LESSON 02 – EARLY HISTORY OF COMPUTERS (BEFORE 2000)

LESSON NOTE

Below is a brief timeline of the development of computers.

THE EARLY YEARS

The abacus was the first device used to automate the counting process. It is thought to have been invented between 1000BC and 500BC by the Babylonians or the Chinese.
By the 1600s, no advancements in the automation of counting or any mathematics had taken place. Mathematicians had to do very large calculations by hand. Some people spent their entire lives doing calculations.
Famous mathematician Blaise Pascal built the first mechanical calculator named Pascaline in 1642. He was 19 years of age. He used gears in a similar way to how modern odometers work. (Click here to see an animation of Pascal’s calculator.)
Charles Babbage is best known for his two calculating machines. In the early 1820s, he set out to build a difference machine that would automate computations. It was to be steam powered. However, by the early 1830s, Babbage moved on to a new idea – the analytical engine. No model of either machine was completely built before Babbage’s death in 1871.


Modern day abacus	Blaise Pascal’s Pascaline	Vacuum tubes

In 1879, Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb. This moved electricity from the laboratory to a residential and commercial need.
The invention of the light bulb led to the discovery of the vacuum tube; a key part of early computer systems. The first vacuum tube was created by John Fleming in 1904. Vacuum tubes are used to control the flow of electrons in electronic devices.
In the 1880s, the American Census Bureau created a contest to see who could create a system that would better collect, count and sort the census data. Their current system was failing taking more than 10 years of counting! The contest winner was Herman Hollerith who used punch cards and a card reader. His system reduced the Census Bureau’s work from 10 years to an amazing six weeks.

Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. By 1924, the company had merged with two others and was renamed International Business Machines (IBM).
In 1930, MIT professor Vennevar Bush created the MIT Differential Analyzer, a machine that resembled Lord Kelvin’s proposed machine of the 1870s. While the machine was mostly mechanical, it did make use of vacuum tubes as a temporary storage medium, serving much like today’s RAM.


Herman Hollerith	Hollerith’s punch card	Vennevar Bush

WORLD WAR II – THE END OF MECHANICAL COMPUTERS

Like is the case with the development of many techonologies, wartime often leads to much technological innovation. Such was the case for computers during World War II (1939-1945).

The Germans created a machine called Enigma that could encrypt and decrypt messages. Feeling confident that their enemies could not understand their encrypted messages, Germans openly transmitted their encrypted messages over radio.
However, in the early days of the war, the English captured one of these machines. They were therefore able to understand how to decrypt German messages. However, the high volume of message meant that the decryption process was slow. In response to this, the English created the Colossus machine able of processing an amazing 5000 characters per second and up to 2000 messages per day. Colossus was the first fully electronic machine built.
In the United States, IBM created the highly publicized Harvard Mark I computer.
The military also had the ENIAC built in order to do tedious projectile calculations. It consisted of 18 000 vacuum tubes, weighed 60 000 pounds and occupied 1500 square feet of floor space. Like all previous computers, it was limited to running a single program that was actually wired inside the computer.


The Enigma machine	Part of ENIAC	John Von Neumann

COMPUTERS FOR BUSINESSES

After the war, mathematician John Von Neumann joined a team looking at ways to improve on the design of ENIAC. Neumann suggested that instead of having a single program hard-coded on the computer, the program should be stored on the computer itself. This was a very important shift in thinking in the history of computers.

Neumann’s concept of software resulted in two new computer systems: the EDVAC in 1949 and the UNIVAC in the early 1950s. While these systems were major breakthroughs, they were very expensive. Only fifty or some machines were sold.
IBM reluctantly joined the general purpose mainframe computer industry. They delivered the IBM 701 in 1953, and a more compact model, the IBM 650 shortly after. They were more powerful then other general purpose computers. The 650 was also built in different components allowing parts to be shipped to different companies. Competitors’ computers had to be built on-site. While IBM only expected to sell 200 machines, it ended up selling over 1800 of them.
In 1947, the first transistor was successfully created at AT&T’s Bell Labs. By the mid 1950s, transistors started replacing vacuum tubes allowing for much smaller, cheaper and more reliable computer systems. The invention of the transistor has been said to be one of the most important technological breakthroughs ever.


Transistor	A System/360 model

In 1956, IBM created the first hard disk drive. They were integrated into most computer systems as of the early 60s.
In 1959, IBM delivered the 7090 models to the United States Air Force for use in the Defense Early Warning (DEW) system. These computers were the first all-transistor computers. An important feature is that software that worked on previous IBM models also worked on the 7090s. This set precedence for backwards compatibility – the ability of newer computers using older software.
In 1964, IBM took another considerable risk investing several billion dollars in research for its new line of mainframe computers – the System/360s. This was the biggest research project ever undertaken by any private company. The line of 360s was a huge success earning IBM many billions of dollars (each costing about a million dollars). Some competitors backed out of the computer industry at the sight of the technology used.

THE FIRST INTEGRATED CIRCUIT

In the meantime, in the 1950s, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild both separately created the integrated circuit (chip). An IC is the integration of transistors, capacitors and resistors into a single package.
In 1968, Noyce left Fairchild to open his own company – Intel.
In 1971, the Intel 4004 was the first microprocessor chip, containing about 2300 transistors on a 3 mm by 4 mm silicon chip. It could perform 60 000 operations per second – as much as the ENIAC which weighed 60 000 pounds and took up 1500 square feet!
By 1974, Intel topped the 4-bit 4004 chip with an 8-bit 8080 chip. It could perform 1 million instructions per second (1 MegaHertz) and consisted of 6000 transistors.


An integrated circuit	The Intel 4004	The Intel 8080A

THE PERSONAL COMPUTER ERA

By 1975, using the Intel 8080, two similar brands (the Altair and the IMSAI) of personal computers were being sold. Their price was about $400, compared to the cheapest alternative of $10 000. They involved the owners having to solder parts together. The most popular RAM chip was the 256-byte integrated circuit.
In 1976, the 5.25 inch floppy disk drive (FDD) becomes available for certain computer systems. Its price is about $400. Each disk held about 1.2 megabytes.

A few years earlier, IBM invented the hard disk.
On April Fool's Day, 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs released the Apple I computer based on a Motorola microprocessor. This started Apple Computers. The Apple I was the first single circuit board computer. By the end of the year, the Apple II computer was released featuring a built-in version of the BASIC programming language and colour graphics.


The Altair Computer	5.25 inch floppy disc	The Apple II

On August 12, 1981, IBM announced that it was joining the personal computer industry. Interestingly, Apple Computer placed a full-page add in dozens of newspapers welcoming IBM to business hoping this would convince the public that PCs were not just a passing fad.
The IBM PC used a 16-bit Intel 8088 processor which had a speed of 4.7 Megahertz. It came with 16 kilobytes of memory that could be upgraded to 256 kilobytes. The buyer had a choice of two operating systems, one of which was Microsoft’s DOS. Its cost was about $2500, similar to the Apple II. A total of 65 000 systems were sold in the first year.
IBM had an open approach to the IBM PC where as Apple patented several aspects of its system. This meant that other companies could freely create their own versions of IBM PCs often called clones. These clones could run any software that IBM PCs could run and were also said to be PC-compatible. This gradually led to IBM losing its control over the PC industry that it mostly created.
In 1982, Intel released its 80286 processor. It consisted of 134 000 transistors. It will be used in IBM PCs that will be called 286s.
In 1982, the best-selling computer of all-time, the Commodore 64 was released. It had 64 kilobytes of RAM, sound and colour graphics.

In January 1984, Apple released the first version of its famous MacIntosh. It has a graphical user interface and also comes with a mouse.
In 1985, Intel released its 80386 processor. It consists of 275 000 transistors. It will be used in IBM PCs that will be called 386s.


IBM PC	Intel 80286	Intel 80386

By 1988, the 3.5 inch FDD, released a few years earlier, was outselling it’s larger counterpart by the end of the decade.

In 1989, Intel released its 80486 processor consisting of 1.2 million transistors. It will be used in IBM PCs that will be called 486s. These computers usually came with 4 megabytes of RAM.
In 1990, Microsoft released Windows 3.0. It took advantage of the now common Intel 80386 (the 386) processor found in PCs.
In 1991, the CD-ROM drive became available. Its initial cost was about $400.
In 1993, the Intel Pentium processor is released. It consists of 3.2 million transistors. It’s initial speed is 60MHz.


Intel 80486SX	CD-ROM drive	Intel Pentium

In the mid-90s, Internet Service Providers popped up in larger cities and started providing internet access to paying customers. Computers required an internal modem that used a phone line to go on the internet.

In 1995, Microsoft released its famous Windows 95. At this point, the Windows operating system was user friendly enough to allow anybody to use a computer system.
In 1997, the Intel Pentium II processor is released. It consists of 7.5 million transistors and runs at up to 300MHz.


Modem	Windows 95 CD-ROM

In 1997, the CD-RW was released. This CD-ROM drive allowed for data to be written onto a blank CD disk. This rendered 3.5 inch floppy drives less important as CD-ROMs stored about 700 megabytes (compared to 1.44 megabytes on 3.5inch floppies).
In 1999, the Intel Pentium III processor is released. It consists of 9.5 million transistors and runs at up to 500MHz.
In 2000, the AMD Athlon is the first processor to hit 1000 MHz (or 1 GHz). Later in the year, Intel releases its Intel Pentium IV processor. By early 2001, it runs at 1.7GHz. It consists of 42 million transistors.
In 2000, the first USB flash drives became available. In time, they would replace the need for CD-RW and DVD-RW once USB speeds and storage capacity increased enough.

AFTER 2000

Gradual and incremental improvements continued yearly. New CPUs, faster networking, new technologies as well as the introduction of mobile computing and cloud computing would shape the world we know today.