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The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory, and were often enormous, taking up the space of an entire room. They were very expensive to operate and used a huge amount of electricity, as well as generating a lot of heat, which contributed to frequent causes of malfunctions.
First generation computers relied on machine language only, which was the lowest-level programming language understood by computers. -
The first electronic computer was developed late in WWII by John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was used for ballistics computations, weighing 30 tons, including 18,000 vacuum tubes, 6,000 switches, and 1,500 relays.
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This program was written and designed by Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams. Its Random Access Memory was used to hold program instructions, as well as to hold numbers involved in calculations. This an improvement from the ENIAC because instructions could be read successively at electronic speed. Also, when running a seperate program, it involved resetting part of the memory using a simple keyboard instead of reconfiguring the electronic circuitry in the ENIAC.
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Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer that was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England. EDSAC was the first practical stored-program electronic computer. EDSAC ran its first programs on May 6, 1949, when it calculated a table of squares and a list of prime numbers.
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On October 2, 1955 the power finally shut off and the ENIAC retired. Today, parts of the machine are exibited at the Smithsonian, Washington, USA and a few other locations in the USA.
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Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and ushered in the second generation of computers. The transistor was invented in 1947 but it wasn't a common use in computers until the late 1950s. The transistor allowed computers to become smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable than their first-generation predecessors. Even though the transistor still generated a good amount of heat that subjected the computer malfuntons, it was still far superior compared to the vacuum tubes.
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IBM Iaunched the IBM 350 Disk File, the first hard drive, as a factor of the IBM RAMAC 305 computer. The drive features fifty double-sided 24-inch diameter platters, served by one arm and one read/write head. Its capacity is about 5 MB, and transfer rate is 8800 characters per second.
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Bill Gates developed a version of BASIC for the Altair 8800 as a student in Harvard. With its success, he and co-developer Paul Allen founded Microsoft, which delivered an operating system for the IBM PC, the Microsoft Word word processing program, the Window system software, and several other programs.
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Control Data Corp. released its model 1604 computer, which was designed by Seymour Cray. Applications of the CDC 1604 included processing data in real time, controlling weapons systems, solving large-scale scientific problems, and commercial applications. It was the most powerful computer back in its day.
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Jack Kilby created the first integrated circuit at Texas Instruments to prove the fact that resistors and capacitors could exist on the same piece of semiconductor material. His circuit contained a sliver of germanium with five elements linked by wires.
"What we didn't realize then was that the integrated circuit would reduce the cost of electronic functions by a factor of a million to one, nothing had ever done that for anything before" - Jack Kilby -
COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) is one of the earlirst high-level programming languages created by Grace Hopper. It was also one of the first computers that stored their instructions in their memory, moving from a magnetic drum to magnetic core technology.
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The Bell 103, by AT&T, was the 1st commercial device available in 1962. This first modem allowed full-duplex transmission, and boosted data rates to 300 bits per second. Soon after the Bell 103, there came the Bell 212, which had improved features such as employing a method of modulation known as the phase-shift keying (PSK). This was better and easier than the frequency-shift keying (FSK) method that the Bell 103 provided.
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The first mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart. It was carved from wood and tracked motion via two wheels mounted on the bottom instead of the ball employed in today's models. Today there are 3 basic types of computer mice including: mechanical, optomechanical, and optical.
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The development of the integrated circuit was the highlight of the third generation of computers. Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, or semiconductors, which drastically increased the speed and efficiency of computers. This was a vast improvement from the past two generations of computers.
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IBM releases the System 360 range of commercial computers which included innovations like upgradeability and magnetic tape drives.
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The CDC 7600 model is considered to be the first true supercomputer designed by Seymour Cray. He also designed the predecessor (6600), and a successor, the 8600, which the company never marketed. It can calculate at a speed of nearly 40 megaflops.
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The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was responsible for guidance, navigation, and control computations in the Apollo space program. It was the first computer to use integrated circuit logic and took up less than 1 cubic foot of the spacecraft. It stored data in 15 bit words (with one parity bit) and had a 11.7 usec memory cycle time. Astronauts communicated with the AGC using the "DSKY" (Display Keyboard) which used digital displays and communicated with austronauts.
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The microprocessor brought today's generation of computers. Thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip. What in the first generation filled up an entire room can now fit in the palm of the hand. The Intel 4004 chip, developed in 1971, located all the elements of the computer from the central processing unit (CPU) and memory to input/output controls on simply a single chip.
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The first email marked another historic moment in the evolution of communication. The text of that first electronic missive contained "something like QWERTYUIOP," sent by
Ray Tomlinson in 1971, The email was only a test message to himself. The email was sent from one computer to another sitting right beside it, but it traveled via ARPANET, which is a network of computers that was the precursor to the Internet. -
Engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, San Mazor, and Matsatoshi Sima, invented the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 404, at Intel in 1971. It had an advert in the November 15 issue of Electronic News. That same date, Intel announces the World's first Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM) technology at the ISSCC conference. However the actual prduct, the 1702, was launched later in the year.
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Microsoft introducesa new product, Windows, to compete with other graphical environments for computers, such as interface on the Apple Lisa. However, it wasn't until 1985 when Windows 1.0 finally became available to the public. Its major features included pull-down menus, tiled windows, mouse support, and cooperative multitasking of the program’s applications. version 3.0. Even though useful, Windows interface wasn't generally accepted until version 3.0.
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The Intel 80386, also known as the i386 or 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit (CPU) of many personal computers and workstations.
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The World Wide Web becomes available to the general public.
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Intel begins to ship its Pentium microprocessor. Engineers Federico Faggin. The new processor developed from the original (Intel 4004). It continued speed and power exponential increase for personal computers, which would allow for a smoother incorporation of speech, sound, handwriting, and photographs into documents.
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The original Apple Newton MessagePad features a 20 MHz ARM 610 processor, 4 MB of ROM, 640k of SRAM (150k usable), and infrared-beaming capabilities in a compact handheld case with a 336x240 pressure-sensitive monochrome display. The original Newton MessagePad made an attempt to recognize natural handwriting and use a basic form of artificial intelligence to 'tie' important information together. It was known as one of the 1st handheld systems, or PDA, but the product was later abandoned in 1997.
