In today’s society, the computers we have now compared to the ones in the past, vary greatly. Back then, we could not do the many things that we could today with our technology. Our technology has grown tremendously throughout the years and with this technology, we have been able to accomplish a vast amount of things. With this exponential rate of our technology, it opens many opportunities for us. Also, it could possibly open up to the ‘Singularity’. In that case, there will be many outcomes of the singularity. Background Before the history of computers actually got started, the word ‘computer’ was being used around the 1700’s. It was defined as a human who was able to perform multiple calculations. The history of computers dates back to …show more content…
Transistors, made of semi-conductors, could now replace the vacuum tubes that were being used for computers. Even though transistors and vacuums could perform the same duties, there were some advantages for transistors over vacuums. The advantages were, it used less space and power. Unaware of each other’s intentions, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce create the first computer chip in 1958. “In designing a complex electronic machine like a computer it was always necessary to increase the number of components involved in order to make technical advances (Bellis, The History of the Integrated Circuit Microchip).” Also, making the circuit actually helped save money on electronic functions. The circuit, also known as the ‘chip’, was made of a semiconductor material. Kilby used germanium, and Noyce used silicon. Fast forward a couple of years and the first computer game is invented. “It was in 1962 when a young computer programmer from MIT, Steve Russell fueled with inspiration from the writing of E.E. “Doc” Smith *, led the team ** that created the first popular computer game (Bellis, The History of Spacewar).” Spacewar was a two-player game that also involved being a spaceship firing missiles at each other. Alan Shugart and a team of IBM engineers invent the “floppy disk”. Back then it was called ‘memory disk’ by IBM in 1971. The floppy disk enabled data to be passed on from computer to computer by physical means. The first 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).
The first generation of electronic computers was characterized by hulking monstrosities of tubes and wires, housed in metal. The first programmable electronic computer was Colossus. Completed in 1943, Colossus contained
From the hardware development perspective, the first generation of computer was the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC). These first electronic computers used vacuum tubes. They were huge and complex,
The earliest conception of a computer could be credited to Pascal. Blaise Pascal had invented
Ockham, Surrey County, England, the Summer of 1843. Lady Ada Lovelace frantically prepares her “Notes” to Sir Charles Babbage. This 19,136 words document will hold the first description of the term “computer” a century before this idea will come to fruition.
After Babbage’s calculator, the revolution of computers took off leading to the first programmable computer, the digital computer, the minicomputer, the desktop computer, the microprocessor, the portable
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
The first conventional computers that were introduced were these big towers of switches, transistors, and buttons. These old computers took up so much power, but had such little specifications. The first Macintosh ever made had a whopping 128kilobytes of random-access memory and the floppy disk inside the computer would not be able to even hold
It all started with the invention of the first PC in 1946, scientists at that time wanted to combine the learning and human thinking in such machines. In 1950 Alan Turing posed a test to machines called Turing test. Basically, this test is used to examine the human behaviour of computers. First, a machine and a human being are made to sit in two different rooms side by side and there is a evaluator sitting, who records the answers and checks the similarity percentage of answers. If the answers are similar to a specific percentage, then it is said that machine has passed Turing test. In 1952 Arthur Samuel from IBM coded a first checkers playing software. He claims that the
Today in our society, we use technology frequently. When technology was new to this world, I was interested in it and wanted to use it. When I started to use a computer, it was so absorbing, I would always stay next to it. I could search things faster and edit a middle of a sentence without making any additional marks I make when I want to add something in the middle of a sentence. I thought the best part of using computers was that it trouble free, until I actually had trouble with my computer.
Computers using vacuum tubes as their electronic elements were in use throughout the 1950s, but by the 1960s had been largely replaced by transistor-based machines, which were smaller, faster, cheaper to produce, required less power, and were more reliable. The first transistorised computer was demonstrated at the University of Manchester in 1953.[20] In the 1970s, integrated circuit technology and the subsequent creation of microprocessors, such as the Intel 4004, further decreased size and cost and further increased speed and reliability of computers. By the late 1970s, many products such as video recorders contained dedicated computers called microcontrollers, and they started to appear as a replacement to mechanical controls in domestic appliances
Computers have been around for what seem like decades, it’s a way of life if nothing else we rely on it so much in our daily life. It wasn’t always like this our computer technology has been advancing astronomical. When once computers were seen as a simple calculator for simple calculations. We valued them as they were specialized machines for each person and each person could have a different experience with the computer, recently computers have skyrocketed with improvement in the early 20th century due to new discoveries in technology. Which has changed society in a drastic way.
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