History of the Computer

Currently, computers are used for everything in life. For example, from researching for a large essay project to playing video games with friends. “From the outset, computers were weighed for both military and commercial significance, and hence they straddled the very institutional boundaries that central to this study. It is also significant that computers became valuable research instruments in nearly all disciplines.” (Akera, 2). The first digital computer was constructed in 1946 by John Mauchly, a professor, and Presper Eckert, an inventor. “They met by chance in 1941 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering. They soon developed a revolutionary vision: to use electricity as a means of computing--in other words, to make electricity "think."” (McCartney, 1). They were ignored by their colleagues, but in 1943 they were becoming more well known and was funded by the U.S Army. The U.S Army was seeking for a contraption that can quickly calculate ballistic missile trajectories in wartime Europe and Africa (McCartney, 1). John Mauchly and Presper Eckert led a team that constructed the computer that occupied 1,800 square feet and weighed thirty tons. They named the large computer, ENIAC, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The process of building this machine was not an effortless task, Mauchly and Presper and their team had to overcome many problems

1830: President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act authorizing the move of of several tribes to Western lands. 1830: The Choctaws sign a treaty exchanging 8 million acres of land east of the Mississippi for land in Oklahoma. 1832: Democrat Andrew Jackson is re-elected president over his opponents, gathering 216 electoral votes to National Republican candidate Henry Clay's 49. 1834: Anti-Catholic protestors burn the Ursuline convent in Somerville, Massachusetts. 1836: Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that any slave brought within its borders by a master is free.

From a very simple invention satisfying man’s conviction to do better, the abacus dramatically encouraged the growth of trade wherever it was adopted, for it was well suited to any commercial calculation. Still used in the Soviet Union and in the Far East in the 20th century, the abacus was finally replaced worldwide by the cheap electronic calculator. (The Inventions, pg.10) In 1945, the world’s first fully electronic computer was completed at the University of Pennsylvania. It was called ENIAC-Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer.

The 1940’s was the beginning of an era of computers ruling us. It all started with Konrad Zuse a German engineer creates and finishes the computer called Z3 built in 1941 it was built using 2,300 relays, and used a floating point binary arithmetic, and had a 22 bit word length. Although the original was destroyed in a bombing run in Berlin in late 1943. He supervised a reconstruction of his invention in the 60's which is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In February of 1946 the ENIAC was released and the public was able to view it, built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert they improved it by 1,000 times since the first computers were released. Started in 1943 it took 3 years to complete and it used a plugboard and switch program, and the speed was about 5,000 operations per second. It took up 1,000 square feet, or the size of a small house! In 1944 the Harvard Mark-1 was completed. Thought by the Harvard professor Howard Aiken, and built by IBM, the dimensions of this beast was room sized, relay-based calculator. Also it had a

The origin of the computer resides with the military. The computer itself was created by the military during the Cold War era, when we were in a technological race with Russia. This race was the fuel for massive advancements in technology especially in the sector of computer intelligence. The first Computer’s were physically large enough to fill an entire room. They were used to manage large quantities of data in textual and numerical form. The government backed certain research facilities in the advancement of the computer and some investigated and experimented in computer technology with art and music. 1

The ENIAC was invented by John Mauchly and J.Presper Eckert, Jr.and built from 1943-1945. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), often referred to as the first computer, was built to supply the need for faster calculations. It started the information age and led to the development of the first commercial computers (The ENIAC).

Although the idea of the computer had developed, the first digital computer, the Colossus, was used in World War II in England to crack into Hitler’s codes to break an electronic code to discover the German’s war plans in 1944. This would eventually evolve into technology that would become the Personal Computers (PC) and begin the age of the Computer and online connection (The Colossus Gallery).

Intel is one of the most prestigious companies that were able to produce its first 4-bit microprocessor on November 15, 1971. On April 1, 1972, Intel was able to introduce its 8-bit microprocessor when also being able to create processors such as Intel 8080, 8085, 8086, 8088, 80186, 80188, as well as

Ada Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage to develop what would become the first computer by writing the algorithms needed to make computers work. She checked Babbage’s work and found errors in his system, helping to design the computer. Lovelace is considered the first

The closest comparison to this small computer at the time was the Altair 8800 and the Intel microprocessors used in calculators and watches. An improved version of the Apple 1 developed into the Apple 11, the first personal computer with graphics and a keyboard, and IBM soon followed Apple’s lead with their version of a small computer. The market for personal computers had been primarily in the business industry. Apple Computer sales netted $50 million by the last quarter of 1979 (Gitman & McDaniel, 2009) and Apple soon became the personal computer of choice for many small businesses and families, especially when Apple introduced the more user- friendly Macintosh computer in the 1980’s. The Macintosh was Apple’s first major step in adapting the personal computer to the desires of corporate America. In ten years, Apple had grown from two employees in a garage to a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees (Jobs, 1985). What began as a hobby for Jobs and Wozniak soon became an essential part of many households and established the foundation for the Apple empire.

In today’s modern world, it’s hard to imagine life without computers. Throughout the decades, computers have gotten better, faster, and smaller. It’s hard to imagine that before the 20th century almost all calculations were done by mechanical devices such as the electromechanical computers; or, the first digital computers that had huge tubes around them that you had to designate a whole room just to fit the computer in. Today we have Internet, phone book, pictures, videos, telephone, mail, and camera that is compacted into one tiny device that can fit in your pocket.

1946: Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and get financing from the Census Bureau to manufacture the UNIVAC, the first business workstation for business and government applications.eniac - World's first electronic, expansive scale, universally useful machine, constructed by Mauchly and Eckert, and initiated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. ENIAC reproduced on an advanced machine chip. See a clarification of ENIAC on a Chip by the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania.

The first ever computer was invented in the 1820s by Charlse Babbage. However the first electronic digital computer were developed between 1940 and 1945 in the United States and in the United Kingdom. They were gigantic, originally the size of a large room, and also need to be supply a large amount of power source which is equivalent as several hundred modern personal computers. The history of computer hardware covers the developments from simple devices to aid calculation, to mechanical calculators, punched card data processing and on to modern stored program computers. The tools or mechanical tool used to help in calculation are called calculators while the machine operator that help in calculations is called computer. At first the

a man named Gary Kildall. IBM came to Kildall first, but he turned them away

The history of computer dates back to 1800s when Charles Babbage, the father of computer invented computer system. When computers first started, one had to know