History+of+Computers

__Overview:__
The first objects that resembled computers were from the mid-20th century (1940-1945). Webster defines a computer as "any programmable electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data." As early as the 1640's, mechanical calculators were sold. There are records of earlier machines, but this was the first commercial calculator (a hand-powered adding machine). The first multiplying calculator appeared in Germany a little before the American Revolution.

__The 1800's:__
In 1801, Frenchman Joseph-Marie Jacquard built a loom that weaved by reading small sheets of hard wood with holes punched in them. These plates were put into the loom, which read the pattern and created the product, or weave. This "machine" was powered by water and was created 140 years before modern computers. The first mass-produced calculator was created in 1820. A little bit later, Charles Babbage began his search for a machine that could be programmed. Babbage was a bad record-keeper, but his difference engine was developed by 1842 and Ada Lovelace used it to translate a short written story. Lovelace is considered the first programmer of Babbage's machine.

George Boole, who wrote An Investigation of the Laws of Thought in 1854, is considered the father of computer science. In 1892, William Burroughs introduces a successful printing calculator.

__The 1900's:__
In 1925, Vannevar Bush built the differential analyzer. Using gears and shafts, it could do simple calculus problems, but it's accuracy wasn't great. Then, in 1935, Kondrad Zuse, a German engineer, built mechanical calculator to do the math involved in his job. Shortly afterwards, he began building a programmable electronic device, which he finished in 1938. John Vincent Atanasoff began working on a digital computer in 1936, assisted by grad student Clifford (John) Berry. The "ABC" was made to sove linear equations common in physics. It has characteristics of later computers, like electronic calculations.

The Enigma was a complex mechanical encoder that was used by Germans and thought to be indestructible. But, in Poland, Great Britian, and the U.S., the Enigma code was finally broken, many years later. To solve the Enigma code, the British built the Colossus Mark 1. They kept the machine a secret until 1970. The U.S. Navy also built a machine that broke both the German code and the Japanese code. (A picture of an Enigma is shown below.)

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__The 1900's (cont.):__
In 1937, Alan Turing suggested a "Universal Machine" that could "compute" any algorithm. Also in 1937, George Steblitz created his Model K, a combination of otherwise useless or leftover materials, and it solved complex problems. On September 11, 1940, he used a teletype machine (used to send telegraphs) in New Hampshire to transmit a problem to his "Complex Number Calculator" in New York, and he got the answer back. This was the first example of a network. In 1943, the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) was being made and developed.

Then, in 1944, the Havard Mark 1 was introduced. It computed difficult tables for the U.S. Navy based off of many ideas proposed by Howard Aiken in the late 1930's. It used a paper tape to store instructions. In early 1945, the Mark 1 was stopped for repairs, and one of its' programmers, Grace Hopper, found a moth in it, which most likely caused the problems. From then on, people referred to fixing the system as "debugging." Later, in 1946, work on the ENIAC was finished, but, even though it was only 3 years old, the ENIAC was very behind on technology, so the inventors started creating a more up-to-date machine, the EDVAC. To make the EDVAC more appealing, halves of ping-pong balls were placed over the lights. The EDVAC was later considered the first computer.

In 1947, the Bell Labs scientists created and worked on a transistor (a small electric device which has at least three electrical contacts and a semiconductor.) Then, in 1948, groups around the world worked on a "stored program" machine. The first "stored program" machine was nick-named "Baby," because it was a smaller version (a prototype) of a much bigger machine under construction in Britain.

The motivation for computer advancements in the next 5 years was mainly the government and the military. UNIVAC was given to the Census Bureau in 1951 and it caused a huge financial loss to Remington-Rand, its manufacturer. In 1952, Grace Hopper, now employed by the UNIVAC company, suggested "reusable software," which were code segments that could be taken out and put together again according to instructions in a "higher level language." Over the next 20 years, Hopper changed this concept and her ideas would later become part of present-day computers. CBS used 1 of 46 UNIVAC computers to predict the results of the 1952 Presidential Election, but they didn't show the prediction on TV at first, because they weren't sure how accurate the machine was.

The next year (1953), IBM introduced the 701, the first commercially successful computer. Over the next few years, computers started to affect peoples' day-to-day lives. In 1961, Fairchild Semiconductor introduced the integrated circuit, which eventually took the place of the transistor. Computer used to be the size of buildings, but, at this time, were the size of rooms (shown below), and were more powerful than the building-sized ones.

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__The 1900's (cont. again):__
Atlas became easier to use within the next year and they had many of the features that make computers today so useful and powerful, including: virtual memory and pipleline instruction, execution, and paging. Also, in April of 1964, IBM introduced the System 360, which was mainly business oriented. Bell Labs developed UNIX, its own operating system, in 1969. Alan Keys proposed the "personal computer" at this time. He will later become a designer for Apple. __The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes__ (released in 1970) was the first movie with the word computer in the title. In 1971, Texas Instruments made the first "pocket calculator," and it weighed 2.5 pounds. Also, in 1973, Xerox introduced the mouse.

The first personal computer was marketed as a kit in 1975. The Altair featured 256 bytes of memory and was sold at this time. In 1976, Apple began selling and advertising PC's, also in kit form; including a monitor anhd a keyboard. Also in 1976, Queen Elizabeth went online and sent the first royal email message. In the next few years, personal computers became very popular very quickly. Companies continued to try to reduce the size and price of PC's, while increasing memory capacity. IBM introduced its PC's in 1981 (this was IBM's 2nd attempt at a PC, but the 1st failed horribly). In 1982, Tron, a computer-generated special effects exravaganza, was released.