A Brief History of Computing PDF

A Brief History of Computing 1930 1950 1970  Part I: ancient history: up to 1930 EECS1520: History 2  origins of digital computers earliest computing device designed to aid numeric...

A Brief History of Computing 1930 1950 1970  Part I: ancient history: up to 1930 EECS1520: History 2  origins of digital computers earliest computing device designed to aid numeric computation abacus: first developed in Babylonia, over 5000 years ago and still used today in some parts of the world a “finger-powered pocket calculator” EECS1520: History 3  origins of computational methods algorithm: a finite set of unambiguous instructions to solve a problem the term is raised from the name of the 9th century mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī Latinized algorithmi early examples: (300 BC) the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers (AD 60–120) the sieve of Eratosthenes for finding prime numbers, EECS1520: History 4  early calculating machines they were manual or mechanical examples: slide rule used in science and engineering in 1600s until it was replaced in 1900s by pocket calculators mechanical calculators (since 1600s) EECS1520: History 5  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine Jacquard loom (1804) used punch cards to define complex patterns woven into textiles punch cards were later used to code computer programs EECS1520: History 6 Punch cards A punched card or punch card is a piece of stiff paper with holes, where presence or absence of holes in pre-defined positions to dictate the design of cloth. (Later) Digital data to be entered in computer was represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions (before the wide use of keyboard) EECS1520: History 7  George Boole (1815–1864) Boolean algebra laid logical foundations of digital computing circuitry EECS1520: History 8  Part II: birth of the electronic computer 1930 to 1951 EECS1520: History 9  Claude Shannon (1916 – 2001) 1937: introduced the application of Boolean Logic in creating digital computing machines 1948: published “A mathematical theory of communication” which establishes the principles for encoding information so it might be reliably transmitted electronically Many consider him the father of the modern information age EECS1520: History 10  Von Neumann Architecture “stored program” binary internal coding CPU-Memory-I/O organization “fetch-decode-execute” cycle More details later EECS1520: History 11  Von Neumann Architecture “Stored program” Central processing unit, a memory, mass storage, IO Earlier computers (e.g., ENIAC) hard-wired to do one task, re-wired for different Stored program computer can run different programs Basis for modern computers EECS1520: History 12  Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) led the World War II research group that broke the (encrypted) code for the German Enigma machine proposed a simple abstract universal machine model for defining computability – The Turing Machine devised the “Turing Test” for EECS1520: History Artificial Intelligence 13  Enigma machine (Germany) invented in 1918, it was the most sophisticated code system of its day, and a priority for the Allies to break it as the Germans believed it was unbreakable EECS1520: History 14  Contributed to the electronic computing machines in 1940s that helped decrypt German coded messages EECS1520: History 16  the 1st electronic general-purpose computer ENIAC: Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer is the first general-purpose electronic digital computer commissioned by the United States Army for computing ballistic firing tables See YouTube video on the last slide page EECS1520: History 17  ENIAC noted for massive scale and redundant design used vacuum tubes to control the flow of electrical signals decimal internal coding operational in 1946 EECS1520: History 18  ENIAC manual programming of boards, switches and “function table” Not “von Neumann Architecture” EECS1520: History 19  vacuum tubes are large, generate a lot of heat and are prone to failures EECS1520: History 20  early computer programming was slow, tedious and repetitious EECS1520: History 21  Part III: age of the mainframes 1951 to 1970 EECS1520: History 22  1950s: computers get smaller four generations of vacuum tube computer circuits, showing the reduction in size during the 1950s EECS1520: History 23  Grace Hopper (1906–1992) created first compiler because she was tired of writing machine code by hand. Greatly improved programming speed and efficiency. EECS1520: History 24 EECS1520: History 25  the transistor “the most important invention of the 20th century…” Transistor replaced vacuum Integrated Circuit tubes, which were bulky allowed placement of many transistors onto a small surface lowered cost and decreased space compared to using individual transistors this enabled computers and other electronic devices to become smaller and cheaper to build and maintain today exceeding 10 billion transistors in a single package of approximately 25 square centimetres EECS1520: History 26  a hearing aid the first device built with transistors, in 1953 Zenith Royal-T “tubeless” hearing aid a prehistoric iPod ☺ EECS1520: History 27  followed by the “transistor radio” Vacuum tube radio EECS1520: History 28  1960s: IBM System/360 introduced in 1964 family of computers, with compatible architecture, covering a wide price range established the standard for mainframes for a decade and beyond EECS1520: History 29  punch cards student programmers using the IBM 026 keypuncher punched card from a Fortran program EECS1520: History 30 Going to the Moon Apollo space program depended on computers to calculate trajectories and control guidance trajectories calculated using IBM mainframes onboard guidance computer had less processing power than modern appliances, but had auto-pilot capabilities Margaret Hamilton led the team who coded programming for the guidance computer considered a pioneer in software engineering wired.com EECS1520: History 31  Gordon Bell: the “minicomputer” Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) developed first “mini” computers, 1960–83 brought computing to small business created major competition for IBM, Univac, who only built mainframes made Boston area first “silicon valley” EECS1520: History 32  DEC PDP series offered mainframe performance at a fraction of the cost PDP-8 introduced at $20,000 vs. $1M for a mainframe (early 1960s dollars) EECS1520: History 33  specialized supercomputers first developed in the late 1970s high-performance systems used for scientific applications (weather forecasting, code breaking) advanced special purpose designs IBM, NRCPC, NUDT Dell EMC, Cray, NEC, and others EECS1520: History 34  supercomputers today: IBM Summit supercomputer used for hydrodynamics, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, climate modeling and financial modeling EECS1520: History 35  Part IV age of the personal computers after 1970 EECS1520: History 36  Intel 4004 microprocessor - 1972 first commercially available microprocessor – first used in a programmable calculator made the personal computer possible contained 2300 transistors and ran at 100 kHz EECS1520: History 37  desktop and portable computers 1975 and later use microprocessors all-in-one designs, performance/price tradeoffs aimed at mass audience personal computers workstations cassette tapes for storage EECS1520: History 38  Altair 8800 first kit micro computer (1975) by MITS EECS1520: History 39  the beginning of Microsoft in 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen approached Ed Roberts of MITS, the company that developed the Altair, and promised to deliver a compiler for BASIC language. They did so, and from that sale, Microsoft was born. EECS1520: History 40  Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with the 1st Apple computer (1976) EECS1520: History 41  Radio Shack TRS-80 (1978) first plug and play personal computer available at retail programmed in BASIC very affordable limited commercial software created a “cottage industry” EECS1520: History 43  Osborne I (1981) first “portable” personal computer came with lots of bundled software only weighed around 20 kilos and sold for $1795 5 inch (13 cm) screen! EECS1520: History 44  IBM PC (1982) IBM’s first personal computer significant shift for IBM open architecture established a new standard – legitimized the personal computer Operating System supplied by Microsoft EECS1520: History 45 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) contributions to computing include: ethernet networking technology laser printers/copiers Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) programing paradigm workstations Alto and Star were the first to use a window-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) wikipedia.org EECS1520: History 46  Xerox Star (1981) EECS1520: History the first to use a window-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) 47  Apple MacIntosh (1984) second Personal computer with GUI interface adapted from the work done at Xerox designed to be a computer appliance for “Real People” introduced at the 1984 Superbowl EECS1520: History 48  the GUI has arrived! EECS1520: History 49  Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) large-area computer network, established in 1969 allowed universities to share data University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Santa Barbara Stanford Research University of Utah, CS Dept. communication protocols developed for ARPANET in early 1980s served as the basis for the Internet EECS1520: History 50  Moore’s Law in action EECS1520: History 51  Today’s price/performance over 3 billion operations per second costs less than $300 memory is measured in gigabytes… not megabytes or kilobytes secondary storage is terabytes, soon to be petabytes communication speeds measured in megabits or gigabits per second, not Kilobits and so it continues EECS1520: History 52 further resources & readings YouTube: The Machine That Changed the World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GropWVbj9wA www.computerhistory.org Google any name or term and see what comes up, such as Wikipedia entries EECS1520: History 53