History of Computing Slides from NYU and Georgia Tech
Early Computational Devices (Chinese) Abacus 2700 2300 BC Used for performing arithmetic operations
Early Computational Devices Napier s Bones, 1617 For performing multiplication & division John Napier 1550-1617
Early Computational Devices Pascaline mechanical calculator Blaise Pascal 1623-1662
Early Computational Devices Leibniz s calculating machine, 1674 Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz 1646-1716
Charles Babbage Babbage (1792-1872) was a British inventor who designed an two important machines: Difference engine Analytical engine He saw a need to replace the human computers used to calculate numerical tables which were prone to error with a more accurate machine.
Charles Babbage Difference engine Designed to compute values of polynomial functions automatically No multiplication was needed because he used the method of finite differences He never built one It was built from 1985 2002 for the London Science Museum
Charles Babbage Difference Engine
Charles Babbage The Next Leap Forward 1800 s
Charles Babbage Analytical Engine Could be programmed using punch cards totally revolutionary idea Sequential control / branching / looping Turing complete
The analytical engine of Charles Babbage
Tabulating Machine 1890 Census
Hollerith Tables and the Census Improved the speed of the census Reduced cost by $5 million Greater accuracy of data collected Hollerith unemployed after the census
The War Years 1939-1945 Two Primary Uses Artillery Tables Hand calculation replaced by machine calculation Department of the Navy Cryptologist : Cryptography The art or process of writing in or deciphering secret writing Bletchley House The Enigma Codes U23
Alan Turing 1936 Published a paper On Computable Numbers Turing s machine - hypothetical computer that could perform any computation or logical operation a human could devise.
Turings Heritage Code breaking was Touring s strength. Colossus a computer to break the German enigma code -100 Billion alternatives. Ran at rate of 25,000 characters per second
KonradZuse-First Programmable Computer 1941
The Enigma Machine 1943 Bletchley Park s Colossus
HARVARD MARK -1, 1944
Harvard Mark I
The Mark I 51 feet long 3,304 electro mechanical switches Add or subtract 23 digit numbers in 3/10 of a second. Instructions (software) loaded by paper tape. The infamous Bug
ENIAC -The Next Jump Forward -1946 1st electronic digital computer Operated with vacuum tubes rather electromechanical switches 1000 times faster than Mark I No program storage - wired into circuitry. This was still based on the decimal numbering system. programmed by switches and cords
ENIAC
The Advent of the Semiconductor -1947 Developed at Bell Labs by Shockley & Bardeen Nobel Prize Point Contact Transistor replaced power hungry, hot and short lived vacuum tubes
EDVAC -Electronic Discreet Variable Automatic Computer 1951 Data stored internally on a magnetic drum Random access magnetic storage device First stored program computer Championed by John von Neumann
The 50 s the Era of Advances
Technical Advances in the 60 s John Mccarthy coins the term Artificial Intelligence 1960 - Removable Disks appear 1964 -BASIC -Beginners-all purpose Symbolic Instruction Language Texas Instruments offers the first solid-state hand-held calculator 1967-1st issue of Computerworld published
IBM System/360 (1964) CPU Architecture 32-bit arithmetic 16 general-purpose registers 24-bit addressing (16,777,216 bytes max.) More than a few megabytes was quite rare Real addressing only! No virtual memory Approximately 142 instructions total Some features were optional I/O architecture Decimal instructions (in-storage only) Floating point (with 4 floating-point registers) Direct control (specialty I/O for check sorters, &c.) Protection feature (i.e., storage keys) Maximum of 7 channels One byte-multiplexor channel (printers, card readers, &c) Up to seven selector channels (disks, tape) Maximum of 256 devices per channel Most machines had far fewer channels & devices IBM System/360 Model 50
IBM System/360 (1964) Storage technology Ferrite core storage Each toroid donut represented one bit Architectural maximum: 16 megabytes Reality: Most customers had no more than 1-2 megabytes Increasing density the donut-hole test: New product s core toroid fit through the donut hole of the previous product s core
IBM System/360 Software Operating Systems Basic Operating System (BOS) Tape Operating System (TOS) Disk Operating System (DOS) Operating System / Multiple Fixed Tasks (OS/MFT) Operating System / Multiple Variable Tasks (OS/MVT) SABRE (Airline Reservations) Time-Sharing System (TSS) Control Program / 67 (CP/67) with the Cambridge Monitor System (CMS) Languages ALGOL Assembler Basic COBOL Fortran PL/1 RPG Online Transaction Processing Customer Information Control System (CICS) Conversational Programming System (CPS) Numerous independent-software-vendor packages
Moore s Law In 1965 Gordon Moore graphed data about growth in memory chip performance. Realized each new chip roughly twice capacity of predecessor, and released within ~2 yrs of it => computing power would rise exponentially over relatively brief periods of time. Still fairly accurate. In 30 years, no of transistors on a chip has increased ~20,000 times, from 2,300 on the 4004 in 1971 to 42 million on the Pentium IV.
The 1970 s -The Microprocessor Revolution A single chip containing all the elements of a computer s central processing unit. Small, integrated, relatively cheap to manufacture.
The Super Computers -1972 The Cray Parallel processing power Speed 100 million arithmetical functions per second Sensitive to heat -cooled with liquid nitrogen Very expensive
Cray I
1971 Intel 4004 Microprocessor Worlds first microprocessor with 2,300 transistors, had the same processing power as the 3,000 cubic-foot ENIAC.
ALTAIR 8800: The First PC
Computer Categorization Supercomputer Mainframe Minicomputer Microcomputer
1978/1979 First individual productivity software VisiCalc Spreadsheet software and WordStar word processor are the killer applications for personal computers, especially for small business owners.
1981 IBM PC The IBM PC is introduced running the Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS- DOS) along with CP/M-86. The IBM PC'sopen 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
1984 Apple Macintosh 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$1,995to US$2,495