CS101 Introduction to Computing

Lecture 2Evolution of Computing

During the Last Lecture …

• We learnt about the Analytical Engine - the first general-purpose, digital computer – and its inventor Charles Babbage

• We had a discussion about the key strengths (speed, do not get bored) and weaknesses (pattern recognition, innovative ideas) of the modern computer

Today’s Goal

To learn about the evolution of computing

To recount the important milestones and the key events

To learn about the steps that took us from Babbage’s idea of the Analytical Engine to today’s ultra-smart hand held computers

But first, why should we spend time on recounting the events of the past

Why not just talk about what is happening in computing now and what is going to happen in the future?

Why?

• If you do not learn from the history, your condemned to repeat it

• Recounting the events of the past provides an excellent opportunity to:– learn lessons– discover patterns of evolution, and– use them in the future

• If we learn from history well, we will:– neither repeat the mistakes of the past– nor would we waste time re-inventing

what already has been invented

Babbage’s Analytical Engine - 1833

• Mechanical, digital, general-purpose

• Was crank-driven

• Could store instructions

• Could perform mathematical calculations

• Could store information permanently in punched cards

Click here to see the picture of punched card

Punched Cards - 1801

• Initially had no relationship with computers

• Invented by a Frenchman named Joseph-Marie Jacquard for storing weaving patterns for automated textile looms (“khuddian”)

• Their value for storing computer-related information was later realized by the early computer builders

• Punched cards were replaced my magnetic storage only in the early 1950s

Protests Against Jacquard’s Invention

• Hand weavers saw the automatic loom as a threat to their livelihood

• They burned several of the new machines

• A few weavers even physically assaulted Jacquard

Turing Machine - 1936

• Alan Turing of Cambridge University presented his idea of a theoretically simplified but fully capable computer, now known as the “Turing Machine”

• The concept of this machine, which could theoretically perform any mathematical computation, was very important in the future development of the computer

• You will learn about the details of the “Turing Machine” in your advanced Computer Science courses

Another contribution by Alan Turing

• The “Turing test”

• A test proposed to determine if a computer has the ability to think

• So far no one has built a computer that can pass that test – there is cash prize of US$100,000

Interrogator

Human

Machineon its own

Terminal

Terminal

Turing Test

• An interrogator is connected to one person and one machine via a terminal, therefore can't see her counterparts

• The interrogator’s task is to find out which of the two candidates is the machine, and which is the human only by asking them questions. If the machine can "fool" the interrogator, it passes the “Turing Test”.

Vacuum Tube - 1904

• John Fleming, an English Physicist, developed the very first one

• These electronic devices consist of 2 or more electrodes encased in a glass or metal tube

• They along with electric relays were used in the construction of earlier computers

• These tubes have now been almost completely replaced by more reliable and less costly transistors

ABC - 1939

• Attanasoff-Berry Computer

• John Attanasoff & Clifford Berry at Iowa State College

• World’s first electronic computer

• The first computer that used binary numbers instead of decimal

• Helped grad students in solving simultaneous linear equations

Harvard Mark 1 - 1943

• Howard Aiken of Harvard University

• The first program controlled machine

• Included all the ideas proposed by Babbage for the Analytical Engine

• The last famous electromechanical computer

ENIAC – 1946

• Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer• World’s first large-scale, general-purpose

electronic computer• Built by John Mauchly & John Echert at the

University of Pennsylvania• Developed for military applications• 5,000 operations/sec, 19000 tubes, 30 ton• 9’ x 80’• 150 kilowatts: Used to dim the lights in the City

of Philadelphia down when it ran

Transistor - 1947

• Invented by Shockly, Bardeen, and Brattain at the Bell Labs in the US

• Compared to vacuum tubes, it offered:– much smaller size– better reliability– much lower power consumption– much lower cost

• All modern computers are made of miniaturized transistors

• Tubes replaced mechanicals

• Transistors replaced tubes

• What is going to replace the transistors?

EDVAC – 1948

• Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer

• Built by Echert & Mauchly and included many design ideas proposed by Von Neumann

• The first electronic computer design to incorporate a program stored entirely within its memory

• First computer to use Magnetic Tape for storing programs. Before this, computers needed to be re-wired each time a new program was to be run

Floppy Disk - 1950

Invented at the Imperial University in Tokyo by Yoshiro Nakamats

Provided faster access to programs and data as compared with magnetic tape

Compiler - 1951

• Grace Hopper of US Navy develops the very first high-level language compiler

• Before the invention of this compiler, developing a computer program was tedious and prone to errors

• A compiler translates a high-level language (that is easy to understand for humans) into a language that the computer can understand

UNIVAC 1 - 1951

• UNIVersal Automatic Computer• Echert & Mauchly Computer Company• First computer designed for commercial apps• First computer that could not only manipulate

numbers but text data as well• Max speed: 1905 operations/sec• Cost: US$1,000,000• 5000 tubes. 943 cu ft. 8 tons. 100 kilowatts• Between 1951-57, 48 were sold

BASIC - 1965

• Beginner All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

• Developed by Thomas Kurtz & John Kemeny at Dartmouth College

• The first programming language designed for the non-techies

• The grand-mother of the most popular programming language in the world today – Visual BASIC

Computer Mouse - 1965

• Invented by Douglas Englebart

• Did not become popular until 1983, when Apple Computers adopted the concept

ARPANET - 1969

• A network of networks

• The grand-daddy of the today’s global Internet

• A network of around 60,000 computers developed by the US Dept of Defense to facilitate communications between research organizations and universities

Intel 4004 - 1971

• The first microprocessor

• Microprocessor: A complete computer on a chip

• Speed: 750 kHz

Altair 8800 - 1975

• The commercially available 1st PC

• Based on the Intel 8080

• Cost $397

• Had 256 bytes of memory; my PC at home has a million times more RAM (Random Access Memory)

Cray 1 - 1976

• The first commercial supercomputer

• Supercomputers are state-of-the-art machines designed to perform calculations as fast as the current technology allows

• Used to solve extremely complex tasks: weather prediction, simulation of atomic explosions; aircraft design; movie animation

• Cray 1 could do 167 million calculations a send; the current state-of the-art machines can do many trillion (1012) calculations per second

IBM PC & MS DOS - 1981

• IBM PC: The tremendously popular PC; the grand-daddy of 95% of the PC’s in use today

• MS DOS: The tremendously popular operating system that came bundled with the IBM PC

TCP/IP Protocol - 1982

• Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

• The communications protocol used by the computer networks, including the Internet

• A communication protocol is a set of rules that governs the flow of information over a network

Apple Macintosh - 1984

• The first popular, user-friendly, WIMP-based PC

• Based on the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing Device) ideas first developed for the Star computer at Xerox PARC (1981)

World Wide Web -1989

• Tim Berners Lee – British physicist

• 1989 – At the European Center for Nuclear Energy Research (CERN) in Geneva

• 1993 - The 1st major browser “Mosaic” was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Deep Blue -vs- Kasparov - 1997

In 1997 Deep Blue, a supercomputer designed by IBM, beat Gary Kasparov, the World Chess Champion

That computer was exceptionally fast, did not get tired or bored. It just kept on analyzing the situation and kept on searching until it found the perfect move from its list of possible moves

It could analyze up to 300 billion chess moves in three minutes

Mobile Phone-Computer

• A small computer, no bigger than the hand set of desktop phone

• Can do whatever an Internet-capable computer can plus can function as a regular phone

• First consumer device formed by the fusion of computing and wireless telecommunication

What is he next major Milestone?

1. Mechanical computing

2. Electro-mechanical computing

3. Vacuum tube computing

4. Transistor computing(the current state-of the-art)

5. Quantum computing

?Quantum Quantum MechanicsMechanics

QUANTUM MECHANICS is the branch of physics which describes the activity of subatomic particles, i.e. the particles that make up atoms

What is he next major Milestone?

• Quantum computers may one day be millions of times more efficient than the current state-of-the-art computers.

• They take advantage of the laws that govern the behavior of subatomic particles.

• These laws allow quantum computers to examine all possible answers to a question simultaneously

• For example, if you want to find the largest from a list of four numbers:– The current computers require on average 2 to 3 steps to get to the

answer– Whereas, the quantum computer may be able to do that in a single step

For further info …

Read the following article that is available on the Web:

Quantum Computing with Moleculesby Neil Gershenfeld and Isaac L. Chuang

http://www.sciam.com/1998/0698issue/0698gershenfeld.html

What have we learnt today?

Focus of the Next Lecture

The World Wide Web