A Brief History of the Computer

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A Brief History of the Computer

• Presented by
• Trisha Cummings

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What is a Computer?

• A computer is a machine which can take
  instructions, and perform computations based on
  those instructions
• It is the ability to take instructions often
  known as programs in computer speak and
  execute them, is what distinguishes a computer
  from a mechanical calculator.

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Numbers, Calculating and Us

• The first known use of numbers dates back to
  around 30000 BC when tally marks were used by
  Paleolithic peoples.
• It is safe to assume that humans begin counting -
  and that fingers and thumbs provide nature's
  abacus.
• The decimal system is no accident.
• Ten has been the basis of most counting systems
  in history. When any sort of record is needed,
  notches in a stick or a stone are the natural
  solution.
• This system had no concept of place-value (such
  as in the currently used decimal notation), which
  limited its representation of large numbers.
• Egyptian numbers 3000-1600 BC
• In Egypt, from about 3000 BC, records survive in
  which 1 is represented by a vertical line and 10
  is shown as .
• The Egyptians write from right to left, so the
  number 23 becomes lll

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Babylonian numbers 1750 BC

• The Babylonians use a numerical system with 60 as
  its base.
• This is extremely unwieldy, since it should
  logically require a different sign for every
  number up to 59 (.
• Instead, numbers below 60 are expressed in
  clusters of ten - making the written figures
  awkward for any arithmetical computation.
• Through the Babylonian pre-eminence in astronomy,
  their base of 60 survives even today in the 60
  seconds and minutes of angular measurement, in
  the 180 degrees of a triangle and and in the 360
  degrees of a circle.
• Much later, when time can be accurately measured,
  the same system is adopted for the subdivisions
  of an hour.
• The Babylonians take one crucial step towards a
  more effective numerical system.
• They introduce the place-value concept, by which
  the same digit has a different value according to
  its place in the sequence.
• We now take for granted the strange fact that in
  the number 222 the digit '2' means three quite
  different things - 200, 20 and 2 - but this idea
  is new and bold in Babylon.

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Zero, decimal system, Arabic numerals from 300 BC

• The digits now used internationally make their
  appearance gradually from about the 3rd century
  BC, when some of them feature in the inscriptions
  of Asoka.
• The Indians use a dot or small circle when the
  place in a number has no value, and they give
  this dot a Sanskrit name - sunya, meaning
  'empty'.
• The system has fully evolved by about AD 800,
  when it is adopted also in Baghdad.
• The Arabs use the same 'empty' symbol of dot or
  circle, and they give it the equivalent Arabic
  name, sifr.
• About two centuries later the Indian digits reach
  Europe in Arabic manuscripts, becoming known as
  Arabic numerals.
• And the Arabic sifr is transformed into the
  'zero' of modern European languages.
• But several more centuries must pass before the
  ten Arabic numerals gradually replace the system
  inherited in Europe from the Roman empire.

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The abacus 1st millennium BC

• In practical arithmetic the merchants have been
  far ahead of the scribes, for the idea of zero is
  in use in the market place long before its
  adoption in written systems.
• It is an essential element in humanity's most
  basic counting machine, the abacus.
• This method of calculation - originally simple
  furrows drawn on the ground, in which pebbles can
  be placed - is believed to have been used by
  Babylonians and Phoenicians from perhaps as early
  as 1000 BC.
• In a later and more convenient form, still seen
  in many parts of the world today, the abacus
  consists of a frame in which the pebbles are kept
  in clear rows by being threaded on rods.
• Zero is represented by any row with no pebble at
  the active end of the rod.

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Roman numerals from the 3rd century BC

• The completed decimal system is so effective that
  it becomes, eventually, the first example of a
  fully international method of communication.
• But its progress towards this dominance is slow.
• For more than a millennium the numerals most
  commonly used in Europe are those evolved in Rome
  from about the 3rd century BC.
• They remain the standard system throughout the
  Middle Ages, reinforced by Rome's continuing
  position at the centre of western civilization
  and by the use of Latin as the scholarly and
  legal language.

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Binary numbers 20th century AD/CE

• Our own century has introduced another
  international language, which most of us use but
  few are aware of.
• This is the binary language of computers.
• When interpreting coded material by means of
  electricity, speed in tackling a simple task is
  easy to achieve and complexity merely
  complicates.
• So the simplest possible counting system is best,
  and this means one with the lowest possible base
  - 2 rather than 10.
• Instead of zero and 9 digits in the decimal
  system, the binary system only has zero and 1.
• So the binary equivalent of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
  8, 9, 10 is 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 111, 1000, 1001,
  1011, 1111 and so ad infinitum

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Ancient Computer

• A bronze Greek device constructed in around 80BC
  could be the world's oldest computer.
• The "Antikythera Mechanism" - consisting more
  than 30 bronze dials and wheels - was recovered
  from the wreck of a cargo ship off the Greek
  island of Antikythera in 1900.
• Its exact purpose was unknown, although a theory
  centers on it being used to calculate the
  movement of the planets then known to the Greeks
  Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

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'Antikythera Mechanism'
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Adding Machines

• Adding machines date back to the 17th century.
• They started with simple machines that could only
  add (and sometimes subtract.)
• Many were rather tricky to use and could produce
  erroneous results with untrained users.
• Apparently, Wilhelm Schickard produced the first
  adding machine in 1623.

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• Unfortunately, this one-of-kind machine was
  destroyed in a fire and its existence remained
  unknown until recently.
• Blaise Pascal (re)invented an adding/subtracting
  machine in 1642 with no knowledge of Shickard's
  machine.
• Pascal made many of his machines and is therefore
  often thought of as the original inventor.
• His first machine was 14" x 5" x 3" and had 8
  digits.

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Jacquard Loom

• Basile Bouchon was a textile worker in Lyon who
  invented a way to control a loom with a
  perforated paper tape in 1725.
• The son of an organ maker, Bouchon adapted the
  concept of music automata controlled by pegged
  cylinders to the repetitive task of weaving.
• Further refinements by others eventually lead to
  the wildly successful Jacquard loom.

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• Jacques de Vaucanson (February 24, 1709November
  21, 1782) was a French engineer and inventor who
  is credited with creating the world's first true
  robots, as well as for creating the first
  completely automated loom.
• His proposals for the automation of the weaving
  process, although ignored during his lifetime,
  were later perfected and implemented by Joseph
  Marie Jacquard, the creator of the Jacquard loom.

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• The Jacquard Loom is a mechanical loom, invented
  by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, that has holes
  punched in pasteboard, each row of which
  corresponds to one row of the design.
• Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card
  and the many cards that compose the design of the
  textile are strung together in order.

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• Uses punch card technology
• on a treadle driven loom

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Charles Babbage

• Perhaps the most famous mechanical computer was
  Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, first
  proposed in the 1830's.
• He originated the idea of a programmable
  computer.
• Considered the "father of computing."
• Invents Analytical machine an automatic
  calculator which never makes it off the ground
  due to its complexity (1823 1842)

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• Nine years later, the Science Museum completed
  the printer Babbage had designed for the
  difference engine, an astonishingly complex
  device for the 19th century.
• Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on
  display in the London Science Museum.
• In 1991 a perfectly functioning difference
  engine was constructed from Babbage's original
  plans.
• Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th
  century, the success of the finished engine
  indicated that Babbage's machine would have
  worked.

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Difference Engine

• Charles Babbage

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Herman Hollerith

• Is widely regarded as the father of modern
  automatic computation.
• He chose the punched card as the basis for
  storing and processing information and he built
  the first punched-card tabulating and sorting
  machines as well as the first key punch, and he
  founded Tabulating Machine Company.
• Which later becomes IBM.
• Hollerith's designs dominated the computing
  landscape for almost 100 years.

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• Hollerith's ideas for automation of the census
  are expressed succinctly in Patent No. 395,782 of
  Jan. 8, 1889
• "The herein described method of compiling
  statistics which consists in recording separate
  statistical items pertaining to the individual by
  holes or combinations of holed punched in sheets
  of electrically non-conducting material, and
  bearing a specific relation to each other and to
  a standard, and then counting or tallying such
  statistical items separately or in combination by
  means of mechanical counters operated by
  electro-magnets the circuits through which are
  controlled by the perforated sheets,
  substantially as and for the purpose set forth."

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• Had the idea to use Jacquard's punched cards to
  represent the census data, and to then read and
  collate this data using an automatic tabulating
  machine.

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How it works

• The results of a tabulation are displayed on the
  clock-like dials.
• A sorter is on the right.
• On the tabletop below the dials are a
  Pantographic card punch on left and the card
  reading station on the right, in which metal pins
  pass through the holes, making contact with
  little wells of mercury, completing an electrical
  circuit.
• When workers wanted some time off, they would
  suck the mercury out of the wells with medicine
  droppers and squirt it into the spittoon).
• All of these devices are fed manually, one card
  at a time, but the tabulator and sorter are
  electrically coupled.

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• He did not stop at his original 1890 tabulating
  machine and sorter, but produced many other
  innovative new models.
• He also invented the first automatic card-feed
  mechanism, the first key punch, and took what was
  perhaps the first step towards programming by
  introducing a wiring panel in his 1906 Type I
  Tabulator, allowing it to do different jobs
  without having to be rebuilt!
• The 1890 Tabulator was hardwired to operate only
  on 1890 Census cards.
• These inventions were the foundation of the
  modern information processing industry.

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Hollerith Automatic Feed Tabulator

• After the 1890 census, the US population
  continued to grow and the original
  tabulator-sorters were not fast enough to handle
  the 1900 census so Hollerith devised another
  machine to stave off another data processing
  crisis.
• Towards the end of the 1900 Census, Hollerith
  sped up the processing of information by adding
  an automatic feed to his tabulator.
• It fed cards downward into the unit through a
  circuit-closing press.
• Later, the pins of the sensing unit were replaced
  by brushes to further speed the flow of
  information and information punched in the cards
  began to control the operation of the units.
• Hollerith had begun to put information on the
  assembly line.

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Pantographic Card Punch

• Developed for the 1890 US census.
• Prior to 1890, cards were punched using a train
  conductor's ticket punch that allowed holes to be
  placed only around the edge of the card, and was
  not terribly accurate, and which tended to induce
  strain injuries.
• The Pantographic punch allowed accurate placement
  of holes with minimum physical strain, one hole
  at a time, and also provided access to the
  interior of the card, allowing more information
  per card.

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Our First Real Computer Eniac

• ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator
  And Computer
• It was the first high-speed, purely electronic,
  digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to
  solve a full range of computing problems
• ENIAC was conceived and designed by John Mauchly
  and J. Presper Eckert of the University of
  Pennsylvania.
• ENIAC was designed and built to calculate
  artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army's
  Ballistic Research Laboratory

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• The contract was signed on June 5, 1943.
• In July, 1943 was constructed by the University
  of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical
  Engineering.
• It was unveiled on February 14, 1946, having cost
  almost 500,000.
• ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a
  refurbishment and a memory upgrade, and was
  transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland
  in 1947.
• There, on July 29 of that year, it was turned on
  and ran continuous until 1145 p.m. October 2,
  1955.

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• ENIAC's physical size was massive compared to
  modern PC standards.
• It weighed 30 short tons, was roughly 8.5 feet by
  3 feet by 80 feet, took up 680 square feet
• Basically, it filled an entire room.
• It used vacuum tube technology
• It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal
  diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000
  capacitors

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Six women did most of the programming of
ENIAC by manipulating its switches and cables
Two women wiring the right side of the ENIAC with
a new program. "U.S. Army Photo" from the
archives of the ARL Technical Library. Standing
Ester Gerston Crouching Gloria Ruth Gorden
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Cpl. Irwin Goldstein (sets the switches on one of
the ENIAC's function tables at the Moore School
of Electrical Engineering. (U.S. Army photo)
foreground)

• Programmers Betty Jean Jennings (left) and Fran
  Bilas (right) operate the ENIAC's main control
  panel at the Moore School of Electrical
  Engineering. (U.S. Army photo from the archives
  of the ARL Technical Library)

J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly examine a
printout of ENIAC results in a newsreel from
February 1946.
Glen Beck (background) and Betty Snyder
(foreground) program the ENIAC in BRL building
328. (U.S. Army photo)
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Evolution

• UNIVAC I of 1951 was the first business computer
  made in the U.S. "Many people saw a computer for
  the first time on television when UNIVAC I
  predicted the outcome of the 1952 presidential
  elections.
• Bendix G-15 of 1956, inexpensive at 60,000, for
  science and industry but could also be used by a
  single user several hundred were built - used
  magnetic tape drive and key punch terminal

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• IBM 650 that "became the most popular
  medium-sized computer in America in the 1950's" -
  rental cost was 5000 per month - 1500 were
  installed - able to read punched cards or
  magnetic tape - used rotating magnetic drum main
  memory unit that could store 4000 words,
• Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments patented the
  first integrated circuit in Feb. 1959