History Of The Computer Essay, Research Paper

Only once in a lifetime will a new invention come about to touch every aspect of

our lives. Such a device that changes the way we work, live, and play is a

special one, indeed. A machine that has done all this and more now exists in

nearly every business in the U.S. and one out of every two households (Hall,

156). This incredible invention is the computer. The electronic computer has

been around for over a half-century, but its ancestors have been around for

2000 years. However, only in the last 40 years has it changed the American

society.

From the first wooden abacus to the latest high-speed microprocessor,

the computer has changed nearly every aspect of people’s lives for the better.

The very earliest existence of the modern day computer’s ancestor is the

abacus. These date back to almost 2000 years ago. It is simply a wooden rack

holding parallel wires on which beads are strung. When these beads are moved

along the wire according to “programming” rules that the user must memorize, all

ordinary arithmetic

operations can be performed (Soma, 14). The next innovation in computers took

place in 1694 when Blaise Pascal invented the first +digital calculating

machine+. It could only add numbers and they had to be entered by turning

dials. It was designed to help Pascal’s father who was a tax collector (Soma,

32).

In the early 1800’s, a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage

designed an automatic calculation machine. It was steam powered and could

store up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Built in to his machine were operations that

included everything a modern general-purpose computer would need. It was

programmed by–and stored data on–cards with holes punched in them,

appropriately called +punchcards+. His

inventions were failures for the most part because of the lack of precision

machining techniques used at the time and the lack of demand for such a device

(Soma, 46).

After Babbage, people began to lose interest in computers. However,

between 1850 and 1900 there were great advances in mathematics and physics

that began to rekindle the interest (Osborne, 45). Many of these new advances

involved complex calculations and formulas that were very time consuming for

human calculation. The first major use for a computer in the U.S. was during the

1890 census. Two men, Herman Hollerith and James Powers, developed a new

punched-card system that

could automatically read information on cards without human intervention

(Gulliver, 82). Since the population of the U.S. was increasing so fast, the

computer was an essential tool in tabulating the totals.

These advantages were noted by commercial industries and soon led to the

development of improved punch-card business-machine systems by

International Business Machines (IBM), Remington-Rand, Burroughs, and other

corporations. By modern standards the punched-card machines were slow,

typically processing from 50 to 250 cards per minute, with each card holding up

to 80 digits. At the time, however, punched cards were an enormous step

forward; they provided a means of input, output, and memory storage on a

massive scale. For more than 50 years following

their first use, punched-card machines did the bulk of the world’s business

computing and a good portion of the computing work in science (Chposky, 73).

By the late 1930s punched-card machine techniques had become so well

established and reliable that Howard Hathaway Aiken, in collaboration with

engineers at IBM, undertook construction of a large automatic digital computer

based on standard IBM electromechanical parts. Aiken’s machine, called the

Harvard Mark I, handled 23-digit numbers and could perform all four arithmetic

operations. Also, it had special built-in programs to handle logarithms and

trigonometric functions. The Mark I was controlled from prepunched paper tape.

Output was by card punch and electric typewriter. It was slow, requiring 3 to 5

seconds for a multiplication, but it was fully

automatic and could complete long computations without human intervention

(Chposky, 103).

The outbreak of World War II produced a desperate need for computing

capability, especially for the military. New weapons systems were produced

which needed trajectory tables and other essential data. In 1942, John P.

Eckert, John W. Mauchley, and their associates at the University of

Pennsylvania decided to build a high-speed electronic computer to do the job.

This machine became known as ENIAC, for “Electrical Numerical Integrator And

Calculator”. It could multiply two numbers at the rate of 300 products per

second, by finding the value of each product from a multiplication table stored in

its memory. ENIAC was thus about 1,000 times faster than the previous

generation of computers (Dolotta, 47).

ENIAC used 18,000 standard vacuum tubes, occupied 1800 square feet of

floor space, and used about 180,000 watts of electricity. It used punched-card

input and output. The ENIAC was very difficult to program because one had to

essentially re-wire it to perform whatever task he wanted the computer to do. It

was, however, efficient in handling the particular programs for which it had been

designed. ENIAC

is generally accepted as the first successful high-speed electronic digital

computer and was used in many applications from 1946 to 1955 (Dolotta, 50).

Mathematician John von Neumann was very interested in the ENIAC. In

1945 he undertook a theoretical study of computation that demonstrated that a

computer could have a very simple and yet be able to execute any kind of

computation effectively by means of proper programmed control without the

need for any changes in hardware. Von Neumann came up with incredible ideas

for methods of building and organizing practical, fast computers. These ideas,

which came to be referred to as the stored-program technique, became

fundamental for future generations of high-speed digital computers and were

universally adopted (Hall, 73).

The first wave of modern programmed electronic computers to take

advantage of these improvements appeared in 1947. This group included

computers using random access memory (RAM), which is a memory designed to

give almost constant access to any particular piece of information (Hall, 75).

These machines had punched-card or punched-tape input and output devices

and RAMs of 1000-word capacity. Physically, they were much more compact

than ENIAC: some were about the size of a grand piano and required 2500

small electron tubes. This was quite an improvement over the earlier machines.

The first-generation stored-program computers required onsiderable

maintenance, usually attained 70% to 80% reliable operation, and were used for

8 to 12 years. Typically, they were programmed directly in machine language,

although by the mid-1950s progress had been made in several aspects of

advanced programming. This group of machines included EDVAC and UNIVAC,

the first commercially available computers (Hazewindus, 102).

The UNIVAC was developed by John W. Mauchley and John Eckert, Jr. in

the 1950’s. Together they had formed the Mauchley-Eckert Computer

Corporation, America’s first computer company in the 1940’s. During the

development of the UNIVAC, they began to run short on funds and sold their

company to the larger Remington-Rand Corporation. Eventually they built a

working UNIVAC computer. It was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951

where it was used to help tabulate the U.S. population (Hazewindus, 124).

Early in the 1950s two important engineering discoveries changed the

electronic computer field. The first computers were made with vacuum tubes,

but by the late 1950’s computers were being made out of transistors, which were

smaller, less expensive, more reliable, and more efficient (Shallis, 40). In 1959,

Robert Noyce, a physicist at the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, invented

the integrated circuit, a tiny chip of silicon that contained an entire electronic

circuit. Gone was the bulky, unreliable, but fast machine; now computers began

to become more compact, more reliable and have more capacity (Shallis, 49).

These new technical discoveries rapidly found their way into new models of

digital computers. Memory storage capacities increased 800% in commercially

available machines by the early 1960s and speeds increased by an equally

large margin. These machines were very expensive to purchase or to rent and

were especially expensive to operate because of the cost of hiring programmers

to perform the complex operations the computers ran. Such computers were

typically found in large computer centers–operated by industry, government, and

private laboratories–staffed with many programmers and support personnel

(Rogers, 77). By 1956, 76 of IBM’s large computer mainframes were in

use, compared with only 46 UNIVAC’s (Chposky, 125).

In the 1960s efforts to design and develop the fastest possible computers

with the greatest capacity reached a turning point with the completion of the

LARC machine for Livermore Radiation Laboratories by the Sperry-Rand

Corporation, and the Stretch computer by IBM. The LARC had a core memory of

98,000 words and multiplied in 10 microseconds. Stretch was provided with

several ranks of memory having slower access for the ranks of greater capacity,

the fastest access time being less than 1 microseconds and the total capacity in

the vicinity of 100 million words (Chposky, 147).

During this time the major computer manufacturers began to offer a range

of computer capabilities, as well as various computer-related equipment. These

included input means such as consoles and card feeders; output means such as

page printers, cathode-ray-tube displays, and graphing devices; and optional

magnetic-tape and magnetic-disk file storage. These found wide use in

business for such applications as accounting, payroll, inventory control, ordering

supplies, and billing. Central processing units (CPUs) for such purposes did not

need to be very fast arithmetically and were primarily used to access large

amounts of records on file. The greatest number of computer systems were

delivered for the larger applications, such as in hospitals for keeping track of

patient records, medications, and treatments given. They were also used in

automated library systems and in database systems such as the Chemical

Abstracts system, where computer records now on file cover nearly all known

chemical compounds (Rogers, 98).

The trend during the 1970s was, to some extent, away from extremely

powerful, centralized computational centers and toward a broader range of

applications for less-costly computer systems. Most continuous-process

manufacturing, such as petroleum refining and electrical-power distribution

systems, began using computers of relatively modest capability for controlling

and regulating their activities. In the 1960s the programming of applications

problems was an obstacle to the self-sufficiency of moderate-sized on-site

computer installations, but great advances in applications programming

languages removed these obstacles. Applications languages became available

for controlling a great range of manufacturing processes, for computer operation

of machine tools, and for many other tasks (Osborne, 146). In 1971 Marcian E.

Hoff, Jr., an engineer at the Intel Corporation, invented the microprocessor and

another stage in the deveopment of the computer began (Shallis, 121).

A new revolution in computer hardware was now well under way, involving

miniaturization of computer-logic circuitry and of component manufacture by

what are called large-scale integration techniques. In the 1950s it was realized

that “scaling down” the size of electronic digital computer circuits and parts

would increase speed and efficiency and improve performance. However, at

that time the manufacturing methods were not good enough to accomplish such

a task. About 1960 photoprinting of conductive circuit boards to eliminate wiring

became highly developed. Then it became possible to build resistors and

capacitors into the circuitry by photographic means (Rogers, 142). In the 1970s

entire assemblies, such as adders, shifting registers, and counters, became

available on tiny chips of silicon. In the 1980s very large scale integration

(VLSI), in which hundreds of thousands of transistors are placed on a single

chip, became increasingly common. Many companies, some new to the

computer field, introduced in the 1970s programmable minicomputers supplied

with software packages. The size-reduction trend continued with the

introduction of personal computers, which are programmable machines small

enough and inexpensive enough to be purchased and used by individuals

(Rogers, 153).

One of the first of such machines was introduced in January 1975. Popular

Electronics magazine provided plans that would allow any electronics wizard to

build his own small, programmable computer for about $380 (Rose, 32). The

computer was called the +Altair 8800+. Its programming involved pushing

buttons and flipping switches on the front of the box. It didn’t include a monitor

or keyboard, and its applications were very limited (Jacobs, 53). Even though,

many orders came in for it and several famous owners of computer and software

manufacturing companies got their start in computing through the Altair. For

example, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of Apple Computer, built a

much cheaper, yet more productive version of the Altair and turned their hobby

into a business (Fluegelman, 16).

After the introduction of the Altair 8800, the personal computer industry

became a fierce battleground of competition. IBM had been the computer

industry standard for well over a half-century. They held their position as the

standard when they introduced their first personal computer, the IBM Model 60

in 1975 (Chposky, 156). However, the newly formed Apple Computer company

was releasing its own personal computer, the Apple II (The Apple I was the first

computer designed by Jobs and Wozniak in Wozniak’s garage, which was not

produced on a wide scale). Software was needed to run the computers as well.

Microsoft developed a Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) for the IBM computer

while Apple developed its own software system (Rose, 37). Because Microsoft

had now set the software standard for IBMs, every software manufacturer had to

make their software compatible with Microsoft’s. This would lead to huge profits

for Microsoft (Cringley, 163).

The main goal of the computer manufacturers was to make the computer as

affordable as possible while increasing speed, reliability, and capacity. Nearly

every computer manufacturer accomplished this and computers popped up

everywhere. Computers were in businesses keeping track of inventories.

Computers were in colleges aiding students in research. Computers were in

laboratories making complex calculations at high speeds for scientists and

physicists. The computer had made its mark everywhere in society and built up

a huge industry (Cringley, 174).

The future is promising for the computer industry and its technology. The

speed of processors is expected to double every year and a half in the coming

years. As manufacturing techniques are further perfected the prices of computer

systems are expected to steadily fall. However, since the microprocessor

technology will be increasing, it’s higher costs will offset the drop in price of

older processors. In other

words, the price of a new computer will stay about the same from year to year,

but technology will steadily increase (Zachary, 42)

Since the end of World War II, the computer industry has grown from a

standing start into one of the biggest and most profitable industries in the United

States. It now comprises thousands of companies, making everything from

multi-million dollar high-speed supercomputers to printout paper and floppy

disks. It employs millions of people and generates tens of billions of dollars in

sales each year (Malone, 192). Surely, the computer has impacted every aspect

of people’s lives. It has affected the way people work and play. It has made

everyone’s life easier by doing difficult work for people. The computer truly is

one of the most incredible inventions in history.

Works Cited

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Cringley, Robert X. Accidental Empires. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley

Publishing, 1992.

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1985.

Fluegelman, Andrew. +A New World+, MacWorld. San Jose, Ca: MacWorld

Publishing, February, 1984 (Premire Issue).

Hall, Peter. Silicon Landscapes. Boston: Allen & Irwin, 1985

Gulliver, David. Silicon Valey and Beyond. Berkeley, Ca: Berkeley Area

Government Press, 1981.

Hazewindus, Nico. The U.S. Microelectronics Industry. New York: Pergamon

Press, 1988.

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Popular Electronics Publishing, January 1975.

Malone, Michael S. The Big Scare: The U.S. Coputer Industry. Garden City,

NY: Doubleday & Co., 1985.

Osborne, Adam. Hypergrowth. Berkeley, Ca: Idthekkethan Publishing

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Rose, Frank. West of Eden. New York: Viking Publishing, 1989.

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Zachary, William. +The Future of Computing+, Byte. Boston: Byte Publishing,

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