CSCI 161

Class 1

Martin van Bommel

History of Computers

Modern computer results from

• Mechanization of arithmetic

• Concept of stored programs

Mechanization

• Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

• 1642 - Pascal’s Adder– gears and wheels– could only add, calculate taxes for his father

• Gottfried von Liebniz (1646-1716) - calculus

• 1670’s - Liebniz calculator– add, subtract, multiply, divide– more reliable and accurate

Stored Program

• Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834)

• 1800 - Jacquard’s Loom – metal punch cards to position threads

for the weaving process

• Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) – 1890 US census– store and process census data

on punched cards

Charles Babbage (1792-1871)

• 1822-33 - Difference Engine– compute polynomials for math tables

• 1830-71 - Analytic Engine– designed but never completed, ahead of its time– Mill - arithmetic computations– Store - store data and results– Operation cards - program instructions– Variable cards - select memory location for ops– Output - printer or punch cards

Analytic Engine

MillStore Printer

OperationCards Variable

Cards

Instructions

Program

Ada Agusta

• Daughter of Lord Byron

• Wrote about analytical engine

• Designed several programs for it

• Known as the first programmer

• 1970’s Dept. of Defence named its programming language Ada

First Computers• 1939-42 - ABC - used binary

– John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry (Iowa State) (link)

– small scale - 300 vacuum tubes

• 1944 - Mark I - programmable

– electromechanical computer– Howard Aiken (Harvard U.)– first real analytical engine– based on relays & a motor

• Grace Hopper - debugging Mark II

ENIAC - 1946Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator

• Known as first fully electronic computer (link)

• John Mauchly & J.P. Eckert, U. of Pennsylvania

• 18,000 vacuum tubes

• 1,500 relays

• 20 x 40 foot room

• low reliability, lots of power, air conditioning

von Neumann Architecture• 1947 - Mauchly, Eckert & von Neumann created

EDVAC – Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (binary, stored program)

• John von Neumann (Princeton)– wrote about stored program concept– both programs and data stored in same memory– basis of almost all modern computers

• modern computers said to use von Neumann architecture

Computer Generations• 1st Generation - before 1960

– vacuum tubes and relays ENIAC

• 2nd Generation - 1958 - 65– transistors IBM 7090

• 3rd Generation - 1964 - 80– integrated circuits or chips IBM 360

• 4th Generation - after 1980– microprocessors - large-scale integration

• (link)

Fifth-Generation?

• Japanese Government had plans in 1980s– Build intelligent systems capable of intelligent

thought and language recognition– Project ended in failure in 1992 – money gone

• What will fifth generation have?– Intelligence? Human

behavior?– Parallel processing? Multiple cores?– Quantum computing? Nanotechnology?