HISTORY OF

COMPUTERS
HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 2700 – 2300 BC: The abacus is actualized
 100 – 400: The Hindu-Arabic numeral system is invented
 628: First mathematical treatment of zero
 1502: Leonardo da Vinci designs the first mechanical calculator
 1614: The Logarithm is proposed
 1617: Napier’s Bones is created
 1620–1630: Oughtred’s slide rule is invented
 1642: Pascal creates the first mechanical calculator
 1672: The stepped reckoner is invented
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 1714: Earliest patent describing a typewriter
 1803: Invention of the Jacquard Machine
 1819 – 1837: Babbage creates difference and analytical engines
 1820: Invention of the Arithmometer
 1865: Invention of the first commercial typewriter
 1874: Remington No. 1, the first commercially successful typewriter enters
production
 1887: Dorr E. Felt files a patent for the Comptometer
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 1890: Invention of the tabulating machine
 1904 – 1907: Inventions of the diode and triode
 Early 1900s: Invention of teleprinters
 1911: Foundation of IBM
 1926: Filing of the first transistor patent
 1936: Alan Turing proposes the Turing Machine
 1937: Shannon’s A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits is finished
 1939: Construction of Atanasoff–Berry Computer prototype
 1943 – 1945: Construction of Colossus
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 1945: Construction of the ENIAC
 1947: Invention of the first transistor
 1947: Booth invents assembling language
 1949: Construction of the EDVAC
 1951: Construction of the UNIVAC I
 1953: The IBM 701 is released
 1956: IBM invents the first commercial hard drive
 1958: First integrated circuit is created
 1950s: Birth of programming languages
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 1963: Invention of the first mouse
 1963: First prototype of the modern computer system presented
 1965: Moore’s Law is first proposed
 1968: Founding of Intel
 1969: Creation of UNIX
 1970: Intel releases the first DRAM chip
 1970: Release of the first commercial microprocessor
 1971: IBM releases the first commercial floppy disk
 1973 – 1974: Development of ethernet
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 1973: Xerox Alto, the first computer supporting GUI, is released
 1975: Founding of Microsoft
 1976: Founding of Apple
 1976: Release of the Electric Pencil
 1977: Release of Apple II
 1979: Release of the first spreadsheet computer program, VisiCalc
 1981: IBM releases its first personal computer, which ran MS-DOS
 1981: Unveiling of the first commercial laptop
 1983: Apple releases Apple Lisa
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 1984: Apple releases the first Macintosh computer
 1984: Launch of the first PDA
 1984: RC-1000 Wrist Terminal launches
 1985: Microsoft unveils Windows 1.0
 1985: Intel releases the 80386 processor
 1985: Registration of the first dot-com domain
 1989: Launch of the GRIDPad 1900, the first commercially successful tablet
computer
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 1990: Invention of HTML
 1990: Launch of the first internet browser
 1990: Microsoft Office for Windows launches
 1991: Launch of the first commercial SSD
 1992: IBM releases the Simon Personal Calculator, the first smartphone
 1992: IBM announces the first ThinkPad laptop
 1993: Apple releases the Apple Newton
 1993: Intel releases the first Pentium processor
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 1995: Windows 95 is unveiled
 1997: Google Search launched
 1999: Nvidia releases the GeForce 256
 2001: Windows XP and Mac OS X launch
 2002: Nokia releases first devices featuring Symbian S60 Operating system
 2003: AMD introduces the Athlon 64, the first commercially available 64-bit
processor
 2005: AMD and Intel release the first dual-core CPU aimed at the consumer
market
A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS
 2005: Launch of YouTube
 2007: Amazon releases the first Kindle
 2007: Apple unveils the first iPhone
 2008: Google and HTC launch HTC Dream, the first Android phone
 2008: Apple releases the MacBook Air
 2010: Apple releases the iPad
 2014 – 2015: Smartwatches resurface
 2015: Microsoft released Windows 10
 2020: Apple announces iPad Pro with trackpad support
THE PREMECHANICAL PERIOD

 can be traced back thousands of years ago, around 3000 BCE to

1450 CE
 During this time, humans started communicating with one another
using words and pictograms curved in rocks. Then they started to
write symbols as substitutes for pictures to depict ideas, objects,
and animals. These gave rise to our modern-day alphabet. Time
passed and early humans soon realized that stone tablets are too
heavy and bulky. When paper was finally produced from the
papyrus plant, storing of information was revolutionized.
 Humans continued to write information that can be organized in
some manner kept as a permanent record. They eventually
compiled these records written on pieces of paper and bound them
together, eventually giving birth to books. As these books grew in
number, they needed to be compiled and stored in areas; hence,
libraries were created. Libraries were considered the first data
centres in history.
THE PREMECHANICAL PERIOD

 Numerical system spread around the world gradually, enabling a simpler, faster,
and more organized way to count.
 The most popular device created in this period is said to have come from China –
the abacus. The abacus is a manually operated device similar to the modern
calculator. This was considered as the first device to process information.
ABACUS

 The abacus is often wrongly attributed to China. In fact, the oldest surviving
abacus was used in 300 B.C. by the Babylonians. The abacus is still in use today,
principally in the far east.
 A modern abacus consists of rings that slide over rods, but the older one dates
from the time when pebbles were used for counting (the word "calculus" comes
from the Latin word for pebble).
***LEONARDO DA VINCI

 made drawings of gear-driven calculating machines but

apparently never built any.
NAPIER’S BONES

 In 1617 an eccentric (some say mad)

Scotsman named John Napier invented
logarithms, which are a technology
that allows multiplication to be
performed via addition. The magic
ingredient is the logarithm of each
operand, which was originally obtained
from a printed table. But Napier also
invented an alternative to tables,
where the logarithm values were
carved on ivory sticks which are now
called Napier's Bones.
SLIDE RULE

 Napier's invention led directly to the slide rule, first built in England in 1632 and
still in use in the 1960's by the NASA engineers of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo
programs which landed men on the moon.
PASCALINE

 In 1642 Blaise Pascal, at age 19,

invented the Pascaline as an aid for his
father who was a tax collector.
 Pascal built 50 of this gear-driven one-
function calculator (it could only add)
but couldn't sell many because of their
exorbitant cost and because they really
weren't that accurate (at that time it
was not possible to fabricate gears
with the required precision).
CALCULATING CLOCK

 The first gear-driven

calculating machine to
actually be built was probably
the calculating clock, so
named by its inventor, the
German professor Wilhelm
Schickard in 1623. This device
got little publicity because
Schickard died soon
afterward in the bubonic
plague.
LEIBNIZ’S CALCULATOR (STEPPED RECKONER)

 the German Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (co-

inventor with Newton of calculus) managed to
build a four-function (addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division) calculator that he
called the stepped reckoner because, instead of
gears, it employed fluted drums having ten flutes
arranged around their circumference in a stair-
step fashion.
PATENT FOR TYPEWRITER

 Henry Milt, an English inventor,

submitted the patent for a typing
device that is very similar to modern
typewriters. He allegedly also created
one.
JACQUARD’S WEAVING LOOM

 In 1801 the Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a power loom that could
base its weave (and hence the design on the fabric) upon a pattern automatically
read from punched wooden cards, held together in a long row by rope.
DIFFERENCE ENGINE

 This machine would be able to compute tables of

numbers, such as logarithm tables. He obtained
government funding for this project due to the importance
of numeric tables in ocean navigation. By promoting their
commercial and military navies, the British government
had managed to become the earth's greatest empire.
 But construction of Babbage's Difference Engine proved
exceedingly difficult and the project soon became the
most expensive government funded project up to that
point in English history.
 Ten years later the device was still nowhere near complete,
acrimony abounded between all involved, and funding
dried up. The device was never finished.
ANALYTICAL ENGINE

 This device, large as a house and powered by 6 steam

engines, would be more general purpose in nature
because it would be programmable, thanks to the
punched card technology of Jacquard.
 The Analytic Engine also had a key function that
distinguishes computers from calculators: the
conditional statement. A conditional statement
allows a program to achieve different results each
time it is run.
ARITHMOMETER

 Thomas de Colmar invents and patents the Arithmometer, the first digital
mechanical calculator.
FIRST COMMERCIAL TYPEWRITER

 Rasmus Malling-Hansen, a Danish inventor, invents

the Hansen Writing Ball, the first commercial
typewriter. It went into production in 1870.
REMINGTON NO. 1

 Designed by Christopher Latham Sholes and

manufactured by E. Remington and Sons, the
Remington No. 1 introduces the QWERTY
keyboard design.
PATENT FOR COMPTOMETER

 Dorr E. Felt files a patent for the Comptometer

 The Comptometer is the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical
calculator.
HOLLERITH’S PUNCHED CARD

 Hollerith's invention, known as the Hollerith desk, consisted

of a card reader which sensed the holes in the cards, a gear
driven mechanism which could count (using Pascal's
mechanism which we still see in car odometers), and a large
wall of dial indicators (a car speedometer is a dial indicator) to
display the results of the count.
 Hollerith had the insight to convert punched cards to what is
today called a read/write technology.
 Hollerith built a company, the Tabulating Machine Company
which, after a few buyouts, eventually became International
Business Machines, known today as IBM.
DIODE AND TRIODE

 John Ambrose Fleming invents the simplest vacuum tube,

the diode. It becomes the most critical component of
electronic circuits during the first part of the 20th century. A
few years later, Lee De Forest invented triode, the first
electronic amplifier.
INVENTION OF TELEPRINTERS

 Many different inventors contribute to the

invention of the first teleprinter. This device
simplified the exchange of messages by
having regular keyboards instead of requiring
knowledge of Morse code.
 IBM

 International Business Machines Corporation

 Charles Ranlett Flint and Thomas J. Watson Sr. found IBM, which has
become one of the biggest tech companies in the world. IBM also first
coins the term personal computer.
TURING MACHINE

 English scientist Alan Turing proposes the

model of the universal machine. It is a
mathematical model of computation that
predicts electronic computers and later
named The Turing Machine.
ATANASOFF-BERRY COMPUTERS

 One of the earliest attempts to build an all-

electronic (that is, no gears, cams, belts, shafts,
etc.) digital computer occurred in 1937 by J. V.
Atanasoff,
 This machine was the first to store data as a charge
on a capacitor, which is how today's computers
store information in their main memory (DRAM or
dynamic RAM). As far as its inventors were aware,
it was also the first to employ binary arithmetic.
COLOSSUS

 The Colossus, built during World War II by Britain for the purpose of breaking the
cryptographic codes used by Germany.
 Britain led the world in designing and building electronic machines dedicated to
code breaking, and was routinely able to read coded Germany radio
transmissions.
 Not a general purpose, reprogrammable machine.
ENIAC

 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator

 built at the University of Pennsylvania between 1943
and 1945 by two professors, John Mauchly and the 24
year old J. Presper Eckert, who got funding from the
war department after promising they could build a
machine that would replace all the "computers",
meaning the women who were employed calculating
the firing tables for the army's artillery guns.
 filled a 20 by 40 foot room, weighed 30 tons, and
used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes
TRANSISTOR

 John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and

William Shockley invent the first point-
contact transistor and later on enables
the invention of microchips.
EDVAC

 Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Calculator

 Eckert and Mauchly's next teamed up with the
mathematician John von Neumann to design EDVAC,
which pioneered the stored program.
UNIVAC

 2nd Generation
 This computer was the first commercial (mass
produced) computer.
 In the 50's, UNIVAC (a contraction of "Universal
Automatic Computer") was the household word
for "computer" just as "Kleenex" is for "tissue".
 UNIVAC was also the first computer to employ
magnetic tape.
INTEL

 Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Intel in

Mountain View, California, it later becomes the
world’s largest semiconductor chip
manufacturer.
MICROSOFT

 Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft with Gates as CEO.
APPLE

 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple. That same

year Apple releases the Apple I, the first computer with a
single circuit board.