GEE-LIE

Lesson 1.2

GENERATION OF COMPUTERS

Computer

➔ Is an electronic device that manipulates information or data

➔ Has the ability to store, retrieve, and process data
➔ Can be used to type documents, send email, play games, and browse the Web
➔ Can also be used to edit or create spreadsheets, presentations, and even videos

Five Generation of Computers:

I. THE FIRST GENERATION : VACUUM TUBES AND PLUG BOARDS (1951-1958)

➔ Used vacuum tubes as their main logic elements
➔ Used punched cards to input and externally store data
➔ Used rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data in programs written in machine language or assembly
language.

Machine Language – instructions written as a string of 0s and 1s

Assembly Language – a language that allowed the programmer to write instructions in a kind of shorthand that
would then be translated by another program called a compiler into machine language

Characteristics of the First Generation Computers:

➢ Used vacuum tubes for circuitry

➢ Electron emitting metal in vacuum tubes burned out easily
➢ Used magnetic drums for memory
➢ Were huge, slow, expensive, and many times undependable
➢ Were expensive to operate
➢ Were power hungry
➢ Generated a lot of heat which would make them malfunction
➢ Solved one problem at a time
➢ Used input based on punched cards
➢ Had their outputs displayed in print outs
➢ Used magnetic tapes
➢ Used machine language
➢ Had limited primary memory
➢ Were programming only in machine language

Examples of First Generation Computers:

• ENIAC
• UNIVAC – the first commercial computer delivered to a business client, the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951.

II. THE SECOND GENERATION: TRANSISTORS AND BATCHF FILLING (1959-1963)

➔ In the 1940s, AT & T’s Bell Laboratories discovered that a class of crystalline mineral materials called
semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor.
➔ Transistors replaced vacuum tubes
➔ Magnetic Cores strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology
Magnetic Core – very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent
data
➔ Magnetic Tape and Disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices
➔ High level programming languages like FORTRAN & COBOL, made computers more accessible to scientists and
businesses.
High level programming language – program instructions that could be written with simple words and
mathematical expressions
FORTRAN – Formula Translation
COBOL – Common Business Oriented Language
➔ Moved from cryptic binary machine language to symbolic, or assembly, languages, which allowed programmers to
specify instructions in words
 ➔ Were the first computers that stored their instructions in their memory, which moved from a magnetic drum to
magnetic core technology

Characteristics of the Second Generation Computers:

➢ Used transistors
➢ Faster and more reliable that first generation systems
➢ Were slightly smaller, cheaper, faster than 1 st generation computers
➢ Generated heat though a little less
➢ Still relied on punch cards and printouts for input/output
➢ Allowed assembly and high-level languages
➢ Stored data in magnetic media
➢ Were still costly
➢ Needed air conditioning
➢ Introduced assembly language and operating system software

The first computers of this generation were developed for the atomic energy industry.

III. THE THIRD GENERATION: INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND MULTI-PROGRAMMING (1964-1979)

➔ Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits
➔ Magnetic core memories began to give way to metal oxide semiconductor(MOS) which also used silicon-backed
chips like the integrated circuits
➔ Increased memory capacity and processing power made possible through the development of operating systems
➔ Programming languages like BASIC were developed, making programming easier to do
➔ Users interacted with third generation computers through keyboards and monitors and interfaced with an
operating system instead of punched cards and printouts, which allowed the device to run many different
applications at one time with a central program that monitored the memory
➔ Computers for the first time became accessible to a mass audience because they were smaller and cheaper than
their predecessors

Characteristics of the Third Generation Computers:

➢ Used ICs
➢ Used parallel processing
➢ Were slightly smaller, cheaper, faster
➢ Used motherboards
➢ Data was input using motherboards
➢ Output was visualized on the monitors
➢ Used operating systems, thus permitting multitasking
➢ Simplified programming languages

IV. THE FOURTH GENERATION: THE MICROPROCESSOR, OS AND GUI (1979 TO PRESENT)
➔ Microprocessor were brought into the fourth generation of computers as thousands of integrated circuits were
built onto a single silicon chip
➔ These small computers became more powerful that they could be linked together to form networks which led to
the development of the Internet
➔ Fourth generation computers also saw the development of GUIs, the mouse, and handheld devices

Characteristics of the Fourth Generation Computers:

➢ Used CPUs which contained thousands of transistors

➢ Were much smaller and fitted on a desktop, laps, and palms
➢ Used a mouse
➢ Were used in networks
➢ Were cheap
➢ Had GUI
➢ Were very fast
➢ Register over 19 billion transistors in high-end microprocessors

V. THE FIFTH GENERATION: THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE (PRESENT)

➔ Are based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) but are still in development
➔ Use parallel processing and superconductors which help to make artificial intelligence a reality
 ➔ Quantum computation and molecular and nanotechnology will radically change the face of computers in the years
to come
➔ The goal of the fifth generation computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are
capable of learning and self-organization

LESSON 1.3

FOUR BASIC COMPUTER PERIODS

I. PRE-MECHANICAL AGE (3000 B.C. – 1450 A.D.)

➔ The earliest form of information technology

Cuneiform

➔ A writing system used in 3000 B.C. by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today Southern Iraq)
➔ Used signs corresponding to spoken sounds, instead of pictures, to express words

Petroglyths – simple pictures or drawings which were usually carved in rock

Phoenician Alphabet – early alphabets developed in the pre-mechanical age

➔ Alphabets became more popular and more people were writing information down
➔ Pens and paper began to be developed. It started off as just marks in wet clay, but later was created out of papyrus
plant. The most popular kind of paper made was probably by the Chinese who made paper from rags.
➔ People were writing a lot of information down so they needed ways to keep it all in permanent storage. This is
where the first books and libraries are developed
Scrolls – sheets of papyrus wrapped around a shaft of wood
➔ Around 300 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together
➔ Dictionary and Encyclopedia made their appearance during this age
➔ The first truly public library was developed by the Greeks around 500 B.C.
➔ The first numbering systems were developed during this period
➔ The first 1-9 system was created by people from India around 100 A.D. However, 775 years later(875 A.D.), the
number zero was invented
➔ Calculator was invented. The popular model of that time was the Abacus

II. MECHANICAL AGE (1450-1840)

➔ Is when we first start to see connections between our current technology and its ancestors
➔ Lots of new technologies were developed in this era

Johann Gutenberg – from Mainz, Germany, invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450 and sped up
the process of composing pages from weeks to a few minutes

Printing Press – made written information much more accessible to the general public by reducing the time and
cost that it took to reproduce written material

William Oughtred – an English clergyman who invented the slide rule in the early 1600s

Slide Rule – a device that allowed the user to multiply and divide by sliding two pieces of precisely machines and
scribed wood against each other; it is an early example of an analog computer

Analog Computer – an instrument that measures instead of counts

Blaise Pascal – a French mathematician who invented the Pascaline in 1642

Pascaline – a very popular mechanical computer; it used a series of wheels and cogs to add and subtract numbers

Charles Babbage – an eccentric English mathematician, frustrated by mistakes, set his mind to create a machine that
could both calculate numbers and print results

- In the 1820s, he was able to produce a working model of his first attempt, which he called the
Difference Engine
- In the 1830s, he designed the Analytical Engine
- Also planned to use punch cards to direct the operations performed by the machine – an idea he
picked up from seeing the results that a French weaver named Joseph Jacquard had achieved
using punched cards to automatically control the patterns that would be woven into cloth by a
loom.
- Was eventually forced to abandon his hopes of building the Analytical Engine because of a failure
to find funding
 Difference Engine – the name was based on a method of solving mathematical equations called the “method of
differences”

- Made of toothed wheels and shafts turned by a hand crank, the machine could do computations
and create charts showing the squares and cubes of numbers

Analytical Engine – had parts remarkably similar to modern-day computers

- Have a part called the store – which would hold the numbers that had been inputted and the
quantities that resulted after they had been manipulated.

Lady Augusta Ada Byron – helped Babbage design the instructions that would be given to the machine on punch cards
and to describe, analyze, and publicize his ideas.

- Has been called the first programmer

III. ELECTROMECHANICAL AGE (1840-1940)

➔ The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period
➔ Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses
➔ Are the beginning of telecommunication

Voltaic Battery – a reliable method of creating and storing electricity at the 18 th century

- made a whole new method of communicating information

Telegraph – was created in the early 1800s

- is the first major invention to use electricity for communication purposes and made it possible
to transmit information over great distances with great speed

Morse Code – was created by Samuel Morse in 1835. Morse devised a system that broke down information (the
alphabet) into bits (dots & dashes) that could then be transformed into electrical impulses and transmitted over a
wire (just as today’s digital technologies break down information into zeros and ones).

Telephone – one of the most popular forms of communication ever

- was created by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. This was followed by the discovery that
electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they
originated. These two events led to the invention of the radio by Marconi in 1894

Herman Hollerith – a young man with a degree in mining engineering who worked in the Census Office in
Washington, D.C., had perfected a machine that could automatically sort census cards into a number of categories
using electrical devices to read the punched holes in each card and thus count the millions of census cards and
categorize the population into relevant groups

IBM Corporation (International Business Machines) – founded by Hollerith to manufacture and sell the
machine he invented

Howard Aiken – a Ph.D. student at Harvard University who decided to combine Hollerith’s punched card
technology with Babbage’s dreams of general-purpose, programmable computing machine

- funded by the IBM, he managed to build the Mark 1

Mark 1 – used paper tape to supply instructions to the machine for manipulating data, counters to
store numbers, and electromechanical relays to help register results

IV. ELECTRONIC AGE (1940- PRESENT)

➔ Is the age that we currently live in
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) – was the first high speed, digital computer capable of
being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems
- Was designed to be used by the U.S. Army for artillery firing tables
- Was even bigger than the Mark 1 taking up 680 square feet and weighing 30 tons- HUGE
- Mainly used vacuum tubes to do its calculations

4 MAIN SECTIONS OF DIGITAL COMPUTING:

i. The era of vacuum tubes and punch cards like the ENIAC and Mark 1
- Rotating magnetic drums were used for internal storage
 ii. The second generation replaced vacuum tubes with transistors, punch cards were replaced with
magnetic tape, and rotating magnetic drums were replaced by magnetic cores for internal storage
- High-level programming languages were created such as FORTRAN and COBOL
iii. The third generation replaced transistors with integrated circuits, magnetic tape was used throughout
all computers, and magnetic core turned into metal oxide semiconductors
- An actual operating system showed up around this time along with the advanced programming
language, BASIC
iv. The fourth and latest generation brought in CPUs ( Central Processing Unit) which contained memory,
logic, and control circuits all on a single chip
- The personal computer was developed
- The graphical user interface (GUI) was developed

LESSON 1.4

CLASSIFICATIONS OF COMPUTERS

Classifications of Computers are based on its size and computing power.

General Classifications of Computers

Personal Computer – is a small, single-user computer based on a microprocessor

- It also has a keyboard for entering data, a monitor for displaying information, and a storage
device for saving data.

Workstation – is a powerful, single-user computer; is like a personal computer, but has a more powerful microprocessor
and a high-quality monitor

Minicomputer – is a mid-sized computer that is less powerful and cheaper than a mainframe

- A multi-user computer capable of supporting from 10 to hundreds of users simultaneously

- Referred to as mid-range server
- Is used in factories for process control, inventory and manufacturing control

Mainframe – is a powerful multi-user computer capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously

Supercomputer – is an extremely fast computer that can perform millions of instructions per second

- Example:
NASA’s Pleiades Supercomputer that has 245, 536 CPU cores and a total memory of 935 TB

Types of Computers

Desktop Computers – are computers designed to be placed on a desk, and are normally made up of a few different parts,
including the computer case, central processing unit (CPU), monitor, keyboard, and mouse

Laptop Computers – are battery-powered computer devices whose portability makes them possible to use almost
anytime, anywhere

Tablet Computers – are handheld computers with touch-sensitive screen for typing and navigation

Smartphones – are handheld telephones which can do things that computers can do, including browsing and searching
the internet and even playing console games

Wearables – include fitness trackers and smartwatches that can be worn throughout the day

Smart TVs – are the latest television sets that include applications present in computers.

LESSON 1.5

EVOLUTION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

The evolution of IT began in the 1970s.

Cognition Enhancers
 ➔ Its concept can help us understand how we can use these emerging technologies.
➔ Combines the complementary strengths of a person and an information technology
Two categories of Cognition Enhancers which will have considerable impact on the workplace:
• Empowering environments
• Hypermedia

Empowering Environments

- Enhance human accomplishment by a division of labor: the machine handles the routine
mechanics of a task, while the person is immersed in its higher-order meanings

The workplace is adopting many empowering environments:

o Databases for information management
o Spreadsheets for modeling
o Computer-aided design systems for manufacturing
o Word processors with embedded spelling checkers, thesauruses, outliners, text
analyzers, and graphic tools which are driving the evolution of a new field: desktop
publishing

Hypermedia

- Is a framework for creating an interconnected, web-like representation of symbols (text,

graphics, images, software codes) in the computer

Evolution of Software Applications

• Command Line Programs (1980s) – the first generation software application included compilers, device drivers,
etc., which were mainly command line programs.
• Desktop Application (1990s) – with the popularity of graphical interface, GUI based desktop applications of
multiple types and forms were released: office application, audio and video players, utility programs, browsers,
etc.
• Web Application (21st Century) – with web’s availability, the next generation applications were developed
keeping world wide web in mind. Web applications were developed keeping in mind that they can be accessed
from any location over internet. Most popular web applications include email clients like gmail, ymail, etc. Social
networking platform like facebok, twitter, instagram, pinterest, qoura, etc.
• Mobile Application (21st Century) – advent of computer technology has resulted into smartphones being
affordable. The most popular mobile applications development platforms are Ios, Android, windows which are
also the most popular mobile operating systems.

Evolution of Programming Language

• 1st Generation Programming Language (1GL) – early programming was done in machine language.
• 2nd Generation Programming Language (2GL) – also called the assembly language programming which is easier
for computer to understand but difficult for programmers
• 3rd Generation Programming Language (3GL) – more normal English language-like and hence easier for
programmers to understand. Also called High Level Languages (HLLs).
• 4th Generation Programming Language (4GL) – closer to natural language than 3GLs
• 5th Generation Programming Language (5GL) – used mainly in artificial intelligence research

LESSON 1.6

EVOLUTION OF MEDIA

The media has transformed itself based on two things:

1) How information is presented

2) How the connection is established

Woodcut printing on cloth or on paper – was used in the early 15th century

Johannes Gutenberg – started working on printing press in 1436 which used relief printing and molding system

In the modern world, printing press delivers messages in print, such as newspapers, textbooks, and magazines.

In the 1800s, the telegraph was developed, followed by the telephone, which made the two-way communication possible.
Message sending and receiving can now be done both ways simultaneously.