THE STORY OF THE COMPUTER

By annebozi

  • Pascaline

    The Arithmetic Machine by Blaise Pascal
  • Period: to

    From the beginning up to 19th century

    The first computer devices

  • Liebniz Wheel (or Liebniz Drum)

    The first four function calculator by Gottfried Liebniz

  • Jacquard Loom

    A fabric loom that used punched cards created by Joseph-Marie Jacquard

  • Difference Engine

    Machine which solves polynomial equations made by Charles Babbage

  • Analytical Engine

    The closest machine to today's computers made by Charles Babbage

  • Tabulating Machine

    Precursor of today's computer, could process data on punched cards by Herman Hollerith
  • Period: to

    From 1930 to 1950

    The birth of the electronic computer

  • The Z1

    A general purpose mechanical computer made by Konrad Zuse

  • The ABC (Atanasoff Berry Computer)

    The first computer to encode information electrically by John V. Atanasoff and his assistant Clifford Berry

  • The Colossus

    The world's first programmable electronic digital computer made by Tommy Flowers and his team

  • The ENIAC

    The first general-purpose electronic computer made by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert.

  • The EDVAC

    The first computer to follow the von Neumann concept made at the University of Pennsylvania

  • First generation computers

    Costly commercial computers afforded only by organisations. Bulky devices with vacuum tubes as electronic switches.
  • Period: to

    From 1950 up to today

    Computers introduced advanced technologies

  • The Mark I-IV

    A huge electromechanical protocomputer that evolved into a fully electronic computer made by Howard Aiken in Harvard University

  • Second generation computers

    Vacuum tubes are now replaced with transistors. The size and cost is reduced and high level programming languages are introduced like FORTRAN and COBOL

  • Third generation computers

    Invention of the integrated circuit and the chip, reduce of cost and size, processing power evolution

  • Fourth Generation Computers

    The first computer subsystems to fit on a single circuit board. Examples Altair 8800, IBM and PC.

  • Fifth Generation Computers

    Miniaturization of computer devices is introduced and improvements are made in secondary storage media. First glance on the smartphone and virtual reality.