Evolution of Computers

Discussing computing, we’ll be discussing the Evolution of computing — more specifically, the “evolution of the technologies” that have brought upon the modern computing era.

The purpose of this blog is to appreciate how fast ‘technology’ is evolving, and the people who have brought us to this point!

Many inventions have taken several centuries to develop into their modern forms and modern inventions are rarely the product of a single inventor’s efforts.

The computer is no different, the bits and pieces of the computer, both ‘Hardware and software’, have come together over many centuries, with many people and groups each adding a small contribution.

We start as early as BC with the Chinese abacus, ‘How is this related to computing you ask?’

The abacus was one of the first machines humans had ever created to be used for counting and calculating. Fast forward to 1642 and the abacus evolves into the first mechanical adding machine, built by mathematician and scientist,” Blaise Pascal” (Inventor of Calculator).

This first mechanical calculator, the ‘Pascaline’, is also where we see the first signs of techno-phobia emerging, with mathematicians fearing the loss of their jobs due to progress.

Also in the 1600s, from the 1660s to the early 1700s, we meet “Gottfried Leibniz”. A pioneer in many fields, most notably known for his contributions to mathematics and considered by many. The first computer scientist.

Inspired by Pascal he created his own calculating machine, able to perform all four arithmetic operations (+, -, x, /).

also read Top 10 Technologies of 2020

He was also the first to lay down the concepts of binary arithmetic, How all technology now days communicates and even en-visioned a machine that use binary arithmetic.

From birth we are taught how to do arithmetic in class 10 and for most people that’s all they’re concerned with, the numbers 0 to 9. However, there are an infinite number of ways to represent information, such as octal as no. 8, hexadecimal as no. 16 used represent colors, No, 256 which is used for encoding, the list can go on.

Binary is №2, represented by the numbers 0 & 1 , Progressing to the 1800s we are met with “Charles Babbage”. Babbage is known as the father of the computer, with the design of his mechanical calculating engines. In 1820, Babbage noticed that many computations consisted of operations that were regularly repeated and theorized that these operations could be done automatically. This led to his first design, the difference engine, it would have a fixed instruction set, be fully automatic through the use of steam power and print its results into a table. In 1830, Babbage stopped work on his difference engine to pursue his second idea, the analytical engine.

Elaborating on the difference engine this machine would be able to execute operations in non-numeric orders through the addition of conditional control, store memory and read instructions from punch cards, essentially making it a programmable mechanical computer. Unfortunately due to lack of funding his designs never came to reality, but if they would have spend up the invention of the computer by nearly 100 years.

Also worth mentioning is Ada Lovelace, who worked very closely with Babbage. She is considered the world’s first programmer and came up with an algorithm that would calculate Bernoulli numbers that was designed to work with Babbage’s machine. She also outlined many fundamentals of programming such as, data analysis, looping and memory addressing. 10 years prior to the turn of the century, with inspiration from Babbage.

American inventor Herman Hollerith designed one of the first successful electro-mechanical machines, referred to as the census tabulator. This machine would read U.S. census data from punched cards, up to 65 at a time, and tally up the results. Hollerith’s tabulator became so successful he went on to find his own firm to market the device, this company eventually became IBM.

To briefly explain how punched cards work, essentially once fed into the machine an electrical connection is attempted to be made. Depending on where the holes in the card are will determine your input No,then on what connections are completed. To input data to the punched card you could use a key punch machine that is the first invention of a keyboard!.

The 1800s were a period where the theory of computing began to evolve and machines started to be used for calculations, but the 1900s is where we begin to see the pieces of this nearly 5,000 year puzzle coming together, especially between 1930 to 1950.

In 1936, Alan Turing proposed the concept of a universal machine, later to be dubbed the Turing machine, capable of computing anything that is computable. Up to this point, machines were only able to do certain tasks that the hardware was designed for. The concept of the modern computer is largely based off Turings ideas.

Also starting in 1936, German engineer, Konrad Zuse, invented the world’s first programmable computer. This device read instructions from punched tape and was the first computer to use boolean logic and binary to make decisions, through the use of relays. For reference, boolean logic is simply logic that results in either a true or false output, or when corresponding to binary, one or zero.

Read Complete Article on : https://www.technfacts.tk/2020/08/2Evolution-of-Computers.html