A Brief History of Computers PDF

(A Brief) History of Computers #07 History of Computers Bill Gates, 40 years ago - A computer on every desk and in every home. Bill Gates, now - It’s been amazing to see so much of that dream become a reali...

(A Brief) History of Computers #07 History of Computers Bill Gates, 40 years ago - A computer on every desk and in every home. Bill Gates, now - It’s been amazing to see so much of that dream become a reality and touch so many lives.  History of Computers “The computer is an extraordinary and revolutionary invention” radically changed the way we live, work, relax,... there are computers everywhere - home, car, hospital, school,... the most important invention of the second half of last century not only radically changed our way of life but has redefined the answer to "who we are"  History of Computers The first computers were people! Computers - clerks who perform calculations (repetitive actions requiring attention and not intelligence, exposed to common mistakes and errors). Initially it was about an occupation – people (usually women) performing repeated calculations required to obtain numerical results (position of the planets, navigation charts). Computers (non-human) - automate the human factor work.  History of Computers By "calculator" or "calculating machine" we shall mean a device... capable of accepting two numbers A and B, and of forming some or any of the combinations A + B, A - B, A x B, A / B. By "computer" we shall mean a machine capable of carrying out automatically a succession of operations of this kind and of storing the necessary intermediate results... Human agents will be referred to as "operators" to distinguish them from "computers" (machines). George Stibitz, Report for the National Defense Research Committee on Relay Computers (1945).  Generations of Computers Generation #1, 1940 to 1956: Vacuum Tubes Generation #2, 1956-1963: Transistors Generation #3, 1963-1971: Integrated Circuits Generation #4, 1971-Today: Microprocessors Generation #5, AI  Generation #1 Vacuum Tubes Enormous size, usually occupying entire rooms. Maintenance very expensive, high-energy consumption, heat dissipation -> damage. Input data by punched cards, the results were most often printed.  Elektro - 1939 New York World's Fair - could walk by voice commands, smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons and move his head and arms. 1940 - "Sparko", a robot dog that could bark, sit and beg to humans. https://youtu.be/AuyTRbj8QSA 1939 - Elektro  Mark I marked the beginning of the modern computing era - programmable digital computer. Made between 1939- 1944 by IBM and Harvard University. 5 tons, 800km of cables, 2.5m high, 16m long, started with a 5-horsepower electric engine. Able to use numbers on 23 positions and store 72 values. Room-size, working speed was slow. 1944 - MARK1  Created in England to break the encrypted messages of the Nazis. Colossus reduced the time to break Enigma messages from weeks to hours. The machine’s existence was not made public until the 1970s. 1944 – COLOSSUS (10x)  ENIAC, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer 30t, 160 m2, energy consumption similar to a locomotive, 40 panels, 20.000 electronic tubes 5.000 add/subtract operations per second, 10 digits numbers, storage capacity of 20 numbers 1946 - ENIAC  Initially it was used to develop the hydrogen bomb project. Designed to be able to replace any human "computer". It was believed that ENIAC had done more calculation over the ten years it was in operation than all of humanity had until that time. 1946 - ENIAC  UNIVAC The first commercial computer to attract widespread public attention. Magnetic tapes. Remington Rand sold 46 Univac at more than $1 million each. 1951 - UNIVAC  Claude Shannon - The Mathematical Theory of Communication Bit as the fundamental unit of information and, coincidentally, the basic unit of computation. 1948 - Shannon  Elmer and Elsie - first electronic autonomous robots, they illustrate the speculative behavior that is so characteristic of most animals. Toys which feed themselves, sleep, think, walk, and do tricks like a domestic animal – toys containing an electric brain. Phototaxis, by which they could find their way to a recharging station when they ran low on battery power. 1950 – Machina speculatrix https://youtu.be/lLULRlmXkKo?t=43  Collecting tennis balls (the nuts) and take them to its nest. 1951 – Squee - The Robot Squirrel  Can machines think? He proposed that if a computer, on the basis of written replies to questions, could not be distinguished from a human respondent, then it must be “thinking”. 1951 – Turing Test  Generation #2 Transistors The transistor was invented in 1947. Transistor allowed computers to become smaller, faster, cheaper, more reliable and able to consume less electricity than their first- generation predecessors. There were still problems with heat dissipation that could generate damages.  Typewriters used as keyboard input devices. 1956 – the Keyboard  Generation #3 Integrated Circuits Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon pills called semiconductors. Improvements – speed, reliability, smaller dimensions, higher capacity memory. New peripherals - keyboard and monitor that helped users to better interact with the computer systems.  System/360 is a major event in the history of computing. System/360 was aimed at both business and scientific customers and all models could run the same software. IBM’s initial investment of $5 billion was quickly returned as orders for the system climbed to 1,000 per month within two years. 1964 – IBM System/360  Brown Box, allowed users to play several different games on a standard television set, including table tennis game, without requiring a computer, microprocessor, or software. The Brown Box also had a light gun accessory for playing shooting games. 1966 – Brown Box  The astronauts were responsible for entering more than 10,000 commands into the AGC for each trip between Earth and the Moon. Culmination point of years of work to reduce the size of the Apollo spacecraft computer from the size of seven refrigerators side-by-side to a compact unit weighing only 30 kg. 1968 – Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC)  The Stanford Arm could assemble a Ford Model T water pump, guiding itself with optical and contact sensors. Heavily used for automobile assembly and other industrial tasks. First successful electrically powered, computer- controlled robot arm. 1969 – Stanford Arm  HP-35 fit all of the features of the desktop scientific calculator into a package small enough for the shirt pocket. 1971 – HP-35 1967 – World first ATM, London  The world’s first ATM was unveiled by Barclays at its Enfield branch in North London on June 27 1967. As a tribute to the golden anniversary, Barclays transformed the ATM at its Enfield branch into gold, added a commemorative plaque and placed a red carpet in front for its users. 1967 – first ATM, London 1970 - Automated Teller Machine (ATM)  Generation #4 Microprocessors Microprocessor - thousands of integrated circuits were built on a single silicon chip. The first generation of these circuits occupied an entire room and today they fit in hand. More and more everyday products began to use microprocessors.  Intel - the first microprocessor Intel 4004 90,000 operations per second 1971 – Intel 4004  Newspaper advertising 1971 – Intel 4004  XEROX 9700 the world’s first laser printer 1971 – XEROX 9700  CRAY-1 supercomputer Each Cray-1 took a full year to assemble and cost about $10 million. Typical applications included US national defense work, including the design and simulation of nuclear weapons, and weather forecasting. 1976 – Cray-1  The Queen Sent Her First Email Queen Elizabeth II became the world’s first monarch to send an email – before the Internet was even invented. Username HME2 – Her Majesty, Elizabeth II. Subject - ‘A Message from Her Majesty the Queen’ 1976 – HME2 1976 – Apple I  Sold complete with a main logic board, switching power supply, keyboard, case, manual, game paddles, and cassette tape containing the game Breakout. When connected to a color television set, the Apple II produced brilliant color graphics for the time. Millions of Apple IIs were sold between 1977 and 1993, making it one of the longest-lived lines of personal computers. Apple gave away thousands of Apple IIs to school, giving a new generation their first access to personal computers. 1977 – Apple II 1977 - Atari Video Computer System 1978 – first computer to the White House  The first PC to gain widespread adoption by industry. US$2,880 (monitor not included). The IBM PC was widely copied (“cloned”) and led to the creation of a vast “ecosystem” of software, peripherals, and other commodities for use with the platform. MS-DOS operating system. 1981 – IBM PC  First mass-production portable computer. $1,795 1981 – Osborne 1  1982 - 800,000 PCs were sold in the US Time named the computer as Man of the Year, which the award was then called. Time's bold choice seems strangely prophetic. 1982 – Man of the year  "computers were once regarded as distant, ominous abstractions, like Big Brother. In 1982, they truly became personalized, brought down to scale, so that people could hold, prod and play with them." 1982 – Man of the year  First commercial personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI). $9,995 US (over $20,000 now) 1983 – Apple Lisa  $2,500 GUI The first successful mouse-driven computer. 1984 – Apple Macintosh  $4,000 Increased performance and storage capacity over the original IBM PC. 1984 – IBM PC/AT  Pixar’s Tin Toy computer animated film winning the Oscar for the Best Animated Short Film https://youtu.be/ffIZSAZRzDA 1988 – Tin Toy  David Levy is the first master chess player to be defeated by a computer. The program Deep Thought defeats Levy who had beaten all other previous computer counterparts since 1968. Garry Kasparov played IBM's Deep Thought chess machine in 1989--easily winning both games of a 2-game match. 1989 - Chess  Apple had initially included a handle in their Macintosh computers to encourage users to take their Macs on the go. A true portable computer - $6,500. 1989 – Macintosh Portable Finally PC users were exposed to the user-friendly concepts of the Apple Macintosh, making the IBM PC more popular. Multitasking, Word, Excel, … 1990 – Windows 3.0  Tim Berners-Lee, CERN, Switzerland: Server, HTML, URL and bowser. Mosaic – the 1st successful browser (1993) – leaving out the editing features. Berners-Lee never regains control of his creation. 1990 - WWW  The PlayStation was a great success, selling more than a hundred million units, setting the stage for the Sony to become a dominant player in the home gaming market. 1995 – Sony PlayStation  Military Drone The unmanned aerial vehicles were equipped with cameras for reconnaissance and could be upgraded to carry two missiles. 1995 – Predator MQ-1  Windows 95 was a major improvement over the previous Windows 3.1, adding features such as “Plug and Play” for more easily installing new peripherals, as well as the Taskbar and Start button menu. More than one million units were sold in the first four days following the release, and within two years, Windows 95 was installed on more computers than any other operating system. 1995 – Windows 95  Of the six matches played, Deep Blue won two, Kasparov won one and the other three matches ended in a draw. Kasparov saw "superior intelligence" in Deep Blue's play, leading to accusations of human interference. 1997 – Deep Blue  US Congress, Digital Millennium Copyright Act Internet – easy copy and share of digital content including music, video, and software, often in direct violation of copyright law. The DMCA has become an influential law worldwide, influencing similar legislation around the world. 1998 – DMCA  Google solving the eternal problem plaguing all previous search engines – how to profit from search. The secret turns out to be a discreet form of advertising, based on auctioning off keywords to appear as "sponsored results" within a search results page. 1998 – Google Search (Beta) File:Surface table.JPG  Generation #5 high speed computing (million inferences/s) natural human-computer interfaces (voice, image) more applications of artificial intelligence parallel computing architectures machines that had reasoning capabilities as opposed to simply perform calculations.  Moore's Law Computing power doubles every 18 months (long term exponential trend). History of Computers History of Computers #07 The End