HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

History of Computers

History of Computers

Human beings are toolmakers. The history of their civilization is strongly influenced by technological innovations that, to an ever-greater extent, make the use of matter and energy for human purposes possible. From the building of huts and the making of a fire to the construction of skyscrapers and the fusion of nuclei, all cultures have been transforming the resources of nature to reproduce and improve the basis of their own survival. Besides matter and energy, there exists another source of supply that has been exploited technologically since time immemorial-information. Whoever used, for the first time, a sharp edge to leave a durable mark that could express excitement, appeal to demons, or represent a bagged animal, stood at the beginning of a process that led to our modern technologies for storing, transmitting, and processing information. (William & Peter, 1994)

From Abacuses to PCs and Beyond

The desire to create artifacts that have all the abilities human beings possess are documented by testimonials handed down to us from antiquity. The legendary king Pygmalion of Cyprus, whose story Ovid tells, carved a statue of his ideal woman, because true women did not live up to his expectations. After he had fallen in love with his work of art, Aphrodite breathed life into the statue so that Pygmalion could marry her.

Digital Calculators

The Abacus

Although the development of intelligent machines is still a matter of front-line research, digital instruments that help human beings with routine mental activities, such as doing arithmetic, were already used in early but advanced cultures. Most widespread was the abacus (the Latin loan word of a Greek expression meaning “slab”), which has been used in various forms, for example, in Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, Rome, India, China, and Central America. (Lancaster, 1997)

Mechanical Calculators

The next decisive step, beyond number-recording aids, was the invention of mechanical calculators in early modern times, when thinking in terms of mechanisms flourished. These calculators could perform more and more complex arithmetical tasks with less and less human intervention. In 1623, the first one was built for astronomical tasks by the German theologian and scientist, Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635).

The First Digital Computers

The rapid development of science and technology, with which the industrial revolution went hand in hand, led to a strong demand for calculating machines and people who could operate them fast and reliably, in order to solve mathematical equations. These people were called computers-a word derived from the Latin computare, “to calculate” (originally, to cut numerals into a piece of wood). (Jay, 1991)

Pioneering Machines: Z3, Ascc, Eniac, And Colossus

The first functioning general-purpose digital computer, the Z3, was built by the German civil engineer, Konrad Zuse (1910-1995), in 1941. Following an idea of Leibniz, Zuse based his machine on the binary system-in hindsight, this was a natural consequence of using relays (the Z3 contained about 2600).

Only 2 years after Aiken's machine, America's first large-scale electronic computer was completed. The ENIAC, the acronym of electronic numerical integrator and computer, was built by ...