Basic Computing Periods-Ages

Pre-mechanical
 The pre-mechanical age is the earliest age of information
technology. It can be defined as the time between
3000B.C. and 1450A.D.
 When humans first started communicating, they would
try to use language or simple picture drawings known as
petroglyphs which were usually carved in rock.
 Early alphabets were developed such as the Phoenician
alphabet.
Petroglyphs
 Pre-mechanical
 As alphabets became more popular and more people were
writing information down, pens and paper began to be
developed.
 It started off as just marks in wet clay, but later paper was
created out of papyrus plant.
 The most popular kind of paper made was probably by the
Chinese who made paper from rags.
 Now that people were writing a lot of information down, they
needed ways to keep it all in permanent storage. This is where
the first books and libraries are developed.
 Pre-mechanical
 Around 100A.D. was when the first 1-9 system was
created by people from India. However, it wasn’t until
875A.D. (775 years later) that the number 0 was
invented.
 Numbers were created, people wanted stuff to do with
them, so they created calculators.
 A calculator was the very first sign of an information
processor. The popular model of that time was the
abacus.
 Mechanical
 The mechanical age is when we first start to see connections between our
current technology and its ancestors.
 The mechanical age can be defined as the time between 1450 and 1840.
 A lot of new technologies are developed in this era as there is a large
explosion in interest with this area.
 Technologies like the slide rule (an analog computer used for multiplying
and dividing) were invented.
 Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline which was a very popular
mechanical computer.
 Charles Babbage developed the difference engine which tabulated
polynomial equations using the method of finite differences.
Difference Engine
 Mechanical
 There were lots of different machines created during this era
and while we have not yet gotten to a machine that can do more
than one type of calculation in one, like our modern-day
calculators, we are still learning about how all of our all-in-one
machines started.
 Also, if you look at the size of the machines invented in this time
compared to the power behind them it seems (to us) ridiculous
to understand why anybody would want to use them, but to the
people living in that time ALL of these inventions were HUGE.
 Electromechanical
 The electromechanical age can be defined as the time between
1840 and 1940.
 These are the beginnings of telecommunication. The telegraph
was created in the early 1800s.
 Morse code was created by Samuel Morse in 1835.
 The telephone (one of the most popular forms of communication
ever) was created by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.
 The first radio developed by Guglielmo Marconi in 1894.
 All of these were extremely crucial emerging technologies that
led to big advances in the information technology field.
Harvard Mark 1
 Electronic
 The electronic age is what we currently live in.
 It can be defined as the time between 1940 and right now.
 The ENIAC was the first high-speed, digital computer capable
of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing
problems.
 This computer was designed to be used by the U.S. Army for
artillery firing tables.
 This machine was even bigger than the Mark 1 taking up 680
square feet and weighing 30 tons - HUGE.
 It mainly used vacuum tubes to do its calculations.
 Electronic
 There are 4 main sections of digital computing.
 The first was the era of vacuum tubes and punch cards like the ENIAC and Mark 1.
Rotating magnetic drums were used for internal storage.
 The second generation replaced vacuum tubes with transistors, punch cards were
replaced with magnetic tape, and rotating magnetic drums were replaced by magnetic
cores for internal storage. Also, during this time high-level programming languages
were created such as FORTRAN and COBOL.
 The third generation replaced transistors with integrated circuits, magnetic tape was
used throughout all computers, and magnetic core turned into metal oxide
semiconductors. An actual operating system showed up around this time along with the
advanced programming language BASIC.
 The fourth and latest generation brought in CPUs (central processing units) which
contained memory, logic, and control circuits all on a single chip. The personal
computer was developed (Apple II). The graphical user interface (GUI) was developed.
 History of Computer: Generations of Computer

 There are five generations of computer:

• First generation – 1946 to 1958
• Second generation – 1959 to 1964
• Third generation – 1965 to 1970
• Fourth generation – 1971 to Today
• Fifth generation – Today to future
 The First Generation
 The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic
drums for memory, and were often enormous, taking up entire rooms.
 They were very expensive to operate and in addition to using a great
deal of electricity, generated a lot of heat, which was often the cause of
malfunctions.
 First generation computers relied on machine language, the lowest-
level programming language understood by computers, to perform
operations, and they could only solve one problem at a time. Input was
based on punched cards and paper tape, and output was displayed on
printouts.
 Example: – ENIAC – EDSAC – UNIVAC I, UNIVAC II, UNIVAC 1101
 The Second Generation
 Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and ushered in the second generation of
computers.
 One transistor replaced the equivalent of 40 vacuum tubes. Allowing computers to
become smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable. Still
generated a great deal of heat that can damage the computer.
 Second-generation computers moved from cryptic binary machine language to
symbolic, or assembly, languages, which allowed programmers to specify
instructions in words.
 Second generation computers still relied on punched cards for input and printouts
for output. These were also the first computers that stored their instructions in their
memory, which moved from a magnetic drum to magnetic core technology.
 Examples: UNIVAC III, RCA 501, Philco Transact S-2000, NCR 300 series, IBM
7030 Stretch, IBM 7070, 7080, 7090 series
 The Third Generation
 The development of the integrated circuit was the
hallmark of the third generation of computers.
 Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon
chips, called semiconductors, which drastically
increased the speed and efficiency of computers.
 It could carry out instructions in billionths of a second.
 Much smaller and cheaper compared to the second-
generation computers.
 The Fourth Generation
 The microprocessor brought the fourth generation of
computers, as thousands of integrated circuits were
built onto a single silicon chip.
 As these small computers became more powerful,
they could be linked together to form networks,
which eventually led to the development of the
Internet.
 Fourth generation computers also saw the
development of GUIs, the mouse and handheld
devices.
 The Fifth Generation
 Based on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
 Still in development.
 The use of parallel processing and superconductors is
helping to make artificial intelligence a reality.
 The goal is to develop devices that respond to natural
language input and are capable of learning and self-
organization.
 There are some applications, such as voice recognition,
that are being used today.
 History of
Computers:
A Brief
Timeline
 The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out of a
need to solve a serious number-crunching crisis. By 1880, the U.S.
population had grown so large that it took more than seven years to
tabulate the U.S. Census results. The government sought a faster way
to get the job done, giving rise to punch-card based computers that
took up entire rooms.
Today, we carry more computing power on our smartphones than
was available in these early models. The following brief history of
computing is a timeline of how computers evolved from their humble
beginnings to the machines of today that surf the Internet, play games
and stream multimedia in addition to crunching numbers.
 A Brief Timeline
 1801: In France, Joseph Marie Jacquard invents a loom that uses punched
wooden cards to automatically weave fabric designs. Early computers would
use similar punch cards.
 1822: English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven
calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. The
project, funded by the English government, is a failure. More than a century
later, however, the world's first computer was built.
 1890: Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate the 1880
census, accomplishing the task in just three years and saving the government $5
million. He establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM.
 1936: Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine, later called the
Turing machine, capable of computing anything that is computable. The central
concept of the modern computer was based on his ideas.
 1937: J.V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State
University, attempts to build the first computer without gears, cams, belts or
shafts.
 1939: Hewlett-Packard is founded by David Packard and Bill Hewlett in a Palo
Alto, California, garage, according to the Computer History Museum.
 1941: Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, design a computer
that can solve 29 equations simultaneously. This marks the first time a
computer is able to store information on its main memory.
 1943-1944: Two University of Pennsylvania professors, John Mauchly and J.
Presper Eckert, build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC).
Considered the grandfather of digital computers, it fills a 20-foot by 40-foot room
and has 18,000 vacuum tubes.
 1946: Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and receive
funding from the Census Bureau to build the UNIVAC, the first commercial
computer for business and government applications.
 1947: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of Bell Laboratories
invent the transistor. They discovered how to make an electric switch with solid
materials and no need for a vacuum.
 1953: Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which eventually
becomes known as COBOL. Thomas Johnson Watson Jr., son of IBM CEO Thomas
Johnson Watson Sr., conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Nations keep
tabs on Korea during the war.
 1954: The FORTRAN programming language, an acronym for FORmula
TRANslation, is developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus,
according to the University of Michigan.
 1958: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known as the
computer chip. Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his work.
 1964: Douglas Engelbart shows a prototype of the modern computer, with a mouse
and a graphical user interface (GUI). This marks the evolution of the computer from
a specialized machine for scientists and mathematicians to technology that is more
accessible to the general public.
 1969: A group of developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX, an operating system that
addressed compatibility issues. Written in the C programming language, UNIX was
portable across multiple platforms and became the operating system of choice among
mainframes at large companies and government entities. Due to the slow nature of
the system, it never quite gained attraction among home PC users.
 1970: The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Access Memory
(DRAM) chip.
 1971: Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the "floppy disk," allowing data
to be shared among computers.
 1973: Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet for
connecting multiple computers and other hardware.
 1974-1977: A number of personal computers hit the market, including Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair,
IBM 5100, Radio Shack's TRS-80 — affectionately known as the "Trash 80" — and the
Commodore PET.
 1975: The January issue of Popular Electronics magazine features the Altair 8080, described as
the "world's first minicomputer kit to rival commercial models." Two "computer geeks," Paul
Allen and Bill Gates, offer to write software for the Altair, using the new BASIC language. On
April 4, after the success of this first endeavor, the two childhood friends form their own
software company, Microsoft.
 1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple Computers on April Fool's
Day and roll out the Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board,
according to Stanford University. The TRS-80, introduced in 1977, was one of
the first machines whose documentation was intended for non-geeks (Image
credit: Radioshack)
 1977: Radio Shack's initial production run of the TRS-80 was just 3,000. It sold
like crazy. For the first time, non-geeks could write programs and make a
computer do what they wished.
 1977: Jobs and Wozniak incorporate Apple and show the Apple II at the first
West Coast Computer Faire. It offers color graphics and incorporates an audio
cassette drive for storage.
 1978: Accountants rejoice at the introduction of VisiCalc, the first
computerized spreadsheet program.
 1979: Word processing becomes a reality as MicroPro International releases
WordStar. "The defining change was to add margins and word wrap," said
creator Rob Barnaby in email to Mike Petrie in 2000. "Additional changes
included getting rid of command mode and adding a print function. I was the
technical brains — I figured out how to do it, and did it, and documented it. “
The first IBM personal computer, introduced on Aug. 12, 1981, used the MS-
DOS operating system. (Image credit: IBM)
 1981: The first IBM personal computer, code-named "Acorn," is introduced. It
uses Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system. It has an Intel chip, two floppy
disks and an optional color monitor. Sears & Roebuck and Computerland sell
the machines, marking the first time a computer is available through outside
distributors. It also popularizes the term PC.
 1983: Apple's Lisa is the first personal computer with a GUI. It also features a
drop-down menu and icons. It flops but eventually evolves into the Macintosh.
The Gavilan SC is the first portable computer with the familiar flip form factor
and the first to be marketed as a "laptop."
 1985: Microsoft announces Windows, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
This was the company's response to Apple's GUI. Commodore unveils the
Amiga 1000, which features advanced audio and video capabilities.
 1985: The first dot-com domain name is registered on March 15, years before
the World Wide Web would mark the formal beginning of Internet history. The
Symbolics Computer Company, a small Massachusetts computer manufacturer,
registers Symbolics.com. More than two years later, only 100 dot-coms had
been registered.
 1986: Compaq brings the Deskpro 386 to market. Its 32-bit architecture
provides as speed comparable to mainframes.
 1990: Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the high-energy physics
laboratory in Geneva, develops Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), giving
rise to the World Wide Web.
 1993: The Pentium microprocessor advances the use of graphics and music on
PCs.
 1994: PCs become gaming machines as "Command & Conquer," "Alone in the
Dark 2," "Theme Park," "Magic Carpet," "Descent" and "Little Big Adventure"
are among the games to hit the market.
 1996: Sergey Brin and Larry Page develop the Google search engine at
Stanford University.
 1997: Microsoft invests $150 million in Apple, which was struggling at the
time, ending Apple’s court case against Microsoft in which it alleged that
Microsoft copied the "look and feel" of its operating system.
 1999: The term Wi-Fi becomes part of the computing language and users begin
connecting to the Internet without wires.
 2001: Apple unveils the Mac OS X operating system, which provides protected
memory architecture and pre-emptive multi-tasking, among other benefits. Not
to be outdone, Microsoft rolls out Windows XP, which has a significantly
redesigned GUI.
 2003: The first 64-bit processor, AMD's Athlon 64, becomes available to the
consumer market.
 2004: Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 challenges Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the
dominant Web browser. Facebook, a social networking site, launches.
 2005: YouTube, a video sharing service, is founded. Google acquires Android, a
Linux-based mobile phone operating system.
 2006: Apple introduces the MacBook Pro, its first Intel-based, dual-core mobile
computer, as well as an Intel-based iMac. Nintendo's Wii game console hits the
market.
 2007: The iPhone brings many computer functions to the smartphone.
 2009: Microsoft launches Windows 7, which offers the ability to pin
applications to the taskbar and advances in touch and handwriting recognition,
among other features.
 2010: Apple unveils the iPad, changing the way consumers view media and
jumpstarting the dormant tablet computer segment.
 2011: Google releases the Chromebook, a laptop that runs the Google Chrome
OS.
 2012: Facebook gains 1 billion users on October 4.
 2015: Apple releases the Apple Watch. Microsoft releases Windows 10.
 2016: The first reprogrammable quantum computer was created. "Until now,
there hasn't been any quantum-computing platform that had the capability to
program new algorithms into their system. They're usually each tailored to
attack a particular algorithm," said study lead author Shantanu Debnath, a
quantum physicist and optical engineer at the University of Maryland, College
Park.
 2017: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is
developing a new "Molecular Informatics" program that uses molecules as
computers. "Chemistry offers a rich set of properties that we may be able to
harness for rapid, scalable information storage and processing," Anne Fischer,
program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office, said in a statement.
"Millions of molecules exist, and each molecule has a unique three-dimensional
atomic structure as well as variables such as shape, size, or even color. This
richness provides a vast design space for exploring novel and multi-value ways
to encode and process data beyond the 0s and 1s of current logic-based, digital
architectures." [Computers of the Future May Be Minuscule Molecular
Machines]