A Short History of Computing

Dr. Frank McCown

Harding University
Computer Science Dept

Photos were obtained from the Web, and copyright is held by the respective owners.
Short History of Computing by Frank McCown is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License
 Fingers!

Digit: Latin for fingers

Kid Snippets: "Math Class" (Imagined by Kids)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdxEAt91D7k
 Abacus
Various forms date
back to 2300 BC

Asian abacus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boulier1.JPG
Roman abacus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RomanAbacusRecon.jpg
 1600s: Mechanical Calculating Machines
1642: Blaise Pascal’s
Pascaline

1610: Wilhelm
Schickard’s calculating
machine

1694: Gottfried
Leibniz’s mechanical
calculator
Photos courtesy of Wikipedia
 1801: Jacquard Loom

Joseph Jacquard invents loom

that is “programmed” using
punched cards

Machines replacing humans

gives rise to fears: During the
Industrial Revolution, Luddites
broke into factories and mills
and destroyed as many
machines as possible

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jacquard.loom.full.view.jpg
 1860s: Babbage’s Engines
Charles Babbage invents (but never completely builds) two machines:

1) Difference Engine – To solve 2) Analytical Engine – General

polynomial equations purpose machine, precursor
to the computer

http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T389/ITHistoryOutline.htm
http://www.gprok.gr/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/analytical_engine.jpg
 Mid 1800s: Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace, daughter of the

poet Lord Byron, worked with
Babbage on the Analytical Engine

Programmed Analytical Engine

using punched cards

Considered first computer

programmer

Ada programming language

named after her

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ada_lovelace.jpg
 1890: Hollerith’s Census Machines

Herman Hollerith developed a

machine for tabulating US
census which used punched
cards

1880 census took 8 years to

tabulate
1890 census took 1 year

Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine

Company later became part of
IBM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hollerith_punched_card.jpg
 1936: Turing Machine

Alan Turing, considered the

father of computer science,
described a theoretical device
called the Turing machine or
“a-machine”. Formalized the
concepts of computation and
algorithms

Turing later helped crack

German military codes during
World War II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alan_Turing_photo.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maquina.png
1939: Atanasoff-Berry Computer

John Atanasoff and Clifford

Berry built the ABC at Iowa
State which found solutions to
systems of linear equations

Considered first fully

electronic digital computing
device, but was not
programmable or fully
functional

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blatanasoff_berry.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atanasoff-Berry_Computer_at_Durhum_Center.jpg
 Infamous Quotes

“I think there is a world

market for maybe five
computers.”
-Thomas Watson Senior, Chairman of IBM, in 1943

This would remain true for 10 more years.

 1944: Harvard Mark I

Howard Aiken designs

Mark I, the first
operational general-
purpose electro-
mechanical computer.
Financed and built at IBM

On display at Harvard University

http://www.harding.edu/fmccown/photos/mark1_harvard.jpg
 1946: ENIAC
John Mauchley and Presper
Eckert complete the Electronic
Numerical Integrator and
Calculator (ENIAC) at Univ of
Pennsylvania. Much based on
Atanasoff’s ABC

First general purpose, digital

electronic computer

Could compute a ballistic firing Dimensions: 30 x 30 feet

trajectory in 20 sec vs. 30 min Weight: 30 tons
conventional way Powered by 18,000 vacuum
tubes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eniac.jpg
 1947: Computer Bug
Computer operators
working with Grace Murray
Hopper on Harvard’s Mark
II computer discover a
“bug”, a moth lodged in the
components, and paste it
into the computer’s logbook
which now resides in
Smithsonian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H96566k.jpg
 1947: Transistor

Bell Labs develops the

transistor (right), an
electronic switch made with a
small piece of silicon with
added impurities. It’s smaller,
uses less power, more
reliable, and cheaper to
produce than vacuum tubes
(left)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Triody_var.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transistorer_(croped).jpg
 1951: UNIVAC I

UNIVersal Automatic Computer

I (UNIVAC I), designed
principally by Eckert and
Mauchly, is the first
commercially successful
computer

Price: $1.25M - $1.5M Sweeney (left) and Eckert (center)

demonstrate the U.S. Census Bureau's
Units Produced: 46 UNIVAC for CBS reporter Walter
Cronkite (right).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UNIVAC_1_demo.jpg
 1954: FORTRAN

John Backus and IBM

develop FORTRAN, the first
successful high-level
programming language and
compiler

Designed for scientific

problems and still widely used
today

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/programming-language-pioneer-passes-
away/2007/03/21/1174153117713.html
 1955: Logic Theorist

The first artificial intelligence

program written by Allen
Newell, Herbert Simon and J. C.
Shaw mimicked the problem solving
skills of a human by proving math
theorems

The term artificial intelligence (AI)

would be coined in 1956 at the
Dartmouth summer research project
on artificial intelligence

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/cnews/article.php/3883606/Tech-Comics-If-Computers-Could-Think.htm
 1958: Integrated Circuit

Integrated circuits (chips)

independently co-invented by
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments
and Robert Noyce of Fairchild
Semiconductor

Transistors, and other electronic

components all fabricated on
single chip of silicon

Chip in DIP (Dual Inline Package)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Microchips.jpg
 1962: Spacewar!

Spacewar! is the first

computer game, written by
Steve Russell (from MIT) and
his small team for the PDP-1
computer

Spacewar! running on PDP-1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spacewar!-PDP-1-20070512.jpg
 1965: Moore’s Law

Gordon Moore, a co-

founder of Intel, predicts that
the number of transistors
which can be placed on a
single chip will double every
year. The prediction was
later modified to every 2
years, but it has held steady
and was dubbed “Moore’s
Law” around 1970

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transistor_Count_and_Moore's_Law_-_2008.svg
 1969: ARPANET

ARPANET, which eventually

becomes the Internet, goes
online with 4 nodes.
Department of Defense
sponsors ARPA (Advanced
Research Projects Agency) to
build a robust interconnected
network of geographically
distant computers
ARPANET IMP log showing Charles S.
Kline sent first message ever on ARPANET
on Oct 29, 1969

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
 1970: UNIX

UNIX operating system developed at Bell

Laboratories by Ken Thompson, Dennis
Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, and others. Re-written
in 1972 using the C programming language

Several variations of UNIX are popular today:

Mac OS X, Linux, BSD
 1971: Microprocessor

Microprocessor: entire CPU

fits on a single chip. Three
companies developed the
microprocessor independently
at the same time: Texas
Instruments, Intel, and Garrett
AiResearch

Look through microscope (200x) at Intel

microprocessor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:80486DX2_200x.png
 1977: Apple II Personal Computer

Apple II, designed primarily by

Steve Wozniak, was the first
highly successful, mass-
produced personal
computers (PCs)

Price: $1300 for model with 4

KB RAM, $2600 for 48 KB RAM
model

http://img258.imageshack.us/i/appleiipd2.jpg/
 Infamous Quotes

“There is no reason anyone

would want a computer in
their home.”
-Ken Olson, President and Founder of Digital, in
1977
 1978: Spam!
DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A
Gary Thuerk, an aggressive PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE
DEC marketer, attempted to NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE
send the first commercial DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE
spam message to every DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060,
Arpanet address on the west AND 2060T. THE
coast (393 recipients) DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF
<cut>
PRESENTATIONS WE WILL BE
GIVING IN CALIFORNIA THIS
MONTH. THE LOCATIONS WILL BE:
THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1978 - 2 PM
DUNFEY'S ROYAL COACH
SAN MATEO, CA
(4 MILES SOUTH OF S.F. AIRPORT
AT BAYSHORE, RT 101 AND RT 92)

http://www.thocp.net/reference/internet/spam.htm
 1981: IBM Personal Computer

IBM develops a PC with

an Intel microprocessor
and Microsoft’s DOS
operating system

Price started at $1,565

300,000 sold in 1981;

3,274,000 sold in 1982

PC named “Machine of the Year” in 1982

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19830103,00.html
 1982: Tron Movie
Disney’s Tron, a movie about the
fictional world inside a computer, is
the first major film to use extensive
3D computer graphics

http://cutprintreview.com/reviews/4-stars/tron-1982-review/
http://deep-structure.blogspot.com/2007/06/tron.html
 1984: Apple’s Macintosh

Apple Computers (Steve Jobs

and Steve Wozniak) developed
the Macintosh which
popularized the graphical
user interface (GUI)

Apple’s iconic 1984

commercial promoting the
Macintosh was the most
expensive commercial ever
produced at the time (about $1
million) and played only once
during the Super Bowl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Macintosh_Desktop.png
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R706isyDrqI
 1985-87: Therac-25

Therac-25 provided
radiation therapy to
patients with cancer

Several software bugs

caused radiation
overdoses leading to five
deaths and other serious
injuries

Highlights seriousness of
writing software and
difficulty in finding bugs

http://computingcases.org/case_materials/therac/analysis/SocioTechnical_Analysis.html
 1990: World Wide Web

Tim Berners-Lee at CERN

develops the WWW, a global
web of interconnected
documents, which runs on top
of the Internet

The Web would become

popular several years later
when Netscape develops an
easy-to-use web browser
Berners-Lee’s NeXT Computer which
was the world’s first web server

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
 1992: Microsoft Windows

Microsoft (Bill Gates) releases

Windows 3.1, the first version
of Windows that was widely
successful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_3.0_workspace.png
 1997: Deep Blue

IBM's Deep Blue

computer defeats world
chess champion Garry
Kasparov in their second
six-game showdown,
becoming the first
computer system to defeat
a reigning world champion
under standard chess
tournament time controls

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deep_Blue.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kasparov-29.jpg
 Infamous Quotes

“I wouldn’t put my company

on the Internet.”
-Ken Olson, Chairman Modular Computer Systems,
in 1996
 1998: Google

Ph.D. students Larry Page and

Sergey Brin drop out of
Stanford to create Google, a
Web search engine which uses
their novel PageRank algorithm
to order search engine results

Google originated from a

misspelling of googol which is 1
followed by 100 zeros

Google’s first server.

Photo taken in Gates Building lobby
at Stanford University
 2003: Worms and Viruses

The most devastating Internet worms and

viruses (SQL Slammer, Sobig.F, Blaster) cause
millions of dollars in damages to individuals and
companies

Worm: Self-replicating malware that spread

through a network

Virus: Malware that infects a computer and often

attaches to another executable file
 200x: Online Social Networks
Online social networks (and sharing
too much trivial information) first
became popular in the early 2000s

2002: Friendster created by

Jonathan Abrams and Peter Chin

2003: MySpace created by eUniverse

employees

2004: Facebook created by Mark

Zuckerberg while a Harvard student
http://www.despair.com/somevedi.html

2006: Twitter created by Jack Dorsey

2005: Multi-core Processors

PCs with dual core CPUs hit

the market. Multi-core CPUs
have multiple processors on
a single chip, and they allow
more throughput with a lower
processor speed, thus using
less power

Places more emphasis in

parallel programming
 2007: iPhone
iPhone by Apple
revolutionizes touch-screen
interfaces for mobile devices

iPhone is Time Magazine’s

2007 Invention of the Year

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20071112,00.html
 2010: iPad

iPad by Apple re-

invigorates the tablet
computing market
 2011: IBM’s Watson

IBM’s Watson defeats veteran Jeopardy champs

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/02/ibms-watson-on-jeopardy-the-machine-has-won.html
2012: Google’s Driverless Car

Google is awarded the first self-driven car license in

Nevada
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/08/uk-usa-nevada-google-idUSLNE84701320120508
http://www.fox5vegas.com/story/18164996/dmv-rolls-out-red-license-plates-for-self-driving-cars
 2013: Google Glass

Wearable computers get lots of buzz

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57578072-93/google-releases-full-google-glass-explainer-video/
 The Future?
• Smart clothing
• Brain-powered prosthesis
• Gesture recognition
• Quantum computers
• The Singularity?

http://healthinformatics.wikispaces.com/Smart+Clothes