COMPUTER HISTORY
computer is define as any programmable electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data. The basic idea of computing develops in the 1200's when a Moslem cleric proposes solving problems with a series of written procedures. The term Computer, originally meant a person capable of performing numerical calculations with the help of a mechanical computing device. The evolution of computers started way back in the late 1930s. Binary arithmetic is at the core of the computers of all times. History of computers dates back to the invention of a mechanical adding machine in 1642. ABACUS, an early computing tool, invention of logarithm by John Napier and the invention of slide rules by William Oughtred were significant events in the evolution of computers from these early computing devices.
In 1937 that John V. Atanasoff develop the first digital electronic computer. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry came up with the ABC prototype in the November of 1939. Its computations were based on a vacuum tube and it used regenerative capacitor memory.
It was in 1941 when Konrad Zuse’s electromechanical ‘Z Machines’, especially the Z3 achieve a notable achievement in the evolution of computers. It was the first machine to include binary and floating-point arithmetic and a considerable amount of programmability. In 1998, since it was proved to be Turing complete, it is regarded as world’s first operational computer.
In 1943, the Colossus was secretly designed at Bletchley Park, Britain to decode German messages. The Harvard Mark I of 1944 was a large-scale electromechanical computer with less programmability. It was another step forward in the evolution of computers.
The U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory came up with the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) in 1946. It came to be known as the first general purpose electronic computer. However it was required to be rewired to change it’s programming thus making its architecture inflexible. Developers of ENIAC realized the flaws in the architecture and developed a better architecture. It was known as the stored program architecture or von Neumann Architecture. It got its name after John von Neumann, who for the first time described the architecture in 1945. All the projects of developing computers taken up thereafter have been using the von Neumann Architecture. All the computers use a ‘stored program architecture’, which is now a part of the definition of the word ‘computer’.
The U.S. National Bureau of Standards came up with Standards Electronic/Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) in 1950. Diodes handled all the logic making it the first computer to base its logic on solid devices. IBM announced the IBM 702 Electronic Data Processing Machine in 1953. It was developed for business use and could address scientific and engineering applications. Till the 1950s all computers that were used were vacuum tube based.
MIT introduces the Whirlwind machine March 8, 1955, a revolutionary computer that was the first digital computer with magnetic core RAM and real-time graphics. The TX-O (Transistorized Experimental computer) and first transistorized computer is demonstrated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956. The early British computer known as the EDSAC is considered to be the first stored program electronic computer. The computer performed its first calculation on May 6, 1949 and was the computer that ran the first graphical computer game.
Thousands of integrated circuits placed onto a silicon chip made up a microprocessor. Introduction of microprocessors was the hallmark of fourth generation computers. The fifth generation computers are under development. They are going to be based on principles of artificial intelligence and natural language recognition. Developers are aiming at computers capable of organizing themselves. The evolution of computers continues.
