History of Computing

By corey471
  • Feb 13, 1200

    Abacus

    Abacus
    This was a manual calculator that first appeared in China, and then in Japan around 1600. It consists of beads mounted on rods within a rectangular frame. Each bead represents a quantity or 1,5,10,50, and so on.To use this you must learn the algorithm for manipulation the beads. Soruce: gwydir.demon.co.uk
  • Period: to

    Manual Calculators

    is a device that assists in the process of numeric calculations, but requires the human operator to keep track of the algorithm.

  • Schickards Calculator

    Schickards Calculator
    This was made by a man names, Wilhelm Schickard, it was a mechanical calculator with a series of interlocking gears. Each of 10 spokes on a gear represented a digit. Soruce: history-computer.com

  • Pascaline

    Pascaline
    This was made by a frenchman named Blaise Pascal. This was a mechanical device that could be used to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Srouce: tcf.ua.edu

  • Colmar's Arithmometer

    Colmar's Arithmometer
    This was made by Thomas deColmar. This was the first mass-produced calculator. These devices were operated under manual power, by turning a crank or pulling a lever. Soruce: sciencemuseum.org.uk

  • Difference Engine

    Difference Engine
    This was the first calculating device that operated without human power. Made by a man named Charles Babbage. This operated using steam power. Srouce: crossingselves.ch
  • Period: to

    Computer Prototypes

    Prototype is an experimental device that typically must be further developed and perfected before going into production and becoming widely available.

  • Atanasoff-Berry Computer

    Atanasoff-Berry Computer
    This was the first to use a vacuum tube, instead of mechanical switched for processing circuitry. It also incorporated the idea of basin calculations on binary number systems. Srouce: rmutphysics.com

  • Harvard mark 1

    Harvard mark 1
    This was made by a IBM sponsored engineer names Howard Aiken. He took 73 IBM automatic accounting machines into a single unified computing unit. Srouce: kantl.be

  • Colossus

    Colossus
    A team of British developers made this electronic device designed to decode messages encrypted by the German Enigma Machine. It had 1,800 vacuum tubes, used binary arithmetic, and was capable of reading input at a rate of 5,000 characters per second. COLOSSUS successfully broke the enigma codes and gave the allies a major advantage during World War 2. Srouce: happidrome.wordpress.com

  • ENIAC

    Made by a team headed by John W. Mauchly, they set out to worn on a gigantic general-purpose electronic computer. ENIAC was designed to calculate trajectory tables for the U.S. Army, but wasn't finished untill november 1945, three months after the war ended.

  • UNIVAC

    UNIVAC
    This is considered by most historians to be the first commercially successful digital computer. This was made by Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp.It was 14.5 feet long, 7.5 feet hight, and 9 feet wide.This was more powerful then ENIAC, it could read at a rate of 7,200 characters per second. Srouce: info-ab.uclm.es
    Soruce - www.info-ab.uclm.es/.../Introduccion.htm
  • Period: to

    Generations Of Computers

    These were the first commercially successful computers

  • Thrid Generation Computers

    Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments independently developed intergrated circuits. Intergrated circuit technology made it possible to pack the equivalent of thousnds of vacuum tubes into a single miniature chip.

  • RCA Spectra 70

    This was one of the first computers to incorporate integrated circuits.

  • DEC PDP-8

    The Digital Equipment Corp. introduced this as the first commercially successful minicomputer. Smaller and less powerful than mainframe computers, while maintaining the capability to simultaneously run multple programs for multiple users.
  • Period: to

    Personal Computers

  • First Microprocessor

    Ted Hoff developed the first general-prupose microprocessor. Called the Intel 4004, this dramatically changed the compter industry.

  • Mark-8

    Mark-8
    Developed by Jonathan A. Titus. These computers were early personal computers, they were not commercially produced or widely available, but they are often considered forerunners of todays personal computer. Source - bytecollector.com/mark_8.htm

  • 68900 9-bit Microprocessor

    Motorola released this and it became big in the Apple 2 and commodore personal computers.

  • MITS Altair

    Ed Roberts and MITS announced, which many historians believe to be the first commercial micro-computer. The altair was based on the intel 8080 processor . It had a processor and 256 bytes of memory. No keyboard, no monitor, and no permanet storage device.

  • Apple 1

    The famous Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak, they founded Apple Computers. The Apple 1, a kit containing a system board with 4 KB of ram.

  • Zilog

    They introduced the Z80 microprocessor, and enhanced 8080 microprocessor, that was used in many early computer systems.

  • Apple 2

    Apple introduced a preassembled computer, which featured color graphics, expansion slots, a disk drive, a 1.07 MHz 6502 processor, and 16KB or ram.

  • IBM PC

    IBM began marketing what it called a personal computer or PC, based on the 8088 processor. It had 4.77 MHz intel 8088 processor, 16KB ram, and single-sided 160 KB floppy disk drives. It was made from off the sheld parts that could be easily obtained from many electronic wholesalers.

  • Apple Lisa

    The big thing with Apple lisa was its graphical user interface, an borrowed idea from Xerox Alto computer. Lisa was too expensice for most consumers.

  • Apple Macintosh

    This featured a graphical user interface that made programs easrier to use than those on the command line baseed IBM PC. The Macintosh became the computer of choice for graphical apllications such as desktop publishing.