Annoer Genetica - Bina Computer

NEWS FLASH!
A New Generation of Computers is about to be Announced
by Roderick Hames

Early Start
Computers have been around for quite a few years. Some of your parents were probably around in 1951 when the first computer was bought by a business firm. Computers have changed so rapidly many people can not keep up with changes.

One newspaper tried to relate how the fast changes in computer technology would look to a similar pace in the auto industry:

"Had the automobile developed at a pace (equal) to that of the computer during the past twenty years, today a Rolls Royce would cost less than $3.00, get 3 million miles to the gallon, deliver enough power to drive (the ship) the Queen Elizabeth II, and six of them would fit on the head of a pin!"

These changes have occurred so rapidly that many people do not know how our modern computer got its start.

The First Computing Machines "Computers"
Since ancient times, people have had ways to deal with data and numbers. Early people tied knots in rope and carved marks on clay tablets to keep track of livestock and trade. Some people considered the 5000 year old ABACUS-- a frame with beads strung on wires to be the first true computing aid.

As trade and tax system grew in complexity, people saw that faster, more reliable and exact tools were needed for doing math and keeping records.

In the mid-1600's, Blaise Pascal and his father, who was a tax officer himself, were working on taxes for the French government in Paris. The two spent hours figuring and refiguring taxes that each citizen owed. Young Blaise decided in 1642 to build an adding and subtraction machine that could aide in such a tedious and time consuming process. The machine Blaise made had a set of eight gears that worked together much like an odometer keeps track of a car's mileage. His machine encountered many of problems. For one, it was always breaking down. Second, the machine was slow and extremely costly. And third, people were afraid to use the machine thinking it might replace their jobs. Pascal later became famous for math and philosophy, but he is still remember for his role in computer technology. In his honor, there is a computer language named Pascal.

The next big step for computers arrived in the 1830's when Charles Babbage decided to build a machine to help him complete and print mathematical tables. Babbage was a mathematician who taught at Cambridge University in England. He began planning his calculating machine calling it the Analytical Engine. The idea for this machine was amazingly like the computer we know today. It was to read a program from punched cards, figure and store the answers to different problems, and print the answer on paper. Babbage died before he could complete the machine. However because of his remarkable ideas and work, Babbage is know as the Father of Computers.

The next huge step for computers came when Herman Hollerith entered a contest given by the U.S. Census Bureau. The contest was to see who could build a machine that would count and record information faster. Hollerith, a young man working for the Bureau built a machine called the Tabulating Machine that read and sorted data from punched cards. The holes punched in the cards matched each person's answers to questions. For example, married, single, and divorces were answers on the cards. The Tabulator read the punched cards as they passed over tiny brushes. Each time a brush found a hole, it completed an electrical circuit. This caused special counting dials to increase the data for that answer.

Thanks to Hollerith's machine, instead of taking seven and a half years to count the census information it only took three years, even with 13 million more people since the last census. Happy with his success, Hollerith formed the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. The company later was sold in 1911. And in 1912 his company became the International Business Machines Corporation, better know today as IBM.

The First Electric Powered Computer
What is considered to be the first computer was made in 1944 by Harvard's Professor Howard Aiken. The Mark I computer was very much like the design of Charles Babbage's having mainly mechanical parts, but with some electronic parts. His machine was designed to be programmed to do many computer jobs. This all-purpose machine is what we now know as the PC or personal computer. The Mark I was the first computer financed by IBM and was about 50 feet long and 8 feet tall. It used mechanical switches to open and close its electric circuits. It contained over 500 miles of wire and 750,000 parts.

The First All Electronic Computer
The first all electronic computer was the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). ENIAC was a general purpose digital computer built in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. The ENIAC contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes (used instead of the mechanical switches of the Mark I) and was 1000 times faster than the Mark I. In twenty seconds, ENIAC could do a math problem that would have taken 40 hours for one person to finish. The ENIAC was built the time of World War II had as its first job to calculate the feasibility of a design for the hydrogen bomb. The ENIAC was 100 feet long and 10 feet tall.

M ore Modern Computers
A more modern type computer began with John von Neumann's development of software written in binary code. It was von Neumann who began the practice of storing data and instructions in binary code and initiated the use of memory to store data, as well as programs. A computer called the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Computer) was built using binary code in 1950. Before the EDVAC, computers like the ENIAC could do only one task then they had to be rewired to perform a different task or program. The EDVAC's concept of storing different programs on punched cards instead of rewiring computers led to the computers that we know today.

While the modern computer is far better and faster than the EDVAC of its time, computers of today would not have been possible with the knowledge and work of many great inventors and pioneers.

Annoer Genetica -Bina Computer

Of course will be need require the sufficient time to be master of computer! but nothing that impossible during you have desire of strength to start it!A aphorism tell; "as far as any a journey started with first step", and I will add; "the best of first step is stepping the accompanied with clear intention".
I suggest you start it from here ;
Articles of The Computer Chronicles By Roderick Hames

NEWS FLASH!
A New Generation of Computers is about to be Announced
by Roderick Hames

In the beginning ...

A generation refers to the state of improvement in the development of a product. This term is also used in the different advancements of computer technology. With each new generation, the circuitry has gotten smaller and more advanced than the previous generation before it. As a result of the miniaturization, speed, power, and memory of computers has proportionally increased. New discoveries are constantly being developed that affect the way we live, work and play.

The First Generation: 1946-1958 (The Vacuum Tube Years)

The first generation computers were huge, slow, expensive, and often undependable. In 1946two Americans, Presper Eckert, and John Mauchly built the ENIAC electronic computer which used vacuum tubes instead of the mechanical switches of the Mark I. The ENIAC used thousands of vacuum tubes, which took up a lot of space and gave off a great deal of heat just like light bulbs do. The ENIAC led to other vacuum tube type computers like the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) and the UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer).

The vacuum tube was an extremely important step in the advancement of computers. Vacuum tubes were invented the same time the light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison and worked very similar to light bulbs. It's purpose was to act like an amplifier and a switch. Without any moving parts, vacuum tubes could take very weak signals and make the signal stronger (amplify it). Vacuum tubes could also stop and start the flow of electricity instantly (switch). These two properties made the ENIAC computer possible.

The ENIAC gave off so much heat that they had to be cooled by gigantic air conditioners. However even with these huge coolers, vacuum tubes still overheated regularly. It was time for something new.

The Second Generation: 1959-1964 (The Era of the Transistor)
The transistor computer did not last as long as the vacuum tube computer lasted, but it was no less important in the advancement of computer technology. In 1947 three scientists, John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain working at AT&T's Bell Labs invented what would replace the vacuum tub
There were obvious differences between the transistor and the vacuum tube. The transistor was faster, more reliable, smaller, and much cheaper to build than a vacuum e forever. This invention was the transistor which functions like a vacuum tube in that it can be used to relay and switch electronic signals.
tube. One transistor replaced the equivalent of 40 vacuum tubes. These transistors were made of solid material, some of which is silicon, an abundant element (second only to oxygen) found in beach sand and glass. Therefore they were very cheap to produce. Transistors were found to conduct electricity faster and better than vacuum tubes. They were also much smaller and gave off virtually no heat compared to vacuum tubes. Their use marked a new beginning for the computer. Without this invention, space travel in the 1960's would not have been possible. However, a new invention would even further advance our ability to use computers.

The Third Generation: 1965-1970 (Integrated Circuits - Miniaturizing the Computer)
Transistors were a tremendous breakthrough in advancing the computer. However no one could predict that thousands even now millions of transistors (circuits) could be compacted in such a small space. The integrated circuit, or as it is sometimes referred to as semiconductor chip, packs a huge number of transistors onto a single wafer of silicon. Robert Noyce of Fairchild Corporation and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently discovered the amazing attributes of integrated circuits. Placing such large numbers of transistors on a single chip vastly increased the power of a single computer and lowered its cost considerably.

Since the invention of integrated circuits, the number of transistors that can be placed on a single chip has doubled every two years, shrinking both the size and cost of computers even further and furthe

r enhancing its power. Most electronic devices today use some form of integrated circuits placed on printed circuit boards-- thin pieces of bakelite or fiberglass that have electrical connections etched onto them -- sometimes called a mother board.

These third generation computers could carry out instructions in billionths of a second. The size of these machines dropped to the size of small file cabinets. Yet, the single biggest advancement in the computer era was yet to be discovered.

The Fourth Generation: 1971-Today (The Microprocessor)

This generation can be characterized by both the jump to monolithic integrated circuits(millions of transistors put onto one integrated circuit chip) and the invention of the microprocessor (a single chip that could do all the processing of a full-scale computer). By putting millions of transistors onto one single chip more calculation and faster speeds could be reached by computers. Because electricity travels about a foot in a billionth of a second, the smaller the distance the greater the speed of computers.

However what really triggered the tremendous growth of computers and its significant impact on our lives is the invention of the microprocessor. Ted Hoff, employed by Intel (Robert Noyce's new company) invented a chip the size of a pencil eraser that could do all the computing and logic work of a computer. The microprocessor was made to be used in calculators, not computers. It led, however, to the invention of personal computers, or microcomputers.

It wasn't until the 1970's that people began buying computer for personal

use. One of the earliest personal computers was the Altair 8800 computer kit. In 1975 you could purchase this kit and put it together to make your own personal computer. In 1977 the Apple II was sold to the public and in 1981 IBM entered the PC (personal computer) market.

Today we have all heard of Intel and its Pentium® Processors and now we know how it all got started. The computers of the next generation will have millions upon millions of transistors on one chip and will perform over a billion calculations in a single second. There is no end in sight for the computer movement.