COMPUTER EVOLUTION

EARLY COMPUTING MACHINES AND INVENTORS.

1.       Abacus

Created 5000 years ago in Asia Minor.

2.       Blaise Pascal

1642, 18 years old son of a French tax collector, invented numerical wheel calculator to help his father with his duties. The brass rectangular box also called pascaline, its limitation is addition.

3.       Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

German mathematician and philosopher, improved pascaline by making it multiply to invent Leibniz’s mechanical multiplier.

4.       Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar

The Frenchman invented Colmar’s mechanical calculator which could perform the four basic arithmetic functions.

5.       Charles Babbage

English mathematics professor invented a Difference Engine which solves differential equations. He also invented another called Analytical Engine; it was the first programmable machine/computer, program by Augusta Ada King.

6.       Herman Hollerith

American inventor used card to store data information which he fed into a machine that complied the results mechanically, he founded Tabulating Machine Company in 1896, later to become International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924.

7.       Vannevar bush

Invented a cumbersome calculator which can solve complex differential equations. Atanasoff and berry developed the first all-electronic computer.

GENERATION OF MODERN COMPUTERS

1.       FIRST GENERATION

They use vacuum tubes and magnetic drum, Von Neumann designed the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (ED-VAC), Remington Rand built UNI VAC (Universal Automatic Computer).

2.       SECOND GENERATION

Invention of Transistor, machine language where replaced by assembly language, high-level languages where used (COBOL, FORTRAN).

3.       THIRD GENERATION

Introduction of Integrated Circuit (IC), which combines three electronic components in a small silicon disc, which was made from quartz.

4.       FOURTH GENERATION

Large Scale integration (LSI) hundreds, thousands and millions of components fit into a single chip, which reduced the size of computer drastically, from desktop to laptop to palmtop, it created way for Operating System that uses graphic and mouse.

5.       FIFTH GENERATION

Artificial Intelligence, use visual input, and learn from its own experiences, voice recognition and imitate human reasoning.