to hash marks in sand
2
Tally Sticks
A tally stick was an ancient memory aid device to
record and document numbers, quantities, or even
messages.
3
Babylonian Clay Tablets
A Babylonian clay tablet dating back 3,700 years has been
identified as the world's oldest and most accurate trigonometric
table, suggesting the Babylonians beat the ancient Greeks to
the invention of trigonometry by over 1,000 years.
4
Mechanical computers
From
The Abacus
c. 4000 BCE
to
Charles Babbage
and his Difference Engine (1812)
5
Mechanical computers:
The Abacus (c. 3000 BCE)
To see how an Abacus works: http://www.viewpure.com/Abacus
6
Blaise Pascal’s Pascaline (1642)
How the Pascaline Works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h71HAJWnVU
7
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz’s
Stepped Reckoner (1674)
How it works:
https://youtu.be/aDN4s8ElxqE
8
Joseph-Marie Jacquard and his punched
card controlled looms
How it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQzpLLhN0fY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlJns3fPItE
9
Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
The Father of Computers
Who is he?: https://youtu.be/XSkGY6LchJs
10
Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine
[1822-1842]
How it works: https://youtu.be/be1EM3gQkAY
11
A working model of Babbage’s Difference Engine
12
Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine
[1837-1871—never completed]
Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to
conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding.
13
Lady Augusta Ada Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852]
Who Was Ada Lovelace, The World’s
First Computer Nerd?:
https://youtu.be/lLOAuYv87uU
14
Electro-mechanical computers
From
Herman Hollerith’s
1890 - Census Counting Machine
to
Howard Aiken and the Harvard Mark I
(1944)
15
Herman Hollerith and his Census Tabulating Machine (1884)
Hollerith’s tabulating machine was the very first machine
to be on the cover of a magazine.
16
A closer look at the Census Tabulating Machine
Here you can see the sorter on the right and the census counting machine on the left.
17
One of Hollerith’s desk still existing today
How it works?: https://youtu.be/9HXjLW7v-II
18
Mechanical Computation Machines –
Earlier 19th Century
19
The Harvard Mark I (1944)
aka IBM’s Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator
(ASCC)
20
The first computer bug
Who is she? :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LR6NPpFxw4
Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper
21
Electronic digital computers
From
John Vincent Atanasoff’s
1939
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
to
the present day
22
Computation machines- Second half of 19th century
First generation computers
These computers were named Eniac, Edvac, and Univac. These computers were made
of vacuum tubes way back in 1945-55. They were huge in size and very costly to
maintain.
Second generation computers
These computers developed after 1955, had transistors in the place of vacuum tubes.
Transistors were more reliable, much cheaper and smaller. This generation had
more computing power, were smaller in size, easier to maintain and were more
affordable than the previous generation.
Third generation computers
These computers developed in the 1960’s, used integrated circuits. The transistors
were miniaturized and kept on silicon chips called the semiconductors which drastically
increased the speed and efficiency of computers.
23
What is a vacuum tube?
Alternatively referred to as an
electron tube or valve and first
developed by John Ambrose
Fleming in 1904.
The vacuum tube is a glass tube
that has its gas removed, creating
a vacuum.
Vacuum tubes contain electrodes
for controlling electron flow and
were used in early computers as a
switch or an amplifier.
24
What is a transistor?
Developed by John Bardeen, Walter
Brattain, and William Shockley at the
Bell Laboratories on December 23,
1947.
The transistor (short for "transfer
resistance") is made up of semi-
conductors.
It is a component used to control the
amount of current or voltage or used
for amplification/modulation or
switching of an electronic signal.
25
What is an integrated circuit?
Alternatively referred to as chip,
monolithic integrated circuit, or
microchip, IC is short for Integrated
Circuit or Integrated Chip.
The IC is a package containing
many circuits, logic gates, pathways,
transistors, and other components
all working together to perform a
particular function or a series of
functions.
Integrated circuits are the building
blocks of computer hardware.
26
Alan Turing
1912-1954
The Turing Machine
aka
The Universal Machine
1936
27
John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995)
Physics Prof
at
Iowa State University.
28
Clifford Berry (1918-1963)
PhD student
of
Dr. Atanasoff.
29
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) - 1939
The ABC was the first electronic digital computer, invented by John Vincent Atanasoff
30
Bletchley Park’s Colossus - 1943
The Enigma Machine
31
1946 - The ENIAC
John Presper Eckert (1919-1995)
ENIAC – Electronic Numerical Integrator And
and Computer,
John Mauchly (1907-1980) The first electronic general-purpose computer,
of the University of Pennsylvania designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert,
Moore School of Engineering
announced in 1946.
32
The ENIAC:
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
The ENIAC: (6mX12m)
30 tons, 18,000 vacuum
tubes, with the
computing power of little
more than the modern
calculator.
33
Programming the ENIAC
34
A movie suggestion…
Hidden Figures - Trailer:
https://youtu.be/RK8xHq6dfAo
The ladies are called
‘computers’ in the movie.
35
A photo by Berenice Abbot of a woman
wiring an IBM computer, 1948
36
Problems with the ENIAC
The ENIAC used 18,000
vacuum tubes to hold a
charge
Vacuum tubes were so
notoriously unreliable.
37
ENIAC’s Wiring!
John Von Neumann
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.
38
Edvac
It took days to change ENIAC's
program.
Eckert and Mauchly's next teamed
up with the mathematician John
von Neumann to design EDVAC,
which pioneered the stored
program.
After ENIAC and EDVAC came
other computers with humorous
names such as ILLIAC,
JOHNNIAC, and, of course,
MANIAC
39
1951 - Univac
40
1951 - Univac
Typical 1968 prices—EX-cluding maintenance & support!
41
The IBM's answer to the UNIVAC: the IBM 702, the first
computer to use magnetic tapes, announced in 1953
42
IBM Stretch - 1959
43
The first mass-produced computer ever,
the IBM 650 (1953-1969)
44
Fourth Generation Computers
used microprocessors or chips which are smaller than a postage stamp and had
tremendous computing capabilities (have about 5,000 transistors and other circuit
elements and their associated circuits on a single chip)
Powerful – Compact - Reliable
Use binary system
Affordable (Inspired personal computer revolution)
Can use high level programming languages like C, C++, DBASE, etc.
Timing sharing, Real time, Networks, Distributed Operation Systems used
Developed from 1971-1990
45
Apple I by Steve Wozniak (1976)
46
IBM Personal Computer or Model 5150, created by a
team of engineers and designers led by Don
Estridge (1981)
47
Osborne 1
The first portable computer.
Released in 1981 by the Osborne
Computer Corporation.
48
The IBM PC
49
Apple Macintosh
50
Operating Systems
Windows 3 Macintosh System 7
51
Fifth Generation Computers
Use super scale integrated chips
Have artificial intelligence
Be able to recognize images and graphs
Be able to use more than 1 CPU for faster processing
speeds
Work with natural language
Be able to solve highly complex problems including
decision making and logical reasoning
52
The Technological Turning Points - 1
53
The Technological Turning Points - 2
54
The Technological Turning Points - 3
55
The Technological Turning Points - 4
56
The Technological Turning Points - 5
57
Computer Generations - Summary
There are five generations of computer:
First Generation – 1946 – 1958 (vacuum tubes)
Second generation – 1959 – 1964 (transistors)
Third generation – 1965 – 1970 (integrated circuits)
Fourth generation – 1971 – today (microprocessors)
Fifth generation – Today to future (AI)
58
