History of Computers

Counting Board

700 BCE

Made approx. 3,000 years ago. Then 1,000 years went by and the abacus was created. Established some where in Chinese, Arabic, Europe, and Egytian history. This device provided the opportunity for users to count, add and subtract!

Blaise Pascal (1623- 1662)

Mar 24, 1642

French mathematician Blaise Pascal built the first gear-driven mechanical calculator. This machine only allows addition and subtraction. Named Pascaline after Pascal himself, the device dealt with whole numbers and generated precise results. http://www.iep.utm.edu/pascal-b/

Joseph Marie (Charles) Jacquard (1752-1834)

Dec 24, 1801

Joseph inheritied his dad's rather small weaving business that later went out of business. Once Jacquard returned from The French Revolutionary War in 1801 he got back to work and created a loom that used a series of punched cards to control the pattern of the weaved product. Thus establishing the Jacquard Loom. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/19901/Joseph-Marie-Jacquard/

Charles Babbage (1792-1872)

Dec 24, 1835

The steam powered analytical engine used punched cards slightly altered from the Jacquard loom to specify input and the calculations to perform. The store and the mill were the major two parts of this engine. The mill, comparable to a modern computer's CPU, performed the operations on values recovered from the store, which now would be considered as memory. It was said to be the world's first general-purpose computer. http://www.charlesbabbage.net/

Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace (1816-1852)

Feb 2, 1842

Since Babbage's idea was only a design and never built Ada sort of used it as a blueprint. Although she did add some ideas of her own. Ada is now given credit for maturing the programming loop. https://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html

William Seward Burroughs (1855-1898)

Dec 24, 1886

In 1886 William Seward Burroughs invented the first commercially successful mechanical adding machine. By 1962 billions of these machines were sold. This adding machine was truly a breakthrough in the computer world. http://wvegter.hivemind.net/abacus/CyberHeroes/Burroughs.htm

1st Census

Dec 24, 1892

Thanks to the adding and listing machines of William Burroughs a census was able to be condensed. The population was multiplying like rabbits. A more complex machine like this was necessary in order to create this. Although the 1890 census wouldn't be finished before they record the 1900 census.

Dr. Herman Hollerith (1860-1992)

Dec 24, 1895

As an employee of the Census Office, he cultivated the first electric punch card tabulator. Data retrived from the position on the cards that were inserted into the tabulator automatically totaled all of the data on the select part of the cards. Realizing that this data could be sort the census only took 3 years to create rather than 10+ like they had anticipated. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/hollerith.html

Thomas J. Watson Sr. (1874-1956)

Dec 24, 1914

Since Hollerith's tabulating machine was so successful a company started. In 1914, Watson joined the company. Around a decade later Watson became president to what we now know as International Business Machine Corporation or IBM for short.

Howard Aiken (1900-1973)

Dec 24, 1939

This Harvard University professor was known for trying to get money from IBM. Powering a finance for a computer that could be programmed to perform instructions automatically. Watson thought "why not!" and millions of dollars were funded to help create this work of masterminds.

Harvard Mark 1

Dec 24, 1944

After coming alive in 1944, this computer was 55 feet long and had 500 miles of wire in it. This milestone used relays instead of gears which made it significantly faster than the ones before. Took a matter of seconds to complete calculations instead of hours.

Grace Hooper

Dec 24, 1945

Shortly after Grace was sworn into the US Navy Reserve she was given a huge task. As a Lieutenant she was ordered to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard. Upon getting to know the mark one she found many issues with it and then began to fix them. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html

UNIVAC

Dec 24, 1946

After tracing the errors in the Marks to a moth being caught in the relay she named it bug. When Hopper discovered many "bugs" with the Marks she decided to do something about it. Later she joined the Eckert-Machly Computer Corporation. Here is where she helped design the first commercial electronic computer the UNIVAC.

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)

Dec 24, 1946

Designed by the military in WW2. In order to compute the tables needed to figure out the trajectory and artillery shell. This device simply dint use relays but vacuum tubes and electronic switches. Now things are definitely speeding up. The ENIAC was 1,000 time faster than a computer with relays.

John Von Neumann (1903- 1957)

Dec 24, 1951

The IAS computer contained something called the binary system. The Binary system is a series of ones and zeros to provide instructions. Zeros and ones were one of two possibility, on of off. Ever since this innovation in technology we have been able to create better and more advanced as well as compact devices.