5 min readFeb 8, 2021

HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

A Brief History of Computers ;

ABACUS

One of the first mechanical devices to count was the abacus, whose history goes back to the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.

This device is very simple,

it consists of beads strung on rods that in turn are mounted in a rectangular frame.

PASCALINE

Another of the mechanical inventions was the Pascalina invented by Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) of France and that of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 - 1716) of Germany. With these machines, the data was represented by the positions of the gears, and the data were entered manually by setting said end positions of the wheels, similar to how we read the numbers on the odometer of a car.

ANALYTICAL ENGINE

The first computer was the analytical machine created by Charles Babbage, mathematical professor of the University of Cambridge and English Engineer in the 19th century. In 1823 the British government supported him to create the project of a machine of differences, a mechanical device to make repeated sums. The idea that Charles Babbage had about a computer was born because the elaboration of the mathematical tables was a tedious and error-prone process. The features of this machine includes a memory that can store up to 1000 numbers of up to 50 digits each. The operations to be executed by the arithmetic unit are stored in a punch card.

It is estimated that the machine would take a second to make a sum and a minute in a multiplication.

TABULATING MACHINE

The Hollerith machine. In the 1880s, the US Census Bureau wanted to expedite the 1890 census process. In order to carry out this task, Herman Hollerith, a statistician, was hired to design a technique that could accelerate the Survey and analysis of the data obtained in the census.

Hollerith proposed the use of cards in which the data would be drilled, according to a pre-established format. Once the cards were punched, they would be tabulated and sorted by special machines. The idea of punch cards was not Hollerith’s original. He relied on the work done in the loom of Joseph Jacquard, who devised a system where the plot of a design of a fabric as well as the information necessary to make its construction was stored in punch cards.Upon learning this method Babbage left the machine of differences and was dedicated to the project of the analytical machine that could be programmed with punched cards to perform any calculation with a precision of 20 digits. The technology of the time was not enough to make his ideas come true.The world was not ready, and I would not be for another hundred years.

HARVARD MARK I COMPUTER

In 1944 the Mark I, designed by a team headed by Howard H. Aiken, was built at Harvard University.

This machine is not considered as an electronic computer because it was not general purpose and its operation was based on electromechanical devices called relays.

ENIAC

In 1947 the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator), the first electronic computer, was built at the University of Pennsylvania. The design team was headed by engineers John Mauchly and John Eckert.

This machine occupied a basement of the University, had more than 18,000 vacuum tubes, consumed 200 KW of electrical energy and required an entire system of air conditioning, but had the capacity to perform five thousand arithmetic operations in a second.

The project, sponsored by the Department of Defense of the United States, culminated two years later, when the Hungarian engineer and mathematician

John von Neumann (1903 - 1957) joined that team. Von Neumann’s ideas were so fundamental to his later development that he is considered the father of computers.

EDVAC

The EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was designed by this new team. It had approximately four thousand bulbs and used a type of memory based on tubes filled with mercury through which electrical signals subject to delays circulated.

The fundamental idea of von Neumann was: to allow data to coexist with instructions, so that the computer can be programmed in a language, and not by means of wires that electrically interconnected several control sections, as in the ENIAC.

All this development of computers is usually seen for generations and the criterion that was determined to determine the generation change is not very well defined, but it is apparent that at least the following requirements must be met:

*The way they are built.

*way in which the human being communicates with them.

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