Short History and Development of Modern

Computer

Muzammil Rabiawardana
 Table of Contents

Table of Contents------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1
Story Line Diagram ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2
1 What is Computer? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3
1.1 Computer Definition ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3
2 Short History of Computer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
2.1 Pra-Computer Era (18th century) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
2.1.1 Charles Babbage designs Difference Engine & Analytical Engine programmed by Ada
Lovelace ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
2.2 Pra-computer era (1920-1970) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6
2.2.1 Germany made Enigma ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6
2.2.2 Breaking of Enigma ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6
2.2.3 The Manchester Baby --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7
Refrences ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9

pg. 1
 Story Line Diagram

Short History and

Development of
Modern Computer

Short History of
What is computer? Computer in Modern Era
Computer

1 What is Computer ? 2 Short History of 3 Computer in Modern

1.1 Computer Definition Computer Era
2.1 Pra-Computer Era 3.1 Modern Era (
(18th century)
2.1.1 Charles Babbage
designs Difference Engine &
Analytical Engine
programmed by Ada
Lovelace
2.2 Pra-computer era
(1920-1970)
2.2.1 Nazi make Enigma
2.2.2 Breaking of
Enigma
2.2.3 The Manchester
Baby

pg. 2
 1 What is Computer?
1.1 Computer Definition
From Oxford dictionary ,Computer is an electronic machine that is used for storing,
organizing, and finding words, numbers, and pictures, for doing calculations, and for
controlling other machines.

pg. 3
2 Short History of Computer
2.1 Pra-Computer Era (18th century)
2.1.1 Charles Babbage designs Difference Engine & Analytical Engine programmed
by Ada Lovelace

In 1820, Charles Babbage developed “calculator” to help Most mathematical functions

commonly used by engineers, scientists and navigators, including logarithmic and
trigonometric functions, can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can
compute many useful tables of numbers. British government intrested to funding the Babbage’s
machine more futher and give Babbage £1700 to start work on the project.

Figure 1 : Difference engine in The London Science Museum

Figure 1 : Charles Babbage,
In Wikipedia, n.d., Retrieved November 2, 2018, from
In Encylcopedia Britannica, n.d., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Retrieved November 2, 2018, /Difference_engine#/media/File:Babbage_Difference_Engine.jpg.
from
https://www.britannica.com/bi
ography/Charles-Babbage.

But,in it’s implementation, Babbage’s machine was not flexible, the metalworking
techniques of the era could not economically make parts in the precision and quantity required.
And also proved to be much more expensive and doubtful of success than the government's
initial estimate. Finaly in 1842,after 22 years Babbage still finished his project and British
government abandonded the project.
In 1833 Charles babbage already realized the weakness of his machine and decided to make
the machine more flexible and can be use for general purposes. He thinks it must be storage to
make easier processing in the machine and need “brain” to control all of it’s processes. How
about the processes for general purposes inside the machine ? Babbage think the machine needs
to have “language” to match all suitable command from users so,he decided to create
“programming language” for his machine.So he talk about it in his lecture in French.

pg. 4
 Figure 2 : Analytical Engine In
The Science Museum (London)
: In Wikipedia, n.d.,
Retrieved November 3, 2018,
from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal
ytical_Engine#cite_note-:1-1.

In 1842 ,the Italian mathematician Luigi Federico Menabrea who hear Babbage’s lecture
published a description of the engine. In 1843, the description was translated into English and
extensively annotated by Ada Lovelace.

Figure 3 : Ada lovelace

,In Computer History, n.d., Retrieved November 2,
2018,
from
https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalove
lace/

She use in recognition of her additions to Menabrea's paper, which included a way to
calculate Bernoulli numbers using the machine. Because of that, now , Ada Lovelace known
as first person who programmed computer using programming language.

pg. 5
2.2 Pra-computer era (1920-1970)
2.2.1 Germany made Enigma

The Enigma was a type of enciphering machine used by the German (was Nazi in
that time ) armed forces to send messages securely. Although Polish mathematicians
Marian Rejewski, had worked out how to read Enigma messages and had shared this
information with the British, the Germans increased its security at the outbreak of war by
changing the cipher system daily. This made the task of understanding the code even more
difficult.

Like other rotor machines, the Enigma machine is

a combination of mechanical and electrical subsystems.
The mechanical subsystem consists of a keyboard; a set
of rotating disks called rotors arranged adjacently along
a spindle; one of various stepping components to turn at
least one rotor with each key press, and a series of
lamps, one for each letter.

Figure 4 : Military Enigma machine

In Wikipedia, n.d.,Retrieved
November 3, 2018,
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enig
ma_machine#/media/File:Enigma_(
crittografia)_-
_Museo_scienza_e_tecnologia_Mil
ano.jpg

2.2.2 Breaking of Enigma

On September 1939, The British Government Code and Cypher School

(GC&CS) at Bletchley Park built up an extensive cryptanalytic team. Initially, the
decryption was mainly of Luftwaffe (German air force) and a few Heer (German army)
messages, as the Kriegsmarine (German navy) employed much more secure procedures
for using Enigma.
The team leader was a Alan Turing, was English mathematician who called by
british government to help break the Enigma. First, breaking of Enigma use
complicated algorithm by manual calculation, but it’s need much time to decrypy and
Enigma message updated in every 24 hours or after the mission accomplished. Alan
Turing think they need machine to beat other machine.

pg. 6
 Figure 5 : Alan Turing
Figure 6 : Bombe Machine in Bletchley Park (1940s) : In Wikipedia, n.d.,Retrieved
In Wikipedia, n.d.,Retrieved November 3, 2018, November 3, 2018,
From From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe#/media/File:W https://id.wikipedia.org/w/ind
artime_picture_of_a_Bletchley_Park_Bombe.jpg ex.php?title=Berkas:Alan_Turi
ng_photo.jpg&filetimestamp=
20110808072713&

Within weeks in Bletchley Park, Alan Turing and team finished machine called Bombe
and they success to decrypt Enigma just within hour. That the first time when
“Computer” was created for the most complicated problems and based on his
experience Alan Turing created The Universal Turing Machine.
The Universal Turing Machine is it is a theoretical idea which plays an
important role in the foundations of mathematics and computer science. Turing
Machine’s are useful for studying algorithms, they provide a language for describing
certain abstract concepts in a precise way. Because of his invention and idea ,now Alan
Turing is known as Father of modern computer.

2.2.3 The Manchester Baby

Based on The Universal Turing Machine theory and research, June 21st, 1948
Scientist from Manchester University finaly finish the world's first stored-program
electronic digital computer successfully and it can executed its own program. That
program was written by Tom Kilburn who, along with Freddie Williams designed and
built the machine. It was called the Small-Scale Experimental Machine, but was soon
nicknamed "The Baby". it is also known as the "Mark 1 prototype".

pg. 7
 Figure 7 : The Manchester Baby
In Wikipedia, n.d.,Retrieved
November 3, 2018, From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Manchester_Mark_1#/media/Fi
le:Manchester_Mark2.jpg

The Manchester baby can process 32-bit word from binary code and the first
storage-computer have size 17 feet (5.2 m) in length, 7 feet 4 inches (2.24 m) tall, and
weighed almost 1 ton. The machine contained 550 valves (vacuum tubes)—300 diodes
and 250 pentodes—and had a power consumption of 3500 watts.

pg. 8
Refrences

Swade, Doron, and Charles Babbage. Difference engine: Charles Babbage and the
quest to build the First Computer. Viking Penguin, 2001.
Bromley, Allan G. "Charles babbage's analytical engine, 1838." Annals of the History
of Computing 4.3 (1982): 196-217.
Singh, Simon (26 January 2011). The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from
Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography. Knopf Doubleday Publishing
Group. ISBN 978-0-307-78784-2.
Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Enigma. Random House, 2012.
Turing, Alan M. "On computable numbers, with an application to the
Entscheidungsproblem." Proceedings of the London mathematical society 2.1 (1937):
230-265.
Napper, R. B. E. (2000), "The Manchester Mark 1 Computers", in Rojas, Raúl;
Hashagen, Ulf, The First Computers: History and Architectures, MIT Press, pp. 356–
377,ISBN 978-0-262-68137-7

pg. 9