Learnings of the week By: Emerald May L. Caligdong

This week we discussed about the 4 periods of the computer history.

There are four basic periods in the history of computer, namely: (1) Pre – mechanical Age; (2) Mechanical Age; (3) Electromechanical; and (4) Electronic Age

The Pre – mechanical Age3000 B.C. – 1450 A.D.

First humans communicated through petroglyths which are signs or simple figures carved in rocks. Our ancient ancestors devised the first rudimentary counting methods. In 3100 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (Southern Iraq) devised cuneiform – the first true written language and the first real information system. It is pronounced as “coo – nay – eh – form”. Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created the first true alphabet – composed of symbols expressed in single syllables and consonants. Later, Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels. Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.

Their paper and pens as input technologies are:
Sumerians – writing in wet clay using stylus
Egyptians – writing in a papyrus plant
Chinese – made paper from rags
Their books and libraries as output technologies are:
Mesopotamia – kept earliest Books
Egyptians – kept scrolls
Greeks – fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together
The Egyptians numbering system uses figures to represent a quantity. Such as numbers 1 – 9as vertical lines, number 10 as an inverted U, number 100 as a coiled rope and number 1000 as a lotus blossom. The first numbering system similar to what we use today is from the Hindus. Hindus also developed the concept of zero.

One of the very first information processor is the Abacus. It was invented in Babylonia then popularized in China. It is an ancient computing device cinstructed of sliding beads on small wooden rods, strung on a wooden frame. Considered to be the first calculator.

The Mechanical Age

Johann Gutenberg invented the movable metal – type printing press in the 1450's, and the first book to ever be printed was a Latin language Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany. Gutenberg’s Bibles were surprisingly beautiful, as each leaf Gutenberg printed was later colorfully hand-illuminated.

Ironically, though he had created what many believe to be the most important invention in history, Gutenberg was a victim of unscrupulous business associates who took control of his business and left him in poverty. Nevertheless, the invention of the movable-type printing press meant that Bibles and books could finally be effectively produced in large quantities in a short period of time. This was essential to the success of the Reformation.

Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."

In 1614, John Napier introduces logarithms. Logs allow multiplication and division to be reduced to addition and subtraction. Napier himself, and ardent protestant, accused the Pope of being the Anti-Christ, and in a document he considered to be his finest achievement, went as far as predicting the end of the world. Napier was also a nobleman, a baron, the 7th Laird of Merchiston, and owner of a considerable estate. He was so intelligent that locals believed him to be in leagues with the Devil. Napier was loved by all, and he was respected by many illustrious scientists and mathematicians of the age, to the point of being considered some sort of scientific superstar, with "fans" awaiting his next publication the way we await the release of a movie or pop album. Napier's "greatest hits" include such groundbreaking texts as A Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithms, and his invention of divining rods used as multiplication tables.

In 1623, Wilhelm Shickard, a professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany, invents the first mechanical calculator.It can work with six digits and carries digits across columns. It works, but never makes it beyond the prototype stage because of the fire accident that happened.

In 1625, William Oughtred invented the slide rule, an early example of an analog computer.

In 1642. Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculation machine called the Pascaline. The Pascaline was made out of clock gears and levers and could solve basic mathematical problems like addition and subtraction.

In 1671, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a machine called the stepped reckoner that could multiply 5 digit and 12 digit numbers yielding up to 16 digit number.

In 1801, Joseph – Marie Jacquard designed an automatic loom. The Parts are remarkably similar to modern-day computers are the “store”, “mill”, and punch cards. Punch card idea picked up by Babbage from Joseph Marie Jacquard's (1752-1834) loom. It has a fixed program that would operate in real time.

In 1820, Arithmometer became the first mass-produced calculator developed by Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar. This device performed the same type of computations as Leibniz’s Stepped Reckoner, but was more reliable. These pinwheel-type mechanical adding machines were fixtures in banks accounting offices and stores.

In 1821, Charles Babbage invented the first modern computer design: a steam powered adding machine called “the difference engine”. He understood that long math problems were just repetitive operations. Therefore, the machine can automatically solve math problems.

In 1832, Babbage also invented the “analytical engine”.This engine was a mechanical adding machine that took information from punched cards to solve and print complex mathematical operations. Babage’s difference engine and the analytical engine are regarded as the first “thinking machines”.Babage’s inventions earned the title “father of computers”.

In 1842, Ada Augusta Lovelace also known as Lady Byron is credited as being the first computer programmer.The programming language Ada is named in her honor.

Third, the electromechanical age. The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses.

The Beginnings of Telecommunication
o Voltaic Battery
o Telegraph
o Telephone and Radio

Voltaic Battery is the first electric battery, known as the Voltaire pile was invented a8th century by Alessandro Volta.Samuel F.J. Morse conceived of his version of an electromagnetic telegraph in 1832 and constructed an experiment version in 1815.Telephone and Radio was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. It was Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated by Guglielmo Marconi in 1894. These two events led to the invention of the radio. In 1852-George Boole develops binary algebra

Electromechanical Computing
o Tabulating Machine
o Comptometer
o Comptograph
o Punched Crads

In 1853 - Pehr and Advard Scheutz complete their tabulating Machine, capable of processing fifteen-digit numbers, printing out results and rounding off to eight digits.

In 1885 - Dorr Felt devises the Comptometer, a key driven adding and subtracting calculator.

In 1889 - Felt’s Comptograph, containing built-in printer, is introduced.

Herman Hollerith was the first person to successfully use punched cards in 1890. It was adapted for use in early computers and provided computer programmers with a new way to put information into their machine. Hollerith was the father of information processing and found the Tabulating machine Company which later became the Computer Tabulating Recording Company. Hollerith company went to become the International Business Machines Corporation known today as IBM.

In 1893 - The Millionaire, the first efficeint four-function calculator invented by Otto shweiger, a Swiss Engineer.

In 1906 - Vacuum tube was developed by Lee De Forest which provide electricity controlled switch.

The fourth period is the Electronic Age

In 1941, Konrad Zuse built the first programmable computer called Z3. A computer is programmable because of following instructions.
o Z3 is designed to solve engineering equations rather than basic arithmetic problems.

In 1942 - Howard Aiken a PhD student of Harvard University built the Mark I “ The First Stored Program Computer”

John Atanasoff and Clifford berry completed the first all-electric computer the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry computer). It was the first computer to use electricity in the form of vacuum tubes to make electric computation possible. It is used for solving complex system of equations.

We also tackled about the generations of computer. It has four generations.

The first generation of computers used vacuum tubes as their main logic elements; punched cards to input and externally store data; and rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data in programs written in machine language (instructions written as a string of 0s and 1s) or assembly language (a language that allowed the programmer to write instructions in a kind of shorthand that would then be "translated" by another program called a compiler into machine language).

In addition, first-generation computers often broke down because of burned-out vacuum tubes.ENIAC had more than 1800 vacuum tubes, and took up to 1800 square feet of space. In addition, the electrical current ENIAC required could power more than a thousand modern computers. Today, ENIAC’s technology could fit in a modern wristwatch.

In 1951 the UNIVAC-1 became the first commercially available electronic computer. This computer was designed by Eckert and Mauchly (the designers of the ENIAC) and built by the Remington Rand corporation. The first of these computers was delivered to US. Census Bureau.

The Second Generation of Computers (1959-1963)
In the 1940s, discovered that a class of crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor to replace vacuum tubes. Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology. Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.

High-level programming languages (program instructions that could be written with simple words and mathematical expressions), like FORTRAN and COBOL, made computers more accessible to scientists and businesses.Instead of vacuum tubes, second generation computers used transistors an exiting new invention at the time. John Barden, Walter Brattain and William Shockley of Bell Telephone Laboratories invented the transistor. A transistor is a small, solid-state component designed to monitor the flow of the electric current.

Transistor
n Were smaller, faster, cheaper, required less power, and produce less heat than vacuum tubes. In computers, a transistor functions as an electronic switch or bridge. Transistors play an important role in electronic circuits. Circuits help make up electronic systems, and electronic systems are what make electronic computing possible. Transistors allowed computers to communicate over telephone lines. The transistor gave way to the concept of parallel processor and multiprogramming.
1961
Grace hopper, the woman that found the first computer bug, finishes developing COBOL.
1964
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), founded by Ken Olsen, release the first minicomputer, the PDP-8.
1965
Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny of Dartmouth College developed BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) as a computer language to help teach people how to program.