Introduction to the History of Computing. Mechanical “Computers” Generation 0 Didn’t use...

Introduction to the History of Computing

Mechanical “Computers”Generation 0

• Didn’t use electricity, some used gears, wires, beads• Abacus• 1000-500 BC (Babylonians): mechanical aid used for counting

The Salamis Tablet

(Greek, 300BC) The Roman Hand Abacus

Abacus (cont.)

Modern: 1200 A.D to present

Middle Ages 5 A.D to c1400 A.D

Ancient times: 300 B.C. to c500A.D.

Da Vinci’s Mechanical Calculator

Notebook sketches c1500

Working model

Napier’s Bones• Early 1600s• Multiplication tables inscribed

on strips of wood and bones

Oughtred’s Slide Rule• Rev. William Oughtred

1621• Use logs to perform

multiplication and division by using addition and subtraction

Pascal’s arithmetic engine• Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)• Mechanical calculator for addition

and subtraction

Leibnez’s Step Reckoner• Gottfried von Leibnez

1670• Add, subtract, multiply,

divide, square roots

Jacquard’s punch card• Joseph Marie Jacquard• 1805 punch cards used to

operator loom• Could reprogram loom by

changing cards

Babbage’s Engines

•Same chair at Cambridge as Newton and Hawking

•Designed the difference engine and later, the analytical engine

•Brass gears and strings of punch cards run by steam

•Analytical Engine never built

Charles Babbage

(1791-1871)

The World’s First Programmer• Lady Ada Byron, Countess of

Lovelace (1815-1952) • Understood Babbage’s

Analytical Engine• saw it as what we would call a

general-purpose computer. • Her notes anticipate future

developments, including computer-generated music.

Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine• Herman Hollerith (1860-1929)

• Invented a punched card device to help analyse the 1890 US census data

• Founded “Tabulating Machine Company” 1896

• 1924 – Tabulating Machine Company merges with others to form IBM

MIT Differential Analyzer• Purpose: to solve differential

equations

• Mechanical computation with first use of vacuum tubes for memory

• Programmed by aligning gears on shafts

• 1930s

Alan Turing (1912-1954)• Develops theory of computability

and the “Turing Machine” model – a simple but elegant mathematical model of a general purpose computer (~1936)

• Helped crack German codes in WWII (1939-1945)

Konrad Zuse• 1936: Z1 first binary computer using

Erector Set parts, keyboard and lights for output (relay memory)

• 1938: Z2 – using punched tape and relays

Z1

Vacuum TubesGeneration 1

• 1939 Atanasoff-Berry Computer– First electronic-digital

computer?

– Binary numbers, direct logic for calculation, regenerative memory

• Prototype 1939

• 2 years then to build full scale model– One op per 15 secs, 300

vacuum tubes, 700 pounds, mile of wire

ABC Prototype

The first computers (cont.)• 1943 British Colossus –

first all-electronic computer? (2,400 vacuum tubes)– Decipher enigma coded

messages at 5,000 chars/sec

– At peak, 10 machines ran 24 hours a day

A German enigma coding machine

The first computers (cont.)• 1943-44 Aiken at

Harvard/IBM “Mark 1” – first electromechanical digital computer (electromagnetic relays – magnets open and close metal switches) (recreation of Analytical Engine)– 8 ft tall, 50 ft long, 1

million parts– 323 decimal-digit additions

per sec– storage for 72 23-digit

numbers.

ENIAC (1946)• 18,000 tubes, 1500 sq ft

• Programmed by wire plugs into panels– 5,000 decimal-digit additions/sec

– 20 10-decimal digit “accumulators”

Von Neumann and ENIAC

• 1941 Von Neumann proposes EDVAC – Electronic Discrete Variable Computer

• Computer should– Use binary

– Have stored programs

– Be function-oriented

UNIVAC-1• The world’s first commercially available

(non-military) computer

• “I think there is a world market for about five computers”– Thomas J. Watson, IBM Chairman

TransistorsGeneration 2

• Transistors replace vacuum tubes

• Size and cost decreased, speed increased

• 1960’s IBM sells large mainframe computers to businesses, called 700 series

• Mainframes run operating systems that allow many dumb terminals to be attached

• Typical business applications are custom written and run in batch mode

Integrated CircuitsGeneration 3

• Integrated circuits contain many transistors on one chip

• 1971 Intel produces 4004 chip with all circuitry for a calculator

VLSI Generation 4

• Mid 1970s• Very large scale integration• 1977 Apple Corporation started by

Steve Jobs sells personal computer for hobbyists

• 1980 IBM creates the PC to sell to businesses

• The PC is widely cloned and becomes widely accepted as prices drop

• PCs and clones use a text based operating system called DOS to programs

• 1984 Apple releases the MAC with a graphical user interface

• Generations on How Webopedia

IBM PC c1982

Programming Language History• Programming languages instruct computers

what to do

• Charles Babbage's difference engine could only be made to execute tasks by changing the gears which executed the calculations

• US Government ENIAC could only be "programmed" by presetting switches and rewiring the entire system for each new "program" or calculation

Programming Language HistoryGeneration 1

• late 40’s / early 50’s: programmers coded directly in machine language

• it allowed the programmer to write its statements in 0's and 1's by hand

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11101000110000100000000001011100111001101111001011011010111010001100001011

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10000000000000000000000001000000111000111111000000000100010000001111010000

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Programming Language HistoryGeneration 2

• mid 1950’s: assembly languages replaced numeric codes with mnemonic names

• an assembler is a program that translates assembly code into machine code

• input: assembly language program

• output: machine language program

• still low-level & machine-specific, but easier to program

• In 1951, Grace Hopper (US Rear Admiral) wrote the first compiler, A-0, which turned English-like instructions into 0's and 1's

gcc2_compiled.:

.global _Q_qtod

.section ".rodata"

.align 8

.LLC0: .asciz "Hello world!"

.section ".text"

.align 4

.global main

.type main,#function

.proc 04

main: !#PROLOGUE# 0

save %sp,-112,%sp

!#PROLOGUE# 1

sethi %hi(cout),%o1

or %o1,%lo(cout),%o0

sethi %hi(.LLC0),%o2

or %o2,%lo(.LLC0),%o1

call __ls__7ostreamPCc,0

nop

mov %o0,%l0

mov %l0,%o0

sethi %hi(endl__FR7ostream),%

or %o2,%lo(endl__FR7ostream),%

call

__ls__7ostreamPFR7ostream_R7ostream,0

nop

mov 0,%i0

b .LL230

nop

.LL230: ret

restore

.LLfe1: .size main,.LLfe1-main

.ident "GCC: (GNU) 2.7.2"

Programming Language HistoryGeneration 3

• In 1957, IBM creates the first of the major languages called FORTRAN.

• Its name stands for FORmula TRANslating system.

• The language was designed for scientific computing.

• Excellent language for scientific work, difficult input/output operations

Programming Language History•  In 1958, John McCarthy of MIT created

the LISt Processing (or LISP) language. • It was designed for Artificial Intelligence

(AI) research. • Because it was designed for such a highly

specialized field, its syntax has rarely been seen before or since.

• Still in use today for AI research, offsprings include Scheme

Programming Language History• 1959 COBOL was developed for

businesses.

• COBOL statements have a very English-like grammar, making it quite easy to learn.

• Much better input/output than FORTRAN permitting business applications

• Highly successful and used on most IBM mainframe computers, even today.

Programming Language History• The BASIC language was developed in 1964 by

John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. • BASIC is a very limited language and was

designed for non-computer science people.• Many versions of BASIC were developed, Bill

Gates and his partner started business by writing a version of BASIC for a hobby computer

• Bill Gates would later start Microsoft when he licenses the DOS operating system to IBM

Programming Languages History• Pascal was begun in 1968 by Niklaus

Wirth.

• Its development was mainly out of necessity for a good teaching tool.

• Pascal was designed in a very orderly approach, it combined many of the best features of the languages in use at the time, COBOL, FORTRAN, and ALGOL.

Programming Language History•  C was developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie while

working at Bell Labs in New Jersey.• The transition in usage from the first major

languages to the major languages of today occurred with the transition between Pascal and C.

• C was built to be fast and powerful at the expense of being hard to read.

• Ritchie developed C for the new Unix system being created at the same time.

• C is very commonly used to program operating systems such as Unix, Windows, the MacOS, and Linux.

Programming Language History• In the late 1970's and early 1980's, a new

programming method was being developed called Object Oriented Programming, or OOP.

• Bjarne Stroustroup liked this method and developed extensions to C known as C++, which was released in 1983.

• C++ was designed to organize the raw power of C using OOP, but maintain the speed of C and be able to run on many different types of computers.

• C++ is most often used in simulations, such as games.

Programming Language History• Visual Basic 1 is released by Microsoft in

1991

• It includes a combination of QuickBasic (Microsoft’s version of BASIC) and a graphical design tool for creating the User Interface (originally developed by Alan Cooper)

• It includes an event-driven programming paradigm

Programming Language History• In the early 1990's, interactive TV was the technology of

the future. • Sun Microsystems decided that interactive TV needed a

special, portable (can run on many types of machines), language.

• This language eventually became Java. • In 1994, the Java project team changed their focus to the

web, which was becoming "the cool thing" after interactive TV failed.

• The next year, Netscape licensed Java for use in their internet browser, Navigator.

• At this point, Java became the language of the future.

Programming Language HistoryGeneration 4

• Often abbreviated 4GL, fourth-generation languages are programming languages closer to human languages than typical 3rd generation languages.

• In 1969, a language called RAMIS was released• Most 4GLs are used to access databases and do in

a few lines of code what would require hundreds of lines of COBOL or C.

• For example, a typical 4GL command is FIND ALL RECORDS WHERE NAME IS "SMITH"