Département MATH ET INFORMATIQUE

English course

1ère Année LMD

HISTORY OF COMPUTER

INTRODUCTION

The computers in recent times have become a relevant too particularly in the
areas of storage and dissemination of information. The ease with which the computer
function, i.e. the speed, accuracy and readiness. With the usefulness of the computer,
it has become fashionable for organizations to be computerized, that is, a computer
department is created to serve the whole organization and expert or professionals are
employed to manage the department. It is today becoming increasingly difficult for
computer illiterates to get good employments, as computer literacy is now a pre-
requisite for most jobs. The world is becoming a global village through the use of
computer, thus there is the need for everyone to be computer illiterate.

The computer age was characterized by generation of computers, which

signified that computer had pass through stages of evolution or development. Before
we could arrive at the present day computers, it has undergone stages of development
known as generation of computers. What is Computer? A computer is an electronic
device used to store retrieve and manipulate data. A computer also defines as a
programmable electromechanical device that accept instruction (program) to direct
the operations of the computers. Four words can be deducted from the above
definition for further illustration.

Examples

i. Store: To put data somewhere for safe keeping

ii. Retrieve: To get and bring the data back.
iii. Process: To calculate compare arrange.

What is Computer Science?

Computer science (sometimes called computation science or computing

science, but not to be confused with computational science or software engineering)
is the study of processes that interact with data and that can be represented as data in
the form of programs. It enables the use of algorithms to manipulate, store, and
communicate digital information. A computer scientist studies the theory of
computation and the practice of designing software systems. Its fields can be divided
into theoretical and practical disciplines. Computational complexity theory is highly
abstract, while computer graphics emphasizes real-world applications. Programming
language theory considers approaches to the description of computational processes,
while computer programming itself involves the use of programming languages and
complex systems. Human– computer interaction considers the challenges in making
computers useful, usable, and accessible.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF COMPUTER:

The history of computer dated back to the period of scientific revolution (i.e.
1543 – 1678). The calculating machine invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642 and that of
Goffried Liebnits marked the genesis of the application of machine in industry. This
progressed up to the period 1760 – 1830 which was the period of the industrial
revolution in Great Britain where the use of machine for production altered the
British society and the Western world. During this period Joseph Jacquard invented
the weaving loom (a machine used in textile industry)

The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out of a need to solve
a serious number-crunching crisis.

By 1880, the United State (U.S) population had grown so large that it took more
than seven years to tabulate the U.S. Census results. The government sought a faster
way to get the job done, giving rise to punch-card based computers that took up entire
rooms. Today, we carry more computing power on our smart phones than was
available in these early models. The following brief history of computing is a
timeline of how computers evolved from their humble beginnings to the machines of
today that surf the Internet, play games and stream multimedia in addition to
crunching numbers. The followings are historical events of computer.

1623: Wilhelm Schickard designed and constructed the first working mechanical
calculator.

1673: Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated a digital mechanical calculator, called the

Stepped Reckoner. He may be considered the first computer scientist and information
theorist, for, among other reasons, documenting the binary number system.

1801: In France, Joseph Marie Jacquard invents a loom that uses punched wooden
cards to automatically weave fabric designs. Early computers would use similar
punch cards. Home / News / Tech / Health / Planet Earth / Strange News / Animals /
History / Culture / Space & Physics.
1820: Thomas de Colmar launched the mechanical calculator industry when he
released his simplified arithmometer, which was the first calculating machine strong
enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment.

1822: English mathematician Charles Babbage (Father of Computer) conceives of a

steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers.
The project, funded by the English government, is a failure. More than a century
later, however, the world's first computer was actually built.

1843: During the translation of a French article on the Analytical Engine, Ada
Lovelace wrote, in one of the many notes she included, an algorithm to compute the
Bernoulli numbers, which is considered to be the first published algorithm ever
specifically tailored for implementation on a computer.

1885: Herman Hollerith invented the tabulator, which used punched cards to process
statistical information; eventually his company became part of IBM.

1890: Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate the 1880 census,
accomplishing the task in just three years and saving the government $5 million. He
establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM.

1936: Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine, later called the Turing
machine, capable of computing anything that is computable. The central concept of
the modern computer was based on his ideas.

1937: J.V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State

University, attempts to build the first computer without gears, cams, belts or shafts.
1937: One hundred years after Babbage's impossible dream, Howard Aiken
convinced IBM, which was making all kinds of punched card equipment and was
also in the calculator business to develop his giant programmable calculator, the
ASCC/Harvard Mark I, based on Babbage's Analytical Engine, which itself used
cards and a central computing unit. When the machine was finished, some hailed it
as "Babbage's dream come true".

1939: Hewlett-Packard is founded by David Packard and Bill Hewlett in a Palo Alto,
California, garage, according to the Computer History Museum.

1941: Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, design a computer that can
solve 29 equations simultaneously. This marks the first time a computer is able to
store information on its main memory.

1943-1944: Two University of Pennsylvania professors, John Mauchly and J.

Presper Eckert, build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC).
Considered the grandfather of digital computers, it fills a 20-foot by 40-foot room
and has 18,000 vacuum tubes.

1946: Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and receive funding
from the Census Bureau to build the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for
business and government applications.

1947: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of Bell Laboratories
invent the transistor. They discovered how to make an electric switch with solid
materials and no need for a vacuum.

1953: Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which eventually
becomes known as COBOL. Thomas Johnson Watson Jr., son of IBM CEO Thomas
Johnson Watson Sr., conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Nations keep
tabs on Korea during the war.

1954: The FORTRAN programming language, an acronym for FORmula

TRANslation, is developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus,
according to the University of Michigan.
1958: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known as the
computer chip. Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his work.
1964: Douglas Engelbart shows a prototype of the modern computer, with a mouse
and a graphical user interface (GUI). This marks the evolution of the computer from
a specialized machine for scientists and mathematicians to technology that is more
accessible to the general public.

1969: A group of developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX, an operating system that
addressed compatibility issues. Written in the C programming language,

UNIX was portable across multiple platforms and became the operating system of
choice among mainframes at large companies and government entities. Due to the
slow nature of the system, it never quite gained traction among home PC users.

1970: The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Access
Memory (DRAM) chip.

1971: Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the "floppy disk,"
allowing data to be shared among computers.

1973: Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet
for connecting multiple computers and other hardware.

1974 -1977: A number of personal computers hit the market, including Scelbi &
Mark-8 Altair, IBM 5100, Radio Shack's TRS-80 — affectionately known as the
"Trash 80" — and the Commodore PET.

1975: The January issue of Popular Electronics magazine features the Altair 8080,
described as the "world's first minicomputer kit to rival commercial models." Two
"computer geeks," Paul Allen and Bill Gates, offer to write software for the Altair,
using the new Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) language.
On April 4, after the success of this first endeavor, the two childhood friends form
their own software company, Microsoft. 1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start
Apple Computers on April Fool's Day and roll out the Apple I, the first computer
with a single-circuit board, according to Stanford University.

1977: Radio Shack's initial production run of the TRS-80 was just 3,000. It sold like
crazy. For the first time, non-geeks could write programs and make a computer do
what they wished.

1977: Jobs and Wozniak incorporate Apple and show the Apple II at the first West
Coast Computer Faire. It offers color graphics and incorporates an audio cassette
drive for storage.

1978: Accountants rejoice at the introduction of VisiCalc, the first computerized

spreadsheet program.

1979: Word processing becomes a reality as MicroPro International releases

WordStar. "The defining change was to add margins and word wrap," said creator
Rob Barnaby in email to Mike Petrie in 2000. "Additional changes included getting
rid of command mode and adding a print function. I was the technical brains — I
figured out how to do it, and did it, and documented it. "The first IBM personal
computer, introduced on Aug. 12, 1981, used the MSDOS operating system. (Image:
© IBM).

1981: The first IBM personal computer, code-named "Acorn," is introduced. It uses
Microsoft's MSDOS operating system. It has an Intel chip, two floppy disks and an
optional color monitor. Sears & Roebuck and Computer land sell the machines,
marking the first time a computer is available through outside distributors. It also
popularizes the term PC.
1983: Apple's Lisa is the first personal computer with a graphical user interface
(GUI). It also features a drop-down menu and icons. It flops but eventually evolves
into the Macintosh. The Gavilan SC is the first portable computer with the familiar
flip form factor and the first to be marketed as a "laptop." The TRS80, introduced in
1977, was one of the first machines whose documentation was intended for non-
geeks (Image: © Radioshack) 1985: Microsoft announces Windows, according to
Encyclopedia Britannica. This was the company's response to Apple's graphical user
interface (GUI). Commodore unveils the Amiga 1000, which features advanced
audio and video capabilities

1985: The first dot-com domain name is registered on March 15, years before the
World Wide Web would mark the formal beginning of Internet history. The
Symbolics Computer Company, a small Massachusetts computer manufacturer,
registers Symbolics.com. More than two years later, only 100 dot-coms had been
registered.

1986: Compaq brings the “Deskpro 386” to market. Its 32-bit architecture provides
as speed comparable to mainframes.

1990: Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory

in Geneva, develops Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), giving rise to the
World Wide Web.

1993: The Pentium microprocessor advances the use of graphics and music on PCs.

1994: PCs become gaming machines as "Command & Conquer," "Alone in the Dark
2," "Theme Park," "Magic Carpet," "Descent" and "Little Big Adventure" are among
the games to hit the market.

1996: Sergey Brin and Larry Page develop the Google search engine at Stanford
University.
1997: Microsoft invests $150 million in Apple, which was struggling at the time,
ending Apple's court case against Microsoft in which it alleged that Microsoft copied
the "look and feel" of its operating system.

1999: The term Wi-Fi becomes part of the computing language and users begin
connecting to the Internet without wires.

2001: Apple unveils the Mac OS X operating system, which provides protected
memory architecture and pre-emptive multi-tasking, among other benefits. Notto be
outdone, Microsoft rolls out Windows XP, which has a significantly redesigned
graphical user interface GUI. 2003: The first 64-bit processor, AMD's Athlon 64,
becomes available to the consumer market.

2004: Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 challenges Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the dominant
Web browser. Facebook, a social networking site, launches.

2005: YouTube, a video sharing service, is founded. Google acquires Android, a

Linux-based mobile phone operating system.

2006: Apple introduces the MacBook Pro, its first Intel-based, dual-core mobile
computer, as well as an Intel-based iMac. Nintendo's Wii game console hits the
market.

2007: The iPhone brings many computer functions to the smart phone.

2009: Microsoft launches Windows 7, which offers the ability to pin applications to
the taskbar and advances in touch and handwriting recognition, among other features.
2010: Apple unveils the iPad, changing the way consumers view media and
jumpstarting the dormant tablet computer segment.

2011: Google releases the Chromebook, a laptop that runs the Google Chrome OS.
2012: Facebook gains 1 billion users on October 4.
2015: Apple releases the Apple Watch. Microsoft releases Windows 10

2016: The first reprogrammable quantum computer was created. "Until now, there
hasn't been any quantum-computing platform that had the capability to program new
algorithms into their system. They're usually each tailored to attack a particular
algorithm," said study lead author Shantanu Debnath, a quantum physicist and
optical engineer at the University of Maryland, College Park.

2017: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a

new "Molecular Informatics" program that uses molecules as computers. "Chemistry
offers a rich set of properties that we may be able to harness for rapid, scalable
information storage and processing," Anne Fischer, program manager in DARPA's
Defense Sciences Office, said in a statement. "Millions of molecules exist, and each
molecule has a unique three-dimensional atomic structure as well as variables such
as shape, size, or even color. This richness provides a vast design space for exploring
novel and multi-value ways to encode and process data beyond the 0s and 1s of
current logic-based, digital architectures." [Computers of the Future May Be
Minuscule Molecular Machines]

The history of computer is considered with the generations of a computer from

first generation to fifth generation. In 19th century English mathematics professor
name Charles Babbage referred as a “Father of Computer”. He designed the
Analytical Engine and it was this design that the basic framework of the computers
of today are based on. Generally speaking, computers can be classified into five
generations. Each generation lasted for a certain period of time and each gave us
either a new and improved computer or an improvement to the existing computer.
The generations of computer are as follows: First Generation of Computer (1937 –
1946):
 In 1937 the first electronic digital computer was built by Dr. John V. Atanasoff
and Clifford Berry. It was called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer

(ABC).

In 1943 an electronic computer name the Colossus was built for the military.
Other developments continued until in 1946 the first general– purpose digital
computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) was built. It
is said that this computer weighed 30 tons, and had 18,000 vacuum tubes which was
used for processing. When this computer was turned on for the first time lights dim
in sections of Philadelphia. Computers of this generation could only perform single
task, and they had no operating system.

Characteristics:

i. Sizes of these computers were as large as the size of a room.

ii. Possession of Vacuum Tubes to perform calculation. iii. They used an

internally stored instruction called program.

iv. Use capacitors to store binary data and information.

v. They use punched card for communication of input and output datand
information

vi. They generated a lot of heat.

vii. They have about One Thousand 1000 circuits per cubic foot

Examples:

i. Mark I developed by Aiken in 1944.

 ii. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) built at the Moore
School for Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 by J.
Presper Eckert and William Mauchley.

iii. Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) also developed

in 1947 by Eckert and Mauchley.

Second Generation of Computer (1947 – 1962): Second generation of computers

used transistors instead of vacuum tubes which were more reliable. In 1951 the first
computer for commercial use was introduced to the public; the Universal Automatic
Computer (UNIVAC 1).

In 1953 the International Business Machine (IBM) 650 and 700 series
computers made their mark in the computer world. During this generation of
computers over 100 computer programming languages were developed, computers
had memory and operating systems. Storage media such as tape and disk were in use
also were printers for output.

i. The computers were still large, but smaller than the first generation of
computers.

ii. They use transistor in place of Vacuum Tubes to perform calculation. iii. They
were produced at a reduced cost compared to the first generation of computers.
iv. Possession of magnetic tapes as for data storage.

iv. They were using punch cards as input and output of data and information.
The use of keyboard as an input device was also introduced.

vi. These computers were still generating a lot of heat in which an air conditioner
is needed to maintain a cold temperature

vii. They have about one thousand circuits per cubic foot.
Example:

i. Leprechaun, IBM built by Bell Laboratories in 1947

ii. Transis produced by philco, GE and RCA. iii. UNIVAC 1107, UNIVAC III.
iv. RCA 501.

v. IBM 7030 stretch. Third Generation of Computer (1963 – 1975): The

invention of integrated circuit brought us the third generation of computers.
With this invention computers became smaller, more powerful more
reliable and they are able to run many different programs at the same time.
Characteristics: i. They used large-scale integrated circuits, which were
used for both data processing and storage. ii. Computers were miniaturized,
that is, they were reduced in size compared to previous generation. iii.
Keyboard and mouse were used for input while the monitor was used

as output device.

iii. Use of programming language like COBOL and FORTRAN were

developed. v. They have hundred thousand circuits per cubic foot.

Examples:

i. Burroughs 6700, Mini computers

ii. Honeywell 200
iii. IBM system 360
iv. UNIVAC 9000 series.

Fourth Generation of Computer (PC 1975 – Current)

At this time of technological development, the size of computer was

redivided to what we called Personal Computers, PC. This was the time the first
 Microprocessor was created by Intel. The microprocessor was a very largescale,
that is, VLS integrated circuit which contained thousands of transistors.

Transistors on one chip were capable performing all the functions of a computer’s
central processing unit.

Characteristics:

i. Possession of microprocessor which performs all the task of a computer

system use today.
ii. The size of computers and cost was reduced. iii. Increase in speed of
computers.

iv. Very large scale (VLS) integrated circuits were used.

v. They have millions of circuits per cubic foot.

Examples:

i. IBM system 3090, IBM RISC6000, IBM RT.

ii. ILLIAC IV. iii. Cray 2 XMP

iv. HP 9000.

v. Apple Computers

Fifth Generation of Computers (Present and Beyond)

Fifth generations computing devices, based on artificial intelligence (AI) are

still in development, although there are some application such as voice recognition,
facial face detector and thumb print that are used today.

Characteristics:

i. Consist of extremely large scale integration.

 ii. Parallel processing iii. Possession of high speed logic and memory chip.

iv. High performance, micro-miniaturization.

vi. Ability of computers to mimic human intelligence, e.g. voice

recognition, facial face detector, thumb print. vi. Satellite links, virtual reality.
vii. They have billions of circuits per cubic.
Examples:
i. Super computers
ii. Robots

iii. Facial face detector

iii. Thumb print.

Conclusion:

The earliest foundations of what would become computer science predate the
invention of the modern digital computer. Machines for calculating fixed numerical
tasks such as the abacus have existed Charles Babbage, sometimes referred to as the
"father of computing". Ada Lovelace is often credited with publishing the first
algorithm intended for processing on a computer. Since antiquity, aiding in
computations such as multiplication and division. Algorithms for performing
computations have existed since antiquity, even before the development of
sophisticated computing equipment.

In1980 Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-Dos) was born and in 1981 IBM
introduced the personal computer (PC) for home and office use. Three years later
Apple gave us the Macintosh computer with its icon driven interface and the 90s
gave us Windows operating system. As a result of the various improvements to the
development of the computer we have seen the computer being used in all areas of
life. It is a very useful tool that will continue to experience new development as time
passes.