1. History of Computers Famous Quotes about Computers
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” – Popular Mechanics, 1949
“There is no reason anyone in the right state of mind will want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977.

2. History of Computers The Early History of Computers The Abacus
Blaise Pascal
Joseph Jacquard
Charles Babbage
Herman Hollerith
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
The ENIAC
The UNIVAC
Transistors
Integrated circuits

3. History of Computers The Abacus
The abacus, a simple counting aid, may have been invented in Babylonia (now Iraq) in the 4th century B.C.
others on YouTube that show how quickly Japanese kids can do calculations using these
Some consider this to be the very first computing device (a computer?).

4. History of Computers The Pascaline – 1642
First mechanical calculator; its design used until 1960s when the first electronic calculators came out
Blaise Pascal created the Pascaline in His father was an accountant and he wanted to create something that would help with the calculations. It was limited to addition and subtraction.
There were 50 of these Pascalines built. They could do the job of six accountants, but were not a commercial success because people feared it would create unemployment. Instead, they mostly existed in the homes of their owners as conversation pieces.

5. History of Computers
The Pascaline

6. History of Computers The Pascaline
The top picture is what is inside the box – the gears that turned to advance each digit.

7. History of Computers Jacquard’s Loom – 1801
First machine programmed with punched-cards
This machine used punched-cards to program what pattern would be weaved into the fabric. This replaced some people’s jobs, which caused riots over the loss of their jobs. This is referenced on page 309 in our text.
There are a couple of real short videos on YouTube that show Jacquard’s loom, but they don’t show very much.

8. History of Computers
Jacquard’s Loom

9. History of Computers Punched-cards for a loom
The punched-cards were fed into the loom.

10. History of Computers Punched-card
Here is another picture of a punched-card. Punch cards were used as the main source of input for computers through the 1970s. Computers from the 1940s-1960s, as you’ll see in some of the slides coming up, did not look like computers of today - there were huge, had no monitors or keyboards, and they used punch card input hoppers to feed the punch cards to be read into the computer. A punch card operator would sit at a machine that would punch the holes into the cards and when she was done with the stack of cards, they would be inserted into the punch card input hopper, when would then read each card into the machine.
Punched cards are still used today, with some toll roads (the small ticket that the machine spits out to you that has some holes punched into it) and maybe still in some voting machines.

11. History of Computers Babbage Difference Engine – 1820s - 1840s
6 feet high
10 feet long
contains 4000 parts
weighs 3 tons
Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine was never completed in his lifetime. It was to be used to accurately create complicated mathematical tables, such as logarithmic and trigonometric tables, which mathematicians would work on by hand back in those days.
Babbage’s team worked on it for almost 20 years, and with financial problems (and one of the people on the team reportedly stealing the money that was funding the project), the British government put an end to the project before it was completed. A working replica of it was built in 1991 based in Babbage’s original design, and is on display at the London Science Museum.

12. History of Computers Herman Hollerith and the 1890 US Census
Hollerith’s Tabulating Machines reduced the amount of time to tabulate the results of the census by a huge amount of time. Different sources say different time frames; About.com says that what would have taken 10 years to tabulate by hand took 1 year with these machines. Watch the YouTube video (link below) for more information.
Hollerith’s World Tabulating Machine Company eventually became IBM in 1924.

13. History of Computers
Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine used for the Census

14. History of Computers ABC Computer – around 1940
Built by Professor John Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry of the Physics Department at Iowa State University to help with calculations complicated physics calculations.
First electronic digital computer
First to use the binary numbering system
First to use vacuum tubes to store data instead of mechanical switches used in older computers
Was the size of a desk
It took 15 seconds for EACH calculation (today’s computers can do more than 300 billion operations in 15 seconds).
The ABC computer, which was being housed in the basement of the Physics Department, was dismantled during the war, (WWII) when storage space was needed. It had been forgotten about for some time, and for years, ENIAC had been given credit for being the first electronic, digital computer. But in 1973, a U.S. District Court invalidated the ENIAC patent and concluded that the ABC was the first "computer”.

15. History of Computers
ABC
(note the tubes in the lower right corner)

16. History of Computers Vacuum Tubes
Used as a switch in computers, and for amplification in early radios & tvs.
Vacuum tubes are tubes enclosed by glass (looks like a light bulb) that create/control a flow of electrons. Inside the tube, which is devoid of air, is a filament which, when heated, releases electrons into the vacuum. The resulting negatively-charged cloud of electrons are drawn to a positively-charged metal plate inside the tube, thus a flow of electrons (which is what electricity is - a flow of electrons).
Vacuum tubes were large, bulky, unreliable (burnt out frequently), used a lot of power, generated a lot of heat.
Vacuum tubes were eventually replaced by transistors, which started to be used in computers in the early 1950s.

17. History of Computers
IBM Vacuum Tubes

18. History of Computers ENIAC – 1946 Cost $500,000 to build
weighed 30 tons
10 feet high
3 feet wide
100 feet long
Built at the University of PA in the mid-1940s by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert; was a U.S. government sponsored project for the military for artillery firing tables.
It took up a 30X30 room, used 18,000 vacuum tubes, and had to be programmed by hand by changing thousands of switches and wires.
By the time it was finished, the war was over. It was used by the military, however, for doing calculations for the design of the hydrogen bomb, weather prediction, cosmic-ray studies, thermal ignition, random-tunnel studies, and wind-tunnel design.
It had been rumored that when the ENIAC was powered on, the lights of Philly dimmed. They now think that wasn’t true and it has become an urban legend.

19. History of Computers
ENIAC – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

20. History of Computers UNIVAC – 1951
First mass produced computer for commercial use
First to use the “stored program” concept - computers previously had no storage - nothing to hold programs or data
Used a keyboard & magnetic tape, instead of punched- cards.
Gained exposure on the CBS news for correctly predicting the outcome of the 1952 presidential election (Eisenhower over Stevenson).
- an old film from Remington Rand presenting the Univac - “tomorrow’s miracle of technology here today”; really interesting - wow, we’ve come a long way!

21. History of Computers
UNIVAC - Universal Automatic Computer

22. History of Computers
UNIVAC Vacuum Tube

23. History of Computers The First Transistor - 1947
Invented by scientists at Bell Labs in NJ.
Smaller, more powerful, more reliable than vacuum tubes
Started to be used in computers in the early 1950s

24. History of Computers
An early transistor next to a vacuum tube

25. History of Computers

26. History of Computers
1958 Transistors
(less than ½ inch wide)

27. History of Computers The size of a cell phone built with Vacuum Tubes:
If transistors were never invented…

28. History of Computers The size of a pager built with vacuum tubes:
If transistors were never invented…

29. History of Computers
The size of a home computer built with vacuum tubes:
If transistors were never invented…

30. History of Computers Integrated Circuits - 1958
Integrated circuits (computer chips) began use in computers in 1961
An integrated circuit contains many transistors (today, up to several hundred million) and electronic circuits on a single wafer of silicon, or chip.
Invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments.
A really interesting site that explains the history of transistors and integrated circuits:

31. History of Computers The first mainframe: The IBM 360 – 1964
The first family of upgradeable computers - for the first time, customers could use a lower cost system and then upgrade to larger systems as their needs grew without the time and expense of having to rewrite software

32. History of Computers The first minicomputer: The PDP-8 – 1965
The first successful commercial minicomputer, produced by DEC.
The first computer for less than $25,000.
Size categories of computers:
1. Microcomputers (PCs, laptops, desktops) are the smallest, most affordable computers, intended for one user at a time.
2. Minicomputers, or now called servers, are larger, more powerful, more expensive, and intended for up to several hundred users at a time.
3. Mainframes are the next larger size, still more powerful and more expensive, and can handle thousands of users at a time.
4. Supercomputers are the largest, most powerful, most sophisticated, most expensive type of computer used for things that require complex calculations, like weather prediction, atomic
energy research, seismic activity prediction, human genome sequencing, credit card processing, and the design and testing of modern aircraft.

33. ARPAnet The Birth of the Internet - 1969
The Advanced Research Projects Agency within the Department of Defense created ARPAnet - four computers that were connected together - which eventually grew into what we know today as the Internet
The four computers were at the following locations: UCLA, Univ. of California in Santa Barbara, Stanford, & Univ. of Utah
Eisenhower created ARPA within the DOD (Department of Defense) to get the U.S. into space. This function was replaced by NASA and ARPA was redefined as a sponsor of advanced research projects at various universities & contractors
It was determined in the 1960s that in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack, U.S. military communications would be extremely vulnerable, so ARPA was assigned to the project of creating a network that could withstand partial outages.

34. Processors First Microprocessor – Intel 4004 (1971) (2300 transistors)
An Integrated circuit with the entire CPU contained on it (a “computer on a chip”).
The Pentium and the Core 2 Duo are examples of common processors today.
AMD makes competing processors - they are compatible processors (they run the same software as the Intels) and have sometimes performed better than the Intel processors.

35. History of Intel Processors
1984: Intel – 134,000 transistors; 6-12 MHz
1987: Intel – 275,000 transistors; MHz
1989: Intel 486 – first processor with 1 million transistors on it; MHz
1993: Pentium – 3.3 million transistors; MHz
1997: PII – 7.5 million transistors; MHz
1999: PIII – million transistors; 400 MHz – GHz
: PIV – million transistors; GHz
2002: Pentium M (an improved PIII) – 77 million transistors; up to 1.6 GHz
2005: Pentium D - two PIV Prescott dies in a single package; higher heat and more power hungry than the Core 2 Duo; is a 32-bit processor
Today: Core 2 Duo - two Pentium M dies in a single package; 64-bit processors; faster, consumes less power, dissipates heat better - better than a Pentium D

36. Internet
1972
23 hosts (computers connected to ARPAnet) including MIT and Harvard
the first program is written
50 Kbps backbone (like a dial-up speed)

37. History of Computers The first supercomputer: The Cray 1 – 1976
Designed by a team, including Seymour Cray, for Cray Research at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

38. Early History of Personal Computers
1975: Altair – first microcomputer
: first Apple – Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak – built in Job’s garage; they tried to sell their idea to Atari – they weren’t interested; then they tried Hewlitt Packard – they said “we don’t need you – you haven’t got through college yet”
1981: IBM PC
1982: Compaq is founded to develop and market IBM- compatible PCs
1982: Sun Microsystems introduces its first workstation
1984: Apple MacIntosh – first desktop with a GUI OS
1985: Microsoft introduces Windows – its first GUI OS for IBM-compatibles
1985: Toshiba releases first PC-compatible notebook, the Toshiba T1100

39. History of Computers The Altair 8800: 1975 The first microcomputer
Sold as a kit through Popular Mechanics magazine, the designers intended to sell 400 to hobbyists over the 2 mos. the article was printed– they sold 400 in one afternoon!
Altair BASIC, an interpreter that allowed the BASIC programming language to run on the Altair computer, was Microsoft’s founding product written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen while Bill was a student at Harvard.
this video shows the Altair 8800 and some of the other early microcomputers

40. History of Computers The first Apple: 1976
About two hundred Apple I’s were built and sold over a ten month period, for the superstitious price of $
First personal computer to use a keyboard

41. History of Computers The Apple II: 1977
The original retail price was $1298 with 4KB of RAM and $2638 with 48KB of RAM.
Later, an external 5 ¼ inch floppy disk drive could be added. It also had other expansion slots which permitted other expansion capabilities.
VisiCalc, the first ever spreadsheet program written for the Apple II, was released in
One of the first successful mass produced personal computers

42. Application Software
1979 – Visicalc – one of the first spreadsheet programs, originally written for the Apple II; sold over 700,000 copies in 6 years
1983 – Lotus – combines spreadsheet, graphics, and database

43. Memory
Bill Gates: “640 KB of memory ought to be enough for anybody”
In today’s computers, 1-4 GB is common; especially if you have Vista (at least 2 GB is a good minimum with Vista)
4GB is 6,250 times more than 640KB
If you don’t have enough memory, multitasking can be difficult, programs may freeze or may not even run, things just don’t work very smoothly
The rule of thumb with RAM memory is the more the better
It is the easiest, quickest, cheapest piece of hardware to upgrade and if you don’t have enough of it, after upgrading - you’ll see immediate improvements in terms of how quickly or smoothly your computer operates

44. History of Computers The IBM PC: 1981 Was $1565 when first released
Purchased mainly by businesses – not popular in the home market.
Check out “The BIG LIST of Computers Models Throughout History ( )” and you’ll see that the computers on these slides are just a fraction of the computers on this list:

45. Internet 1982 The term “Internet” is used for the first time. 1983
DNS is created at Univ. of Wisconsin
DNS: Domain Name System - a distributed database that contains pairs of web page names (domain names) with their corresponding IP addresses; it’s what allows us to type “ in the address bar instead of having to remember the corresponding IP address of
will tell you what your computer’s IP address is

46. Internet 1984 Upgrade to a portion of the Internet
1.5 Mbps (like a DSL connection)
1,024 hosts
1988
Next upgrade begins after the above upgrade was so successful
56,000 hosts
There are a lot of changes and upgrades taking place during this time. In the early 1990s, control of the Internet changes from government controlled to being controlled by communications companies.

47. Internet
1990s
For most of the decade, the number of hosts doubles or almost doubles each year
1991
WWW is released
617,000 hosts
1992
Upgrade complete
1,136,000 hosts
The WWW was created by Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist from England, to enable scientists to share electronic documents stored on a server and accessible via the Internet from anywhere. It is based on a technology called hypertext, which allows electronic documents to be published in non-linear format; it allows the reader to jump instantly from one electronic document to another.

48. Internet 1993 Mosaic is created at Univ. of Illinois 2,056,000 hosts
1994
Netscape is founded; Yahoo is created
3,864,000 hosts
Internet Explorer is created
In the early-mid 1990s, with the release of the WWW and control of the Internet changing to communications companies, ISPs started to appear, and people started to subscribe and connect to the Internet.