Contents
Introduction 2
1.1 History of Computers 4
1.2 beginning of computers 4
1.2 Cogs and calculators 5
1.3 Engines of calculation 6
1.4 Bush 8
2.0 Modern computers 9
2.1 The First modern computers 9
References 11
Figure 1- abacus used in the 1st century in Rome(Cartwright and Cartwright, 2016) 3
Figure 2- computers nowadays(Cdn2.pcadvisor.co.uk, 2016) 3
Introduction
This is a document, this document is about computers, as we all know we all use computers, computer based programs, or compute based components etc.
According to Charlesbabbage.net (2016) , In the early 19 th century, a mechanic engineer and also a polymath known as Charles Babbage who originated with this concept of a programming computer which was the birth of this great electric device which does all our work in day to day life.
As it was the first computer, it did not have keyboards to input data as nowadays so instead they used a punched card, which in simple has some holes as the input data
The computer got only three things to do which is the input, the processing and lastly the output. the input is nowadays done by keyboards, scanners for inputting documents and etc. then the computer does the processing as we instruct it to do. Lastly, it will give the output as what we want it to be done.
The computer is mainly categorized under two parts, which are:
1. The hardware
2. The software
1. Hardware
It is the outer look of a computer and its component with all its capabilities, it also decides how fast the software which will be described next and also its capacity of storage and etc. hardware is also the input of data and the output of data
2. Software
It is the inner or the heart of the processing, as the hardware gives the instructions to it on how the processing is done, the software decide and does the work for us plus as we want it to process and give the output. Therefore, the software is where all the processing happens and shows the output of the work through a device such as a monitor or a document through a printer, etc.
If you have internet, you will have computer, according to http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/ there are nearly three billion computers using internet where the first billion was reached in 2005 and the second billion in 2010 and third billion 2014.Nowadays computers have become a part of our lives making our daily work easy and interesting to deal with. Everyone uses a computer, even if you do not have a one of your own people now know at least what it is to use this confusing, bulk hardware machine called the computer.
1.1 History of Computers
1.2 beginning of computers
Computers became great inventions of man-kind in the recent 20th century and the 21st century but the history of computers runs to nearly 2500 years old. It is the calculator known as the abacus made of simple material such as beads combined with wires as shown in figure 1. Which is actually still used in some parts of the globe.
FIGURE 2- COMPUTERS NOWADAYS(CDN2.PCADVISOR.CO.UK, 2016)
There may be lot of differences between the abacus of the1st century and computers nowadays but there is something common and a based principle for both which is that both make repeated calculations faster than a human brain.
1.2 Cogs and calculators
Abacus was the greatest calculator until the middle of the 17th century, accurately 1642 when a 18 year old French scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal created the pascaline, which he created it to in order to help his father to collect tax since his father was a leading tax collector at the time. It was a hard time for tax collectors to calculate tax until Pascal created the pascaline to make calculations easy and the pascaline consisted of cogs that could add and subtract decimal numbers.
FIGURE 3- PASCALINE (ANON, 2016)
Few decades later, a german mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz came up with a similar idea of a calculator but it was far more advance than the pascaline of blaise pascal. The leibiniz machine was able to do calculations faster than the pascaline, also it could do a lot more than addition and substraction such as multiplication, division through decimals and whole numbers, and also work out square roots. It had “stepped drums” instead of cogs used in the pascaline, another interesting feature, which was in the leibiniz machine, is that it had a feature known as the memory store or “register”.
Apart from introducing such an advance calculator, the german mathematician and philosopher leibiniz is remembered for another important contribution to computing. He was the man who invented binary code, a way of representing any decimal number using only two digits zero and one. Although leibiniz made no use of this great system known as the binary system, it set others to think more and come up with something to use this system. A century later, Englishman George boole used the idea to invent a new branch of mathematics called Boolean algebra. Modern computers nowadays use binary code and Boolean algebra allowing them make simple decisions by comparing long strings of zeros and ones.
1.3 Engines of calculation
Neither the abacus, nor the mechanical calculators constructed by Pascal and Leibniz really qualified as computers. A calculator is a device that makes it quicker and easier for people to do sums. But it needs a human operator but a computer in the other hand can operate automatically without any human help by following a series of stored instructions called program. Calculators evolved into computers when people devised ways of making entirely automatic, programmable calculators.
The first person to attempt this was a English mathematician named Charles babbage who is also referred as the “father of the computer” because his machines had a input, a memory, a processor, and a output. The same basic components are still being used in computers nowadays.
Babbage never completed a single one of the hugely ambitious machines that he tried to build which was no surprise since each of his programmable engines was designed to use tens of thousands of precision made gears. It was similar to a pocket watch scaled to the size of a stream engine. For a time the British government financed Babbage but when Babbage pressed the government for more money to build an even more advanced machine, they lost patience and pulled out. Babbage was more fortunate in receiving help from Augusta Ada Byron(the daughter of the poet lord Byron, but she was a mathematician) she was an enthusiastic mathematician, she helped to refine Babbage’s ideas for making his machine programmable, and this was why she is still referred as the world’s first programmer.
Babbage had intended that his machine would take the tiredness of heavy large repetitive calculations. Originally, Babbage imagined the army to complie the tables that helped their gunners to fire cannons more accurately would use it.
By nearly the end of the 19th century, other inventors were far more successful in their effort of creating engines of calculations. American statistician herman Hollerith built one of the world’s first practical calculating machines, which he called a tabulator. Which was used to help compile census data. Then, as now, a census was taken each decade but by the 1880’s, the population of the united states had grown so much through immigration that a full scale analysis of the data by hand was taking seven and a half years. The statisticians soon figured out that if the trends continued, they would run out of time to compile a single accurate full-analyzed census before the next one fell due. Fortunately, Hollerith’s tabulator was an amazing success; it tallied the entire census in just six weeks and completed the full analysis in just two and half years. Which helped the American government and the statisticians to do their census every decade. Hollerith realized his machine could do more than just the help on census, so he set up the tabulating machine company in the 1896 to manufacture it commercially and sell all around USA. A few years later, it changed its name to the computing- tabulating recording also known as C-T-R in abbreviations, and then in 1924 it changed its name for the final time and acquired its present name known as the International Business Machines also known as IBM in short form.
FIGURE 4 TABULATOR (ANON, 2016)
1.4 Bush
At the time of CTR was becoming IBM, the world’s most powerful calculators were being developed by US government scientist Vannevar Bush. In 1925 he made his first machine of his life known as the “the new recording product Intergraph multiplier”. Later he built a machine known as the “differential analyzer” which was made of gears, belts, levers and shafts to represent numbers and to carry out calculations. Bush’s ultimate invention or the ultimate calculator was an improved machine known as “ the Rockefeller Differential Analyzer”, assembled in 1935 from 320km of wire and 150 electric motors. Machines like these were called analog calculators because they stored numbers in a physical form rather than as digits. Even though these analog calculators could carry out the most complex calculations all though it took several days of wheel cranking and belt turning before the results were emerged.
FIGURE 5 DIFFERENTIAL ANALYZER (ANON, 2016)
Impressive machines like these were only one of several outstanding great contributions bush made to the 20th century technology. Another machine similar to the differential analyzer was invented by A brilliant mathematician who figured out how electrical circuits could be linked together to process binary code with Boolean algebra to make simple decisions called claude Shannon.
Later bush devoted his life for the war and weaponry creation for world war, and bush’s final wartime contributions was to sketch out an idea for memory storing and sharing devices called “memex” that later inspired Tim Berners-Lee to invent the World Wide Web also known as the WWW.
2.0 Modern computers
2.1 The First modern computers
The world war 2 years were a crucial period in the history of computing, it was the time when enormous computers began to appear.