Future History

Antonio Fuentes and Maria Cal

1ºA Bach, IES Sofía Casanova

A way of

rediscovering

the past

This is the

now of

yesterday

WAY, WAY BACK….

Part 1 – The origins

Chapter I

THE ABACUS

The oldest device known calculation is the abacus.

Its name comes from the Greek meaning Abakos flat surface. It is known that the Greeks employed to count tables in the V century BC or perhaps earlier. Abacus as we know it today is composed of a series of wires with beads strung on them.

This version of Abacus has been used in the Middle East and Asia

It was invented on 3500 A.C. (Babylon) by the ancient

Greek and Roman civilizations; it was very simple, with beads

strung on rods which in turn are mounted on a rectangular

frame, it was the first "machine" to perform computations.

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until relatively recently

Chapter II

Blaise Pascal y Leibniz It is a 17th-century calculating machine

developed by French mathematician Blaise

Pascal. After numerous prototypes, Pascal

introduced his machine to the public in

1645. It could only add and subtract but

gained attention because units were placed

in prominent locations throughout Europe.

The Pascaline inspired Gottfried Leibniz to

invent his stepped drum cylinder, a major

improvement that was used in calculators

for centuries.

When accountants began using the Pascaline, fellow colleagues expressed grave

concern that they might be replaced by technology!

943

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Chapter III

Analytical Engine

Charles Babbage was a computer pioneer,

and he designed two classes of engine.

Difference engines are called so because

of the mathematical principle on which they

are based. Babbage conceived, in 1834, a

more ambitious machine, later called

Analytical Engine, a general-purpose

programmable computing engine.

The Analytical Engine has many essential features

found in the modern digital computer. It was

programmable using punched cards, which we are

going to see what they are in the next point, an

idea borrowed from Jacquard used for weaving

complex patterns in textiles. The Engine had a

'Store' where numbers and intermediate results

could be held, and a separate 'Mill' where the

arithmetic processing was performed. It had an

internal repertoire of the four arithmetical functions

and could perform direct multiplication and division.

The logical structure of the Analytical Engine was essentially the same as that

which has dominated computer design in the electronic era - the separation of the

memory (the 'Store') from the central processor (the 'Mill').

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Chapter IV

Punched cards

Punched cards were first used around

1725 by Basile Bouchon and Jean-

Baptiste Falcon as a more robust form of

the perforated paper rolls then in use for

controlling textile looms in France. This

technique was greatly improved by

Joseph Marie Jacquard in his Jacquard

loom (Spanish: telar) in 1801.

From the 1900s, into the 1950s, punched

cards were the primary medium for data

entry, data storage, and processing in

institutional computing.

During the 1960s, the punched card was gradually replaced as the primary means

for data storage by magnetic tape, as better, more capable computers became

available. Punched cards were still commonly used for data entry and

programming until the mid-1980s when the combination of lower cost magnetic

disk storage, and affordable interactive terminals on less expensive minicomputers

made punched cards obsolete for this role as well.

WAY, WAY BACK….

Part 2 – First Generation

First Generation (1940-1956)

The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory, and were often enormous, taking up entire rooms. They were very expensive to operate and in addition to using a great deal of electricity, generated a lot of heat, which was often the cause of malfunctions.

First generation computers relied on machine language, the lowest-level programming language understood by computers, to perform operations, and they could only solve one problem at a time. Input was based on punched cards and paper tape, and output was displayed on printouts.

The UNIVAC and ENIAC computers are examples of first-generation computing devices. The UNIVAC was the first commercial computer delivered to a business client, the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951.

A UNIVAC computer at the Census Bureau.

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Chapter I

VACUUM TUBES

In electronics, a vacuum tube, is a device used to

amplify, switch, otherwise modify, or create an

electrical signal by controlling the movement of

electrons in a low-pressure space. Some special

function vacuum tubes are filled with low-pressure

gas: these are so-called soft tubes as distinct from the

hard vacuum type which have the internal gas

pressure reduced as far as possible. Almost all tubes

depend on the thermionic emission of electrons.

Vacuum tubes were critical to the development of

electronic technology, which drove the expansion and

commercialization of radio broadcasting, television,

radar, sound reproduction... Some of these applications pre-dated electronics, but

it was the vacuum tube that made them widespread and practical.

Chapter II

COLOSSUS Colossus was the world's first electronic digital

computer that was at all programmable. The

Colossus computers were developed for British

codebreakers during World War II. Colossus

used vacuum tubes to perform Boolean

operations and calculations. Colossus was

designed by the engineer Tommy Flowers to

solve a problem posed by mathematician Max

Newman.

The prototype, Colossus Mark 1, was shown to be working in December 1943. An

improved Colossus Mark 2 that used shift registers to quintuple the speed, first worked

on 1 June 1944, just in time for the Normandy Landings.

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The destruction of most of the Colossus hardware and

blueprints, as part of the effort to maintain a project secrecy

that was kept up into the 1970s, deprived most of those

involved with Colossus of credit for their pioneering

advancements in electronic digital computing during their

lifetimes.

Chapter III

TURIN MACHINE

Alan Mathison Turing was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, computer scientist, mathematical and biologist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's code breaking centre. For a time he led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers. A Turing machine, invented in 1936, is a hypothetical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a computer.

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Chapter IV

ENIAC Acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, the first operational

electronic digital computer in the U.S., developed by Army Ordnance to compute

World War II ballistic firing tables. The ENIAC, weighing 30 tons, using 200

kilowatts of electric power and consisting of 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays,

and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors, was completed

in 1945. In addition to ballistics, the ENIAC's field of application included weather

prediction, atomic-energy calculations, cosmic-ray studies, thermal ignition,

random-number studies, wind-tunnel design, and other scientific uses. The ENIAC

soon became obsolete as the need arose for faster computing speeds.

Chapter V

UNIVAC The UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I) was the second commercial computer

produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John

Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC. UNIVAC I used 5,200 vacuum tubes, weighed 29,000 pounds (13 metric tons), consumed

125 kW, and could perform about 1,905 operations per second running on a 2.25 MHz

clock. The Central Complex alone (i.e. the processor and memory unit) was 4.3 m by 2.4m

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by 2.6 m high. The complete system occupied more than 35.5 m² of floor space.

Part 3 – Second generation

Second Generation (1956-1963)

Transistors

Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and ushered in the second generation of computers. The transistor was invented in 1947 but did not see widespread use in computers until the late 1950s. The transistor was far superior to the vacuum tube, allowing computers to become smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable than their first-generation predecessors. Though the transistor still generated a great deal of heat that subjected the computer to damage, it was a vast improvement over the vacuum tube. Second-generation computers still relied on punched cards for input and printouts for output.

Second-generation computers moved from cryptic binary machine language to symbolic, or assembly, languages, which allowed programmers to specify instructions in words. High-level programming languages. These were also the first computers that stored their instructions in their memory, which moved from a magnetic drum to magnetic core technology.

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Part 4 – Third generation

Third Generation (1964-1971)

Integrated Circuits

The development of the integrated circuit was the hallmark of the third generation of computers. Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, called semiconductors, which drastically increased the speed and efficiency of computers.

Instead of punched cards and printouts, users interacted with third generation computers through keyboards and monitors and interfaced with an operating system, which allowed the device to run many different applications at one time with a central program that monitored the memory. Computers for the first time became accessible to a mass audience because they were smaller and cheaper than their predecessors.

Chapter I

Integrated Circuit The idea of the integrated circuit was conceived by a

radar scientist working for the Royal Radar

Establishment of the British Ministry of Defence,

Geoffrey W.A. Dummer (1909–2002). Dummer

presented the idea to the public at the Symposium on

Progress in Quality Electronic Components in

Washington, D.C. on 7 May 1952.

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a

chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small plate ("chip") of

semiconductor material, normally silicon. This can be made much smaller than a

discrete circuit made from independent components. ICs can be made very

compact, having up to several billion transistors and other electronic components

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in an area the size of a fingernail. The width of each conducting

line in a circuit can be made smaller and smaller as the

technology advances. ICs were made possible by experimental

discoveries showing that semiconductor devices could perform

the functions of vacuum tubes and by mid-20th-century

technology advancements in semiconductor device fabrication.

The integration of large numbers of tiny transistors into a small

chip was an enormous improvement over the manual assembly

of circuits using discrete electronic components.

Chapter II

Microprocessors

UNIVAC

The advent of low-cost computers on integrated circuits has transformed

modern society. The first use of the term "microprocessor" is attributed to

Viatron Computer Systems describing the custom integrated circuit used in

their System 21 small computer system announced in 1968.

During the 1960s, computer processors were constructed out of small and

medium-scale ICs—each containing from tens of transistors to a few

hundred. These were placed and soldered onto printed circuit boards, and

often multiple boards were interconnected in a chassis. The large number of

discrete logic gates used more electrical power—and therefore produced

more heat—than a more integrated design with fewer ICs. The distance that

signals had to travel between ICs on the boards limited a computer's

operating speed.

The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for

electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal (BCD) arithmetic on 4-bit

words.

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Chapter III

The company was founded in 1911 as the

Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR)

through a merger of three companies: the

Tabulating Machine Company, the International

Time Recording Company, and the Computing Scale

Company

In 1963, IBM employees and computers helped

NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury

astronauts, and a year later, the company moved its

corporate headquarters from New York City to

Armonk, New York. The latter half of that decade

saw IBM continue its support of space exploration,

with IBM participating in the 1965 Gemini flights,

the 1966 Saturn flights, and the 1969 mission to

land man on the moon.

On April 7, 1964 IBM announced the first computer

system family, the IBM System/360. Sold between

1964 and 1978, it was the first family of computers

designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both

commercial and scientific.

On October 11, 1973, IBM introduced the IBM 3660, a laser-scanning point-of-sale

barcode reader which would become the workhorse of retail checkouts.

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Fourth Generation (1971-Present)

The microprocessor brought the fourth generation of computers, as thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip. What in the first generation filled an entire room could now fit in the palm of the hand. The Intel 4004 chip, developed in 1971, located all the components of the computer—from the central processing unit and memory to input/output controls—on a single chip.

In 1981 IBM introduced its first computer for the home user, and in 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh. Microprocessors also moved out of the realm of desktop computers and into many areas of life as more and more everyday products began to use microprocessors.

As these small computers became more powerful, they could be linked together to form networks, which eventually led to the development of the Internet. Fourth generation computers also saw the development of GUIs, the mouse and handheld devices.

Chapter IV

HOME COMPUTERS Development of the single-chip microprocessor was an enormous catalyst to the

popularization of cheap, easy to use, and truly personal computers. The Altair 8800 at the

time set a new low price point for a computer, bringing computer ownership to an

admittedly select market in the 1970s. This was followed by the IMSAI 8080 computer,

with similar abilities and limitations. The Altair and IMSAI were essentially scaled-down

minicomputers and were incomplete: to connect a keyboard or teleprinter to them

required heavy, expensive "peripherals".

The MITS Altair, the first commercially successful microprocessor kit, was featured on the

cover of Popular Electronics magazine in January 1975. It was the world's first mass-

produced personal computer kit, as well as the first computer to use an Intel 8080

processor. It was a commercial success with 10,000 Altairs being shipped. The Altair also

inspired the software development efforts of Paul Allen and his high school friend Bill

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Gates who developed a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, and then formed Microsoft.

The advent of the microprocessor and solid-state memory made home computing

affordable. Early hobby microcomputer systems such as the Altair 8800 and Apple I

introduced around 1975 marked the release of low-cost 8-bit processor chips, which had

sufficient computing power to be of interest to hobby and experimental users. By 1977

pre-assembled systems such as the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 began the era

of mass-market home computers

After the success of the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Commodore PET and the Apple II in

1977, almost every manufacturer of consumer electronics rushed to introduce a home

computer. Large numbers of new machines of all types began to appear during the late

1970s and early 1980s. Mattel, Coleco, Texas Instruments and Timex, none of which had

any previous connection to the computer industry, all had short-lived home computer

lines in the early 1980s. Some home computers were more successful—the BBC Micro,

Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Atari 800XL and Commodore 64, sold many units over several years

and attracted third-party software development. During the peak years of the home

computer market, scores of models were produced, usually with little or no thought given

to compatibility between different manufacturers or even within product lines of the

same manufacturer. Except for the Japanese MSX standard, the concept of a computer

platform was still forming, with most companies considering BASIC compatibility

sufficient.

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Chapter V

APPLE Apple was established on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. The Apple I kits were a computer single handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips), which is less than what is today considered a complete personal computer.The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $2,763 in 2014 dollars, adjusted for inflation). Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. By the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The company introduced the Apple III in May 1980 in an attempt to compete with IBM and Microsoft in the business and corporate computing market As of June 2014, Apple maintains retail stores in fourteen countries, as well as the online Apple Store and iTunes Store the latter of which is the world's largest music retailer. Apple is the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization with an estimated market capitalization of $446 billion by January 2014. +

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Chapter VI

MICROSOFT Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered

inRedmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and

sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and

services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of

operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer web

browser. Its flagship hardware products are Xbox game console and the Microsoft

Surface series of tablets. It is the world's largest software maker measured by

revenues. It is also one of the world's most valuable companies.

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop

and sell BASIC interpreters forAltair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal

computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by

Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent

rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000

millionaires from Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly

diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate

acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion

in its largest acquisition to date

As of 2013, Microsoft is market dominant in both the IBM PC-compatible operating

system and office software suite markets (the latter with Microsoft Office). The

company also produces a wide range of other software for desktops and servers,

and is active in areas including Internet search (with Bing), the video game

industry (with the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles), the digital services

market (through MSN), and mobile phones (via the Windows Phone OS). In June

2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time,

with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers.

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Part 5 – Fifth generation

Fifth Generation

(Present and Beyond) Defining the fifth generation of computers is somewhat difficult because the field is

in its infancy. The most famous example of a fifth generation computer is the

fictional HAL9000 from Arthur C. Clarke's novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL

performed all of the functions currently envisioned for real-life fifth generation

computers. With artificial intelligence, HAL could reason well enough to hold

conversations with its human operators, use visual input, and learn from its own

experiences. (Unfortunately, HAL was a little too human and had a psychotic

breakdown, commandeering a spaceship and killing most humans on board.)

Using recent engineering advances, computers may be able to accept spoken

word instructions and imitate human reasoning. The ability to translate a foreign

language is also a major goal of fifth generation computers. This feat seemed a

simple objective at first, but appeared much more difficult when programmers

realized that human understanding relies as much on context and meaning as it

does on the simple translation of words.

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Many advances in the science of computer design and technology are coming

together to enable the creation of fifth-generation computers. Two such

engineering advances are parallel processing and another advance is

superconductor technology, which allows the flow of electricity with little or no

resistance, greatly improving the speed of information flow.

Fifth generation computing devices are still in development. Quantum computation and molecular and nanotechnology will radically change the face of computers in years to come.

Consider Moore's Law, an observation that Gordon Moore made back in 1965. He noticed that the number of transistors engineers could cram onto a silicon chip doubled every year or so. That manic pace slowed over the years to a slightly more modest 24-month cycle. Awareness of the breakneck speed at which computer technology develops has seeped into the public consciousness. We've all heard the joke about buying a computer at the store only to find out it's obsolete by the time you get home. What will the future hold for computers?

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Assuming microprocessor manufacturers can continue to live up to Moore's Law, the processing power of our computers should double every two years. That would mean computers 100 years from now would be 1,125,899,906,842,624 times more powerful than the current models. In 2005, Moore said that as transistors reach the atomic scale we may encounter fundamental barriers we can't cross .We may get around that barrier by building larger processor chips with more transistors. But transistors generate heat, and a hot processor can cause a computer to shut down. Computers with fast processors need efficient cooling systems to avoid overheating. The larger the processor chip, the more heat the computer will generate when working at full speed. Another tactic is to switch to multi-core architecture. A multi-core processor dedicates part of its processing power to each core. They're good at handling calculations that can be broken down into smaller components; however, they aren't as good at handling large computational problems that can't be broken down. Future computers may rely on a completely different model than traditional machines. What if we abandon the old transistor-based processor?