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The First Digital Computer
Designed by Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer was designed to improve upon existing models by performing more advanced equations. He eventually realized that analog-based computers were simply not enough for complex equations. He decided to implement the following. The computer would use electricity for power and would use base-two numbers. It would also use condensors for memory and use direct action instead of "counting" to compute. -
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The History of the Computer
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The First Transistor
The transistor was developed to replace the vacuum tube. The transistor vastly overpowered the vacuum tube because of the transistor's ability to perform calculations millions or billions of times faster. Vacuum tubes were also limiting in that they were too big, about the size of your thumb. And while transistors were built by hand, they were still much smaller. Transistors also required much less energy to use than vacuum tubes. -
The First Wide-Range Computer
Known as EDSAC, or Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, the first "wide-range" computer was designed to assist with many calculations. Most computers built beforehand were usually designed to break code or were purely experimental. EDSAC was designed to help mathematicians and scientists solve complex exquations. EDSAC was innovative because of its ability to store specific codes which could be used to perform calculations. It also stored multiple words in memory. -
The First Hard Drive
Designed to help businesses record transactions, the RAMAC 305 disk storage unit was the first computer to implement a form of accessible recording. The 305 was the size of two refrigerators. The basic storage system had a capacity of a mere five megabytes. Transactions were stored on 50 magnetic disks which held 50000 sectors which in turn held 100 alphanumeric characters. This allowed for a capacity of five million charcters. -
The First Microprocessor
Originally designed for calculators, Intel's 4004 CPU was designed to put a computer within the space of a few milimeters. The Intel 4004 had 2300 transistors within the space of just 12 sqaure milimeters. The 4004 was able to do the same work of the ENIAC, which used 18000 vacuum tubes within a 3000 cubic foot area. Intel then proceeded to put their design in multiple computer-related products. Many microprocessors are still based off of Intel's revolutionary invention. -
Links
First Computer: http://jva.cs.iastate.edu/operation.php
First Wide-Range Computer: http://www.tnmoc.org/special-projects/edsac/edsac-history
First Hard Drive: https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_350.html
First Transistor: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/electronics-components-why-transistors-were-invent.html
http://www.techspot.com/guides/251-how-small-is-32nm/
First MicroProcessor: http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/microprocessor.htm
