What is a computer?
Before finding out about the history of the computer, it would be good to start with what a computer is. If you ask people that question today, most people would begin to explain about CPU’s, monitors and computer mousses. But actually, is a computer just a machine that can hold data and that was built for over 3000 years ago.
The first computers
Here in Mexico the Maya’s used a system with ropes and knots, and people found a machine in Greece, that could show you where the sun and some planets would be on sky, if you turned a crank. Sadly it was on a ship that sank, and people apparently forget how smart they had been.[1]
1500
After that, the next smart thing people invented was a watch. In Germany in 1502 Peter Henlein from Nurnberg, created the first watch.[2]
1600
Then in the 1600, a man named Schickard, made a kind of clockwork, where you could both plus and minus, but not long after another German man named Leibniz, made a machine that also could multiply and divide.
1700
Then there went some years again before anything new happened, it was first in 1774 that something happened. It was the first telegraph that was built.[3]
1800
In 1822 an English man Charles Babbage made a machine, which could figure out equations as some astronomers, navigators and scientists needed in their everyday, and took them a long time to do. Sadly he didn’t have a lot of money, and when he tried to explain that he could make a machine that could figure anything out, people didn’t believe him. Then he didn’t invent anymore.
Samuel Morse invents, what’s later called, the Morse code in 1838.
In USA last in the 1800s did a company make a machine that could help with counting how many people that lived in USA. Later that company became the company called IBM (International Business Machines).
The first electronic computer
1940
Under the 2. World war made the Germans all the messages as codes with a calculator called Enigma. England got a lot of professors to try to make a computer that could figure the code out, and they did it, so almost the whole war, was England aware of where Germany’s ships were. That was the first electronic computer.
1946
One of the geniuses that broke that code was Alan Turing, and he figured out all the things that was missing, to make that kind of computer, that we use today. But because he was gay, the english government didn’t want him to work on it, so it was USA that came first. They made a computer called ENIAC.
1960
The first minicomputer was made by Digial. It was called a PDP, short for Programmable Data Processor. It had five-megacycle circuits, a magnetic core memory, and fully parallel processing with a computation rate of 100,000 additions per second.
1962
Steve Russell creates "SpaceWar!" and releases it in February 1962. This game is considered the first game made for computers.
1975
In 1975 normal people buy their first computer for only 395 dollars. You had to put the pieces together yourself, and it had no disk drives, printer connections, monitor or keyboard, and no programs. The computers name was Altair 8800, it was so popular that you had to wait months to get it. It had 256 bytes in memory.
1977
This was the year a company made the first computer with a built-in monitor and keyboard. The company was Commodore, and the machines name was PET.
1978
In 1978 invented Apple a floppy drive, that made it possible for to store a lot more of information – 176 kb.
1981
Then came the Osborne 1. It is considered a milestone in the history of computers, because it was portable – It only weighed 12 kg!
It was also the first computer delievered with a software-package. It contained the spreadsheet "SuperCalc", the text processing "Word Star" and the database "dBase-2". These programs are not know today, but it’s the same structure as Microsoft office has today.
It was also very cheap. The whole computer cost less than all the 3 programs together. That’s was because of some good deals between Adam Osborne (the owner of the computer company) and the software companies.
And then it started with Apple, Dell, Microsoft and that everybody got computers. I remember my parents have told me that they bought their first computer for maybe 10 years ago, maybe more. They gave 17000 Danish crowns for it, it would be like 41000 Mexican pesos. It’s crazy, and then it only had a very little memory. I can’t remember how much that was either maybe like a couple of kb.
Specific things
BASIC
To Americans didn’t understand how people wanted to buy a computer without programs, so they made a very small version of the program BASIC to Altair 8800. It made the users capable of writing their own programs, while it also was in a language they could understand instead of just the 0’s and 1’s. It was William Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and after they invented it, they sold it to almost all the computer companies, and made their first success. The BASIC-program was then a part of all personal computers in the late 70’ies and start 80’ies.
PC
In the 80’ies started IBM with the concept PC (Personal Computer). It was a computer that all the systems worked on, it became a big success.
The first computer they made was exactly very impressing. It didn’t have colors or sound, and only 16 kb. But because it was an IBM-machine and that sold a lot.
First IBM had calculated that they would sell around 50000 computers, but it was a lot more. There is millions of PC’s today.
The next PC IBM made was much better, it had a harddrive on 10 MB.
In 1984 took IBM the next step and made the term PC/AT, which stand for Personal Computer/Advanced Technology. It was 3 times as fast as the normal PC because of some advanced 286-processors from Intel. With the AT was a color monitor also normal.
Computerclones
Compaq was a other computer company, that tried to make a PC like IBMs. After some time, they did it, and that was the start of the computer marked as we know it today. That’s how we got computers to a good price.
ENIAC ENIAC is short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer. It was made for USA’s army. When it was announced in 1946, the press called it a giant brain. The University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering started in 1943, and the project was called “Project PX”. They said that it had cost them almost 500000 dollars, and in 2011 because of inflation, that would be nearly 6 mio.! The first budget was on 150000 dollars, so there is a lot of difference. It worked til the 2. October 1955. The Machine needed 150 km2, and it weighed almost 30 tons. A problem while they made it, was that it neede a lot of cooling to the electronic circuit, which had 17468 radio pipes among a lot more. | |
ENIAC was invented and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert from the University of Pennsylvania. They was helped by Robert F. Shaw, Chuan Chu, Thomas Kite Sharpless, Arthur Burks, Harry Huskey and Jack Davis.
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