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Konrad Zuse created the Z1 Computer. It was a binary electrically driven mechanical calculator with limited programmability, reading instructions from punched tape. It was completed in 1938 and financed completely from private funds. This computer was destroyed in the bombardment of Berlin in December 1943, during World War II, together with all construction plans.
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The ABC was at the center of a patent dispute relating to the invention of the computer, which was resolved in 1973 when it was shown that ENIAC co-designer John Mauchly had come to examine the ABC shortly after it became functional.
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Start of project: 1943
Completed: 1946
Programmed: plug board and switches
Speed: 5,000 operations per second
Input/output: cards, lights, switches, plugs
Floor space: 1,000 square feet
Project leaders: John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. -
Conceived by Harvard professor Howard Aiken, and designed and built by IBM, the Harvard Mark-1 was a room-sized, relay-based calculator. The machine had a fifty-foot long camshaft that synchronized the machine’s thousands of component parts. The Mark-1 was used to produce mathematical tables but was soon superseded by stored program computers.
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For programming the EDSAC, Wilkes established a library of short programs called subroutines stored on punched paper tapes.
Technology: vacuum tubes
Memory: 1K words, 17 bits, mercury delay line
Speed: 714 operations per second -
Project director Jay Forrester described the computer as a "reliable operating system," running 35 hours a week at 90-percent utility using an electrostatic tube memory.
Start of project: 1945
Completed: 1951
Add time: .05 microseconds
Input/output: cathode ray tube, paper tape, magnetic tape
Memory size: 2048 16-digit words
Memory type: cathode ray tube, magnetic drum, tape (1953 - core memory)
Technology: 4,500 vacuum tubes, 14,800 diodes
Floor space: 3,100 square feet
Project leaders: Jay For -
During three years of production, IBM sold 19 machines to research laboratories, aircraft companies, and the federal government.
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Each computer used a full megawatt of power to drive its 55,000 vacuum tubes, 175,000 diodes and 13,000 transistors.
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It was invented in 1968 Dr. Alan Kay at XEROX PARC. In his vision he referred to it as the Dynabook - for a "dynamic book"
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Netbooks are also called SubNotebooks or small netbooks or miniLaptops. The concept of Netbook was there in 1990s. Apple introduced the first netbook called eMate 300. After that many companies started manufacturing it.
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The first smartphone was invented by IBM in 1992. It was nicknamed, “Simon,” and had a plethora of features including a calendar, address book, calculator, email service, and even a touch screen. At $899.00, though, most people could not afford it.
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The bulky device is the Apple Newton MessagePad. Introduced in 1993, it was the first Personal Digital Assistant.
The Newton was very ambitious for its time, featuring full Handwriting Recognition, plug-in memory cards, fax and email (with optional modem), IR communications, and a degree of intelligence we still have to see in later PDA's. -
April 1989 - Fraunhofer received a German patent for MP3.
1992 - Fraunhofer's and Dieter Seitzer’s audio coding algorithm was integrated into MPEG-1.
1993 - MPEG-1 standard published.
1994 - MPEG-2 developed and published a year later.
November 26, 1996 - United States patent issued for MP3.
September 1998 - Fraunhofer started to enforce their patent rights. All developers of MP3 encoders or rippers and decoders/players now have to pay a licensing fee to Fraunhofer. -
Though the first models were desktop-based, tablet PCs became portable almost immediately after Microsoft coined the term in 2002. Early portable tablets were bulky and had limited battery life, but smaller tablets were soon produced.