CST 20363-Session 1.2-A Brief History of Computing

CST-20363-Intro-to-CS
 “The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to
do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.” –Ted
Nelson
Session 1.2
A Brief History of
Computing

Abacus (4th Century B.C.)
 The abacus, a simple counting aid, may have been
invented in Babylonia (now Iraq) in the fourth century
B.C.
 This device allows users to make computations using a
system of sliding beads arranged on a rack.
 Considered the first computer

Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662)
 In 1642, the French mathematician and philosopher
Blaise Pascal invented a calculating device that would
come to be called the "Adding Machine".
 One of the first and earliest mechanical devices used
for calculating was the Pascaline

Jacquard Loom (1805)
 First fully automated and
programmable Loom
 Used punch cards to “program”
the pattern to be woven into
cloth

Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871)
 English mathematician,
engineer, philosopher and
inventor.
 Originated the concept of
the programmable computer
and designed one.
 Invents Difference Engine in
1822
 Performed basic arithmetic
 First described a general-purpose
analytical engine in 1837 but

Difference Engine (1822)
The difference engine is a mechanical calculator first developed by Charles
Babbage in 1822. It can compute several sets of numbers and make hard copies
of the results. Due to a lack of funding, he was never able to complete a full-scale
functional version of this machine.

Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace
(1815 - 1852)
 Created a program for the
(theoretical) Babbage
analytical engine which
would have calculated
Bernoulli numbers.
 Widely recognized as the
first programmer.

Kurt Gödel (1906 – 1978)
 Famous for his
incompleteness theorem
 This theorem implies that
not all mathematical
questions are computable
(can be solved).

Herman Hollerith (1860 – 1929)
 Invented
electromechanical counter
in 1880s
 Machine uses punch cards
as input
 Serves tabulation role in
1890 US census
 Company created around
technology becomes IBM

Howard Aiken (1900 – 1973)
 Aiken thought he could create
a modern and functioning
model of Babbage's Analytical
Engine.
 He succeeded in securing a
grant of 1 million dollars for his
proposed Automatic Sequence
Calculator; the Mark I for short.
From IBM.
 In 1944, the Mark I was
"switched" on. Aiken's colossal
machine spanned 51 feet in
length and 8 feet in height. 500

The First Universal Calculator

Aiken & Hopper – Harvard Mark I Computer (1944)
The IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) Computer
was created by IBM for Harvard University, which called it the Mark I.
First universal calculator.

Colossus Mark I & II (1943 – 1944)
 The Colossus Mark I & II are widely acknowledged
as the first programmable electric computers and
were used at Bletchley Park to decode German
codes encrypted by the Lorenz SZ40/42.
Consisted of Vacuum
Tubes

John Eckert & John W. Mauchly –
ENIAC 1 Computer (1946)
 ENIAC was short for
Electronic Numerical
Integrator And Computer.
It was the first general
purpose (programmable to
solve any problem)
electric computer. It
contained over 17,000
vacuum tubes, weighed
27 tones and drew 150

The Transistor (1947)
 Invented by William
Shockley (seated) John
Bardeen & Walter Brattain
at Bell Labs.
 The transistor replaces
bulky vacuum tubes with a
smaller, more reliable, and
power saving solid sate
circuit.

UNIVAC (1951)
 First commercial computer -
Between 1951 and 1958, 47
UNIVAC I computers were
delivered.
 25 feet by 50 feet in size
 5,600 tubes,
 18,000 crystal diodes
 300 relays
 Internal storage capacity of 1,008
fifteen-bit words was achieved
using 126 mercury delay lines

IBM 701 EDPM Computer (1953)
 IBM enters the market
with its first large scale
electronic computer.
 It was designed to be
incomparable with IBM's
existing punch card
processing system, so
that it would not cut into
IBM's existing profit
sources.

Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)
 Developed the first compiler
(A-0, later ARITH-MATIC,
MATH-MATIC and FLOW-
MATIC) while working at the
Remington Rand corporation
on the UNIVAC I.
 Later returned to the NAVY
where she worked on COBOL
and was eventually promoted
to Rear Admiral.

Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, US
Navy, and other programmers at
a UNIVAC console - 1957
Grace Hopper (January 1984)

The First High Level Programming Language

FORTRAN (1954)
 John Backus & IBM invent the
first successful high level
programming language, and
compiler, that ran on IBM 701
computers.
 FORmula TRANslation was
designed to make calculating
the answers to scientific and
math problems easier.

Integrated Circuit (1958)
 Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments &
Robert Noyce at Fairchild
semiconductor independently
invent the first integrated circuits
or “the chip”.
 Jack Kilby was awarded the
National Medal of Science and
was inducted into the National
Inventors Hall of Fame, and
received the 2000 Nobel Prize in
Physics for his work on the

First commercial transistorized computers
(1960)
 DEC introduced the
PDP-1and IBM released
the 7090 which was the
fastest in the world.

First computer game & word processor
(1962)
 Steve Russell at MIT invents
Spacewar, the first computer
game running on a DEC PDP-1.
 Because the PDP-1 had a
typewriter interface, editors like
TECO (Text Editor and Corrector)
were written for it.
 Steve Piner and L. Peter Deutsch
produced the first “word
processor” called Expensive
Typewriter (MIT's PDP-1 cost

The mouse and window concept (1964)
 Douglas Engelbart
demonstrates the worlds first
“mouse”, nicknamed after the
“tail”.
 SRI (Stanford Research
Institute) received a patent on
the mouse in 1970, and
licensed it to apple for
$40,000.

The Internet and Age of Personal Computers

ARPANET (1969)
 The precursor to the Internet as we know it,
funded by ARPA (Advanced Research
Projects Agency now DARPA) begins.
 The first four nodes were located at:
UCLA
Stanford Research Institute
UC Santa Barbara
University of Utah

Intel 1103 Dynamic Memory Chip (1970)
 Worlds first commercially
available dynamic
memory chip, 1024 bytes
or 1KB

Intel 4004 Microprocessor (1971)
 Worlds first
microprocessor with
2,300 transistors, had
the same processing
power as the 3,000
cubic-foot ENIAC.

First computer game & word processor
(1962)
 Robert Metcalfe at Xerox
invents Ethernet so that
multiple computers can talk to
a new laser printer. Originally,
Ethernet used a large coaxial
cable and ran at 3Mbit/sec.
 Ethernet today runs over
twisted pair (usually CAT5, or
CAT6) and can achieve
speeds of 10Megabit/sec to

Personal Computers (1974 – 1975)
Scelbi Mark-8 Altair and IBM 5100 computers are first marketed to
individuals (as opposed to corporations). They are followed by the
Apple I,II, TRS-80, and Commodore Pet computers by 1977.

ALTAIR (1975)
 The invention of the transistor made computers
smaller, cheaper and more reliable. Therefore, the
stage was set for the entrance of the computer into the
domestic realm. In 1975, the age of personal
computers commenced.
 Under the leadership of Ed Roberts the Micro
Instrumentation and Telemetry Company (MITS)
wanted to design a computer 'kit' for the home
hobbyist.

Enter Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Microsoft
 Gates and Allen develop a BASIC interpreter
 High level language for microcomputer programmers
 Briefly associate with MITS
 Form Micro-Soft company in 1975

First individual productivity software
(1978)
 VisiCalc Spreadsheet software
and WordStar word processor are
the “killer applications” for
personal computers, especially for
small business owners.

IBM PC (1981)
 The IBM PC is introduced
running the Microsoft Disk
Operating System (MS-DOS)
along with CP/M-86. The IBM
PC's open architecture made it
the de-facto standard platform,
and it was eventually replaced by
inexpensive clones.
 CPU: Intel 8088 @ 4.77 MHz
 RAM: 16 kB ~ 640 kB
 Price: $5,000 - $20,000

Apple Macintosh (1984)
 Apple introduces the first
successful consumer computer
with a WIMP user interface
(Windows Icons Mouse &
Pointer), modelled after the
unsuccessful Xerox Alto
computer.
 Motorola 68000 @8Mhz
 128KB Ram
 US$1,995 to US$2,495

The World Wide Web (1989)
 Berners-Lee and a small team of
scientists conceived HTML (the
language of the Internet), URLs
(Internet addresses), and put up
the first server supporting the
neq World Wide Web format

The Internet Browser (1993)
 The development in 1993 of the
graphical browser Mosaic by
Marc Andreesen and his team at
the National Center For
Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA) made the web
accessible to everyone.
 Marc Andreesen and
entrepreneur Jim Clark founded
Netscape in 1994 to create a
web browser based on the

Portable Computing and Technology Today

The Handheld Computer (1996)
 The PalmPilot handheld
computer was introduced
by Palm Computing, Inc.

Desktop and Notebook PCs
 Personal Computer (PC)
Desktop PC
 Notebook PC

Desktop and Notebook PCs
 Tablet PC  Workstation
 To visualize and solve complex,
technical problems.

Server Computers
Applications in business
financial, customer
management solutions,
decision support data
warehouse, e-commerce,
and enterprise resource
planning

Supercomputers
In a six-game match, a
chess-playing IBM
computer known as Deep
Blue defeats chess
grandmaster Garry
Kasparov - the first time a
reigning world champion
loses a match to a
computer opponent in
tournament play. Deep
Blue is an IBM RS/6000 SP
supercomputer capable of

Information Systems
 Data processing systems
 Transaction handling, record keeping
 Primarily for clerical personnel and operational-level managers

Management of Information Systems
Uses an integrated database and supports a
variety of functional areas
Structured information (for example, a weekly
inventory status report with predefined content
and format)
Applications in hospitals (patient accounting,
point-of-care processing), insurance (claims-
processing systems, policy administration,
actuarial statistics), and colleges (student
registration, placement)

Decision Support System
 Helps the decision
makers, especially
those at the tactical
and strategic levels,
in the decision-
making process

Executive Information System
Subset of DSS
Supports decision making at the executive levels of
management, primarily the tactical and strategic
levels

Artificial Intelligence
Expert systems, simulation of human sensory
capabilities, neural networks, intelligent agents,
robots and robotics

Virtual Reality
 Combines computer
graphics with
special hardware to
immerse users in
an artificial three-
dimensional world

What About the Future?
 Parallel Computing
 Massive amplification of computing power
 Can be hosted by local networks as well as Internet
 Wireless networking
 Bluetooth
 Embedded or ubiquitous computing
 Digitization of Economy
 Privacy and security
 Open-source movement

CST 20363-Session 1.2-A Brief History of Computing

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CST 20363-Session 1.2-A Brief History of Computing