A Brief History of Computers

Pre-Mechanical Computing:
From Counting on fingers
to pebbles
to hash marks on walls
to hash marks on bone
to hash marks in sand

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Mechanical computers
From
The Abacus
c. 4000 BCE
to
Charles Babbage
and his Difference Engine (1812)
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Mechanical computers:
The Abacus (c. 3000 BCE)

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Napiers Bones and

Logarithms (1617)

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Picture courtesy IBM

Oughtreds (1621) and

Schickards (1623]
slide rule

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Blaise Pascals
Pascaline (1645)

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Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitzs

Stepped Reckoner (1674)

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Joseph-Marie Jacquard and his punched

card controlled looms (1804)

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Preparing the cards with the pattern

for the cloth to be woven

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Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

The Father of Computers

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Charles Babbages Difference

Engine

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Charles Babbages Analytical Engine

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Lady Augusta AdaCou

ntess
of Lovelace
Read Lady Augusta Adas translation of Menabreas
Sketch of the Analytical Engine

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Electro-mechanical computers
From
Herman Holleriths
1890
Census Counting Machine
to
Howard Aiken
and the Harvard Mark I (1944)
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Herman Hollerith and his

Census Tabulating Machine (1884)

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A closer look at the Census

Tabulating Machine

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The Harvard Mark I (1944)

aka IBMs Automatic Sequence
Controlled Calculator (ASCC)

Howard Aiken
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The first computer bug

Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Mur
ray Hopper

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Electronic digital computers

From
John Vincent Atanasoffs
1939
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
to
the present day
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Alan Turing1
912-1954
The Turing Machine
Aka
The Universal Machine
1936

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John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995)

Physics Prof
At
Iowa State
University,
Ames, IA

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Clifford Berry (1918-1963)

PhD student
of
Dr. Atanasoffs

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1939
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)

The ABC was the first electronic digital computer, invented

by John Vincent
Atanasoff
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1943
Bletchley Parks Colossus

The Enigma
Machine
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1946
The ENIAC
John Presper Eckert
(1919-1995)
and
John Mauchly
(1907-1980)
of the
University of
Pennsylvania Moore
School of Engineering
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The ENIAC:
Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Computer

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Programming the ENIAC

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ENIACs Wiring!
John Von Neumann

John Von Neumann came up with the

bright idea of using part of the computers
internal memory (called Primary Memory)
to store the program inside the computer
and have the computer go get the
instructions from its own memory, just as
we do with our human brain.
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1951
Univac

Typical 1968 pricesEX-cluding maintenance & support!

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What hath God wrought!

(first telegraph message sent by Samuel Morse, 1844)
1844

Electronic and computing technology quickly progressedat an ever-accelerating pace

from vacuum tubes (Lee de Forrest, the audion, 1907)

1907
to transistors (William Shockley et al. 1947)
to semiconductors (Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce, 1958)
1958
to microprocessors (M.E. Ted Hoff, 1971)
1971
to networking and the Internet (Vinton Cerf & Robert Kahn, 1982]
1982
to the World Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee, 1991)
1991
and beyond

Whatever next?
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Acknowledgements (continued on next slide)

For one of the best written books on the history of computers, check out
Engines of the Mind : The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframes to Microprocessors -- by Joel N.
Shurkin (Paperback)
A movingly beautiful book on Alan Turing is Alan Turing: the Enigma, by Andrew Hodges
An excellent, readable book on Cryptography is Simon Singhs
THE CODE BOOK. The Secret History of Codes and Code-Breaking
Tutorials on the encryption software PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) can be found at
http://www.pitt.edu/~poole/PGPintro.htm
All pictures and some of the information were obtained from various sites on the World Wide Web.
Complete list follows:
Abacus: http://qi-journal.com/action.lasso?-Token.SearchID=Abacus&-Response=culture.asp
Napier: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Napier.html
http://www.maxmon.com/1600ad.htm
Slide Rules: http://www.hpmuseum.org/sliderul.htm
Pascals Pascaline: http://www.thocp.net/hardware/pascaline.htm
Leibnitz Stepped Reckoner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepped_Reckoner
Jacquard looms: http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/jacquard1.html
http://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstell/meister/e_web.htm
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Acknowledgements (continued)
Charles Babbage: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/babbage/index.asp
Lady Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace: http://www.well.com/user/adatoole/bio.htm
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Electricity: http://www.mediaeng.com/historyelect.html (beautifully written pocket history of
electricity & magnetism)
Herman Hollerith: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hollerith.html
Howard Aiken & The Harvard Mark I: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Aiken.html
Alan Turing: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Turing.html
John Vincent Atanasoff: http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/books/mollenhoff/overview.shtml
Biographies of Atanasoff and Clifford Berry: http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/ABC/Biographies.html
J. Presper Eckert: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Eckert_John.html
John Mauchly: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Mauchly.html
The patent controversy: http://www.library.upenn.edu/special/gallery/mauchly/jwm7.html
ARPANet: http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa.html
Thanks to the following EDTECH listserv colleagues and friends who have reviewed the presentation
and provided amendments and additional material for inclusion on the slides and in the notes.
Nancy Head, online instructor, Michigan Virtual High School (MVHS), U.S.A., on the web at
www.mivhs.org
Mandi Axmann, Instructional Designer, Open Universities Australia
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Thank You

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