History of Computer

Technology

By: Puneet Badyal

Overview• Almost half a century ago, computers have completelty changed the entire worlds

point of view

• The first change in the world was the invention of the abcus - the abcus was a rack of full of beads and it was used to preform calculations

• In 1642 Baise Pascal made an invention a numerical wheel calculator, to help his father with his taxes-he called it the Pascaline

• In 1812 Charles Babbage realized the relationship between machines and math, he began to form a machine called the Difference Engine- but he failed to do so, and invented the Analytical Engine

• The Analytical Engine was made to make important decisions

• In 1820 Charles Colmar had made an invention called the Arithometer- the Arithometer was a calculator that preformed simple math equations, for instance addition, multiplication, division, subtraction

• In 1880 the U.S was scared that the census that they had planned would take more than a decade, then Herman Hollerith invented a system were data could be stored on to a punch card and then a machine would get the rest of the results- it only took six weeks to complete the census

• In 1896 Hollerith became extremely successful and began a Tabulating Machine Company

First-Generation Computers

• First- Generations computers were first established at the time of the second world war.

• The Colossus invention only had one purpose which was to figure out the hidden German messages

• In 1943 an  U.S University  made a machine called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and computer (ENIAC)

• It was made to do extremely large  equations and to preform other great functions

• It took three years to build, it was extremely large, weighing 30 tons

• Made calculations in 30 seconds that would have taken a person at least twenty hours.

• Was extremely fast but eventually it was replaced  by better computers  for instance UNIVAC and EDVAC

Second- Generation Computers

• The second generation computers started around 1956, from huge, large and heavy vacuums and tubes to transistors

• Transistors were much more faster, smaller and they required a huge amount of energey as well

•  Conductor - is when the transistor remains on

• Insulator-is when the transistor remains off

• . Assembly language was a language,  that sent directions to the computers and it also allowed humans to recognize and be aware of what was going on

• Machine language was a language that sent directions to the computers -but humans couldn't recognize and understand it

• Transistors were improving a lot but newer and newer inventions were getting invented for instance printers and better computers which were faster and smaller 

Third-Generation Computers

• In the 1950's the third generation computer had came to a start

• In the 1950's Jack Kilby had invented The Integrated Circuit with the help of Robert Noyce

• The Integrated Ciruit kept track of the information that happens within a computer

• The Integrated Circuit was type of chip,it had a lot of space on it and was used for various things for instance phones, cars and televisions

Fourth-Generation Computers

• Was not similar to the previous generations in which people were inventing and producing more computers and other types of technology

• In 1974 MITS Altair announced that people could also buy their own computers- they also set up a price for the people to buy  

• In the fouth-generation, in 1981 the PC computers were introduced and became a huge hit

• In 2001 there were millions of computers being sold all around the world - this made computer technology grow more and started to become more advance

COMPUTER HARDWARE AND

SOFTWARE

DEFINE HARDWARE AND INPUT/ OUTPUT DEVICES

• It would be extremely difficult to use a computer without input and output devices

• Input devices- are in computers that allow humans to accesss information and then the computer listens to the commmand and does what it is created to do

• Some examples of input devices are keyboards, mice , joysticks, gamepads and scanners

• Output devices- are extremely important, it tells the user what the computer is doing and whether it is doing it right or wrong- A couple of examples of an output device are a computer moniter and a printer

• Hardware- is the main source of storage in a computer

Processors and Memory

• One of the most important processors in a computer is the central processing unit (CPU), it is one of the most essential part of the computer, only performs simply math function- For instance addition,subtraction, muliplication and division, but it performed them remarkably fast

• In the middle of the CPU are the transistors, the transistor and the CPU are either on or off- all the information that goes through the CPU is put into the transistors

• The CPU has large variety of things it does however it has no memory- Once it has finished the calculation it starts the next one- forgetting the previous calculation

• Since the CPU doesn't have any memory a Random access memory (RAM) is placed- however once the computer is turned off all the data in RAM is lost

Hard Drives and Removable Storage

• Computers use many different ways of storing data for instance, hard drives, CD-ROMS, and floppy disks- all of these devices have their own unique way to store data

•  Storage quantity is measured by bits of data- When a state was on or off "the transistors are represented as BInary digiTS (BITS)"

• The on and off state represent by one bit, on is one and off is zero- eight BITS is equal to one byte and a Kilobyte is equal to 1024, when you multiply a kilobyte by 1024 you will get megabyte which is 1048576 and as you keep multipling 1024 by the bytes the bytes keep getting larger

• The main place were the storage is stored in the computer is the hard drive

• Hard drives store data on many magnetic recording platters- hard drives are getting much larger and larger however their size of them are getting smaller

• A couple of storage devices are CDs, USBs and cameras 

Networks

• Networks have been growing at a rapid pase, almost all companies have networks

• Most of the networks have cables for instance twisted- pair wire or the coaxial cable but now networks are starting to become wireless

•  Node- "contains a network interface card (NIC)" that allows information to transfer between the network, nodes can also be connected to one another

• Networks can be laid out any way the user would like- the layout of a network is called topology and the three main topologys are bus,star, and ring

Operating Systems

• Operating systems also known as platforms are used to do two extremely important tasks- they manage the hardware in the computer and secondly they also supply us with a connection- the connection in which we communicate with computer

• UNIX/LINUX made by the Bell Labs reseachers in the 1960's- the UNIX was a great success and it allowed you to do many task all at once, it was great for users- the LINUX was made after the UNIX by Linus Torvalds, the LINUX was an open soucre which meant that anyone was able to update and access the use of the operating system

• Mac0S Graphical user interfaces (GUISs) inspired by Steve Jobs in the 1970's

• The Macintosh computer by apple made in 1984 was huge success - it had user-friendly icons which were easy for the user to use

• Disk Operating System (DOS) was made in 1981, many different companies made different versions of it but microsoft's MS-DOS was the one that people used the most

• In 1985 Windows was introduced it allowed many programs to run at the same time- then in 1992 windows 3.1 and was put into a lot of computers in U.S then any other Operating Systems

Software Applications

• Everything you do on a computer always involves some sort of software

• Softwares can be put into two groups: systems and applications

• Systems software is low-level, and is very basic

• Applications software does an extreme amount of things like word processing, spreadsheets, animation, and games- Application software can't run without an operating system