The History of the Computer

The word "Computer" has become a very familiar word to you by now. You can also identify a computer easily. However, it took a long time to develop  the computers which we use today. Moreover, many people have contributed to produce this.
You have heard that the human who lived in the jungle started designing various machines to ease his work when he started socializing himself gradually.
The Abacus is a simple tool which man used to ease his calculations. Many people believe that Abacus is the foundation of the computer we use today.
The Abacus, which is supposed to be the first machine people used for mathematical calculations, has been used over thousands of years by various nations in the world to facilitate their mathematical calculations. Even today, the Abacus is used for calculations not only in Asian countries such as China and Japan but also in North America.

The basic reason for man to discover a tool like the abacus was their urge to do their work efficiently and accurately. Figure 1.1 shows a present day abacus.

John Napier, a Scotland national, revealed the theory of logarithms to theworld in 1617. The process of multiplication of numbers can be converted into an easy process of addition by the use of logrithms. Logarithmic tables should be used to solve problems using logarithms. John Napier used a brilliant alternative system for this by writing the required figures in ivory stripes. Such ivory stripes marked with logarithmic values are called Napier’s bones.

Using John Napiar’s logarithmic concepts, the slide ruler was designed in England in about 1632. 

Around 1642, a French mathematician called Blaise Pascal invented the adding machine that facilitated mathematical calculations further. Additions and  subtractions could be done easily using this machine. This machine is also called the ‘Pascaline’.

 

A German mathematician called Gottfried Wilhelm improved Pascal’s machine further in around 1674. Consequent to this improvement, all the operations: additions, subtractions and equally divisions and multiplications could be done. The machine improved by Gottfried Wilhelm is called the ‘Step Reckoner’. 

With industrialization, many types of machines were designed and a French man called Joseph Jacquard designed a machine called the ‘Mechanical Loom’ to ease weaving cloth in 1801. Joseph Jacquard was able to make various patterns on cloths by using the cards with punch holes.
 

he basic foundation for the creation of  the 'Analytical Engine'  by Charles Babbage was the Punch Card Concept  in 1833. However, he was unable to produce the analytical engine as he wished with the technology available at that time. Figure 1.7 is an implementation of the analytical engine based on Babbage's idea.

When looking at the functionality of this  analytical machine, we can see that the necessary components required for data input, storage, processing and output had been in-built. Computers designed later were greatly influenced by these concepts of Babbage and that is why Babbage is considered to be the ‘Father of the computer’.
A friend of Babbage called Ada Augusta Lovelace was keen on preparing programs required for his engine. Such programs are considered to be the first attempt of computer programming. Hence, Ada  Augusta Lovelace is considered to be the first computer  programmer in the world.

The computer language which was used later for military purposes was named Ada as a mark of respect for her.

Herman Hollerith was able to carry out a very successful population census in America in 1890 using Joseph Jacquard’s concept of punch cards. Herman Hollerith was able to produce  results of this census within a short  period since he was keen on using the punch card technology correctly.
The computer manufacturing organization IBM (International Business Machines) which is very popular today was established under Hollerith’s initiatives.

Howard Aiken of the Harvard University made every effort  to develop Charles Babbage’s concepts in 1937. As a result, around 1944, Howard Aiken and his friends in IBM Corporation in Harvard were able to design a  machine called ‘Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator’. However, this Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator was later named as ‘Mark I’.

Mark I machine had the capability to perform additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions very easily. A type writer was connected to input data while punch cards were used for data output. There were more than 3,000 electromechanical relays in Mark I and it was about 5 tonnes in weight. Further, it should be mentioned that Mark I was used for more than 15 years.
Between 1937 and 1942, the Bulgarian Professor John Vincent Atanasoff was able to complete a computer partly with the assistance of Cliff Berry. Later this computer was named ‘Atanasoff Berry Computer’ (ABC computer).

However, there is much controversy about the first electronic digital computer. Some say that Prof. John Vincent Atanasoff’s ABC computer is the first electronic digital  computer. However, as this ABC computer was completed partly, they were not able to obtain the patent license for this machine. 

 On account of this, ENIAC computer (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) which was produced later is considered to be the world’s first electronic digital computer.
Around 1945 a mathematician called John Von Neumann introduced a new concept that can be used in computers . The basic idea of this was to make the computer capable to get different tasks performed by using its stored programs without effecting any physical changes to the computer machine. What is  being used in the modern computers is the concept of John Von Neumann.

Moor School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania produced the world’s first electronic digital computer around1946. This was called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) and about 18,000 vacuum tubes were used to develop this machine. Figure 1.14 shows a vacuum tube

Although ENIAC computer (Figure 1.15) was able to carry out about 5,000 calculations within a second, there were several drawbacks of it such as the large size of the machine, the frequent changes of burned vacuum tubes due to excessive heat and also high electrical consumption

Computers which were designed using vacuum tubes were called the ‘First generation computers’.

A few years later in 1950, Remington Rand institution manufactured UNIVAC - I (Universal Automatic Calculator - I) computer which had the capacity to carry out about 10,000 calculations in a second.

Meanwhile in 1957, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) designed its ‘IBM 704’ computer which could carry out about 100,000 calculations per second.

The second generation of computers  starts with the invention of the transistor. The honour of inventing the transistor goes to William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brarttain of the Bell Laboratory and for this they were awarded the Nobel prize for Physics in 1956.

Computers in the second generation were designed with smaller transistors and these computers could perform 200,000 – 250,000 mathematical calculations per second.

 

 Low electrical consumption and smaller size were the key characteristics of this second generation computers.

Third generation computers were designed with Integrated Circuits (ICs).

With the use of integrated circuits, the size of the computer was reduced further while achieving higher efficiency. Integrated circuits used in the earlier stage consisted of a few transistors and the technology was called SSI (Small Scale Integration). The next generation of  integrated circuits were designed by developing these circuits further with more transistors. Those are called MSI (Medium Scale Integration), LSI (Large Scale Integration), VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration), and ULSI (Ultra Large Scale Integration) respectively.

Micro-chips which were designed with the development of the technology represent the fourth generation of the computer. These microchips are called microprocessors too.