Weekly Multifarious Learning

This last week of June, we shared different knowledge about the history of computer specifically during the 2 last basic periods which are the Electromechanical (1840-1940) and electronic (1941-present). I realized the importance of every inventions made by different and versatile inventors. Each invention has something to do with today’s latest computers.

During the Electromechanical Period, electricity was the key advance made knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses. Examples of invention in this period are the voltaic battery by Alessandro Volta; telegraph by Samuel F.B. Morse; telephone and radio. In this period, there’s also a discovery about electrical waves. Electricity used by electronic devices and different machines at this time until now. But in Electromechanical Period only small number of invention have been done compared to Electronic Period.

Human or inventors made a lot of inventions, machines, devices, etc. People are more prone or engage with machines and devices like tabulating machines, comptometer, comptograph and punch cards. They sell their inventions. People want to buy these inventions, especially during wars. Therefore, there’s a rapid inventions during Electronic Period which is the micro-processors.

In addition to this, I also learn how does computer evolved and developed with different characteristics, capability and properties. If there is computer there are also companies who process these inventions.

The Electronic Age:1941-Present

1941

Konrad Zuse built the first programmable computer called Z3. Z3 is designed to solve engineering equations rather than basic arithmetic problems.

Z3 was the first fully functional, program controlled (freely programmable) computer of the world.

1942

Howard Aiken a PhD student of Harvard University built the Mark I “ The First Stored Program Computer”

8 feet tall, 51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weight 5 tons, used about 750, 000 parts, 500 miles of wires, 3-5 seconds per calculation.

John Atanasoff and Clifford berry completed the first all-electronic computer the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry computer).

ABC was the first computer to use electricity in the form of vacuum tubes to make electric computation possible. ABC was used for solving complex system of equations.

The four generations of digital Computer

THE FIRST GENERATION (1951-1958)

The first generation of computers used vacuum tubes as their main logic elements

Punched cards to input and externally store data;

Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data in programs

Program written

machine language (instructions written as a string of 0s and 1s)

Assembly language (a language that allowed the programmer to write instructions in a kind of shorthand that would then be "translated" by another program called a compiler into machine language).

Computers had vacuum tubes, resistors, and welded metal joints. They were large, slow, expensive and produced a lot of heat.

1945

Presper Eckert and John Mauchly developed the first operational electronic digital computer, called ENIAC, for US Army. ENIAC was over 1000 times faster than Mark 1, and could perform 5000 additions per second.

ENIAC had more than 1800 vacuum tubes, and took up to 1800 square feet of space. In addition, the electrical current ENIAC required could power more than a thousand modern computers. Today, ENIAC’s technology could fit in a modern wristwatch.

1951

UNIVAC-1 became the first commercially available electronic computer. This computer was designed by Eckert and Mauchly (the designers of the ENIAC) and built by the Remington Rand corporation. The first of these computers was delivered to US. Census Bureau.

1951 and 1953

magnetic core memory was developed. This memory consists of tiny ferrite “donuts” that were arranged on a lattice of wires. The polarity of their magnetization could be change or detected by passing current through the wires. This allowed each lattice point store one “bit” – either 0 or 1. Magnetic core memory was the fastest type of memory until the late 1980’s.

THE SECOND GENERATION (1959-1963)

1940

Discovered that a class of crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor to replace vacuum tubes. Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.

John Barden, Walter Brattain and William Shockley of Bell Telephone Laboratories invented the transistor. A transistor is a small, solid-state component designed to monitor the flow of the electric current.

Transistor

Were smaller, faster, cheaper, required less power, and produce less heat than vacuum tubes. In computers, a transistor functions as an electronic switch or bridge. Transistors play an important role in electronic circuits. Circuits help make up electronic systems, and electronic systems are what make electronic computing possible. Transistors allowed computers to communicate over telephone lines. The transistor gave way to the concept of parallel processor and multiprogramming.

1961

Grace hopper, the woman that found the first computer bug, finishes developing COBOL.

1964

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), founded by Ken Olsen, release the first minicomputer, the PDP-8.

1965

Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny of Dartmouth College developed BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) as a computer language to help teach people how to program.

The THIRD GENERATION(1963-1974)

Individual transistors were replace by integrated circuits. Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards. Magnetic core internal memories began to give way to new form, metal-oxide semiconductor.

Third-generation computers were built between 1963-1974.

In the third generation, computers relied on a new technology called the integrated circuits. The integrated circuit is a single wafer or chip that can hold many transistors and electronic circuits.

1959

Jack Kilby invented the monolithic integrated circuit which is still widely used in electronics system.

1968

Intel was founded by Robert Noyce. He is one of the inventors of the integrated circuit.

1969

ARPANET is set-up. ARPANET later becomes the Internet.

1972

The C programming language is developed at AT&T Bell Labs by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritche. The UNIX operating system, also written at Bell Labs, is rewritten using C.

The FOURTH GENERATION(1979-Present)

Intel Corporation designed the first tiny computer on a chip, it was called the microprocessor.

Microprocessor is an integrated circuit built on a tiny piece of silicon.

1975

Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems or MITS produced the first PC. They named the computer kit Altair 8080, after the Star Trek episode, “A Voyage to Altair”.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded the Microsoft.

In April 1976

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded APPLE COMPUTERS.

1978

VisiCalc is released. This is the first spreadsheet program and it made microcomputers useful to business.

1979

The first microcomputer word processor, Word Star, is released.

With these previous lessons, I realized that we also need to know how does computer made not just only knowing how to use them.

This Week’s Past Learnings

Many people are now expert in using and exploring computers. They’re excellent in browsing into internet, but do they know what the history of computers is?

In these past days, we tackled about the history of computers, its electromechanical age and the electronic age. I learned about the sequence of how the telecommunication begins in the electromechanical age. It first begin in the invention of the voltaic battery in the 18th century by Alessandro Volta, then the telegraph by Samuel Finley Breeze Morse followed by the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 and radio by Guglielmo Marconi in 1894. The invention of the radio, there were two events which plays a big role, these are: the discovery of electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they are originated. I also learned about the tabulating machines, comptometer, comptographs and punch cards.

In electronic age, I learned that Konrad Zuse built the first programmable computer called Z3. A computer is “programmable” because it is capable of following instructions. And this Z3 is designed to solve engineering equations rather than basic arithmetic problems. And Herman Hollerith was the first person to use punched cards and was known as the father of information processing and founder of the Tabulating Machine Company later become the International Business Machines Corporation known today as IBM.

There are 4 generations of digital computers.

First Generation Computers (1951-1958)

The first generation of computers used vacuum tubes as their main logic elements

Computers had vacuum tubes, resistors, and welded metal joints. They were large, slow, expensive and produced a lot of heat.

In 1945, Presper Eckert and John Mauchly developed the first operational electronic digital computer, called ENIAC, for US Army. ENIAC was over 1000 times faster than Mark 1, and could perform 5000 additions per second. ENIAC had more than 1800 vacuum tubes, and took up to 1800 square feet of space.

Second Generation Computers (1959-1963)

In the 1940s, discovered that a class of crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor to replace vacuum tubes. Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology. Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.

Instead of vacuum tubes, second generation computers used transistors an exiting new invention at the time. John Barden, Walter Brattain and William Shockley of Bell Telephone Laboratories invented the transistor.

Transistor

Were smaller, faster, cheaper, required less power, and produce less heat than vacuum tubes. In computers, a transistor functions as an electronic switch or bridge. Transistors play an important role in electronic circuits. Circuits help make up electronic systems, and electronic systems are what make electronic computing possible. Transistors allowed computers to communicate over telephone lines. The transistor gave way to the concept of parallel processor and multiprogramming.

The THIRD GENERATION(1963-1974)

Individual transistors were replace by integrated circuits. Computers relied on a new technology called the integrated circuits. The integrated circuit is a single wafer or chip that can hold many transistors and electronic circuits. Jack Kilby invented the monolithic integrated circuit which is still widely used in electronics system. Intel was founded by Robert Noyce. He is one of the inventors of the integrated circuit.

The FOURTH GENERATION(1979-Present)

Intel Corporation designed the first tiny computer on a chip, it was called the microprocessor.

Microprocessor is an integrated circuit built on a tiny piece of silicon.

Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems or MITS produced the first PC. They named the computer kit Altair 8080, after the Star Trek episode, “A Voyage to Altair”.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded the Microsoft.

From these learnings, we can trace the origin of the computers and its inventors who improved the machines to arrive in this prestigious work, the “computer”.

My Acquired Knowledge For This Week

Early humans' numbering system

As far as I can remember in the past few days, we tackled about the origin or history of the alphabet, the writing system and the numbering system.
Some of the early systems of writing are the cuneiform of the Babylonians and the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. Early humans wrote on the stone, since it has no paper in their time.
Then here comes the numbering system of early humans. For instance, the Egyptians, their numbers are written in figures like:
=Millions =Hundred Thousands =Ten Thousands=Thousands =Hundreds =Tens =Ones
On the other hand, the Indian System, they use abacus for centuries. Abacus is a device to perform the four basic calculations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), is one of the oldest inventions. The abacus was further developed into a board with separation lines for the positions of the numerals.

As shown above, beads are strung on wires or rods. This is the form in which the abacus is still in use in the Middle East, China, and Japan, and with which the word abacus is usually associated today.
As time goes by, the numbering system is improving and its because of the changing technology.
That's why it came up to the inventions of computing system like calculators, computers and other devices or gadgets on computing numbers with a higher number of computations.

The four periods on the development of the computer

I have learned that there are four historical periods where the computers are being developed.
We know that computers are useful in our generation, since we are now on a high technology.
Did we imagine or have we asked ourselves,"How and when did the computers exist?"
Let's find it out on my brief understanding on how and when did the computers developed by the specific periods.

• The Pre-mechanical Period(1945-1956)

First generation computers were characterized by the fact that operating instructions were made-to-order for the specific task for which the computer was to be used. Each computer had a different binary-coded program called a machine language that told it how to operate. This made the computer difficult to program and limited its versatility and speed. Other distinctive features of first generation computers were the use of vacuum tubes (responsible for their breathtaking size) and magnetic drums for data storage.

• The Mechanical Period(1956-1963)

By 1948, the invention of the transistor greatly changed the computer's development. The transistor replaced the large, cumbersome vacuum tube in televisions, radios and computers. As a result, the size of electronic machinery has been shrinking ever since. The transistor was at work in the computer by 1956. Coupled with early advances in magnetic-core memory, transistors led to second generation computers that were smaller, faster, more reliable and more energy-efficient than their predecessors. The first large-scale machines to take advantage of this transistor technology were early supercomputers, Stretch by IBM and LARC by Sperry-Rand. These computers, both developed for atomic energy laboratories, could handle an enormous amount of data, a capability much in demand by atomic scientists. The machines were costly, however, and tended to be too powerful for the business sector's computing needs, thereby limiting their attractiveness. Only two LARCs were ever installed: one in the Lawrence Rasiation Labs in Livermore, California, for which the computer was named (Livermore Atomic Research Computer) and the other at the U.S. Navy Research and Development Center in Washington D.C. Second generation computers replaced machine language with assembly language, allowing abbreviated programming codes to replace long, difficult binary codes.

• The Electromechanical Period(1964-1971)

Though transistors were clearly an improvement over the vacuum tube, they still generated a great deal of heat, which damaged the computer's sensitive internal parts. The quartz rock eliminated this problem. Jack Kilby, an engineer with Texas Instruments, developed the integrated circuit (IC) in 1958. The IC combined three electronic components onto a small silicon disc, which was made from quartz. Scientists later managed to fit even more components on a single chip, called a semiconductor. As a result, computers became ever smaller as more components were squeezed onto the chip. Another third-generation development included the use of an operating system that allowed machines to run many different programs at once with a central program that monitored and coordinated the computer's memory.

• The Electronic Period(1971-Present)

After the integrated circuits here comes the Large scale integration (LSI) that could fit hundreds of components onto one chip. By the 1980's, very large scale integration (VLSI) squeezed hundreds of thousands of components onto a chip. Ultra-large scale integration (ULSI) increased that number into the millions. It also increased their power, efficiency and reliability. Now one microprocessor could be manufactured and then programmed to meet any number of demands.
Though the possibilities envisioned by Gore and others for such a large network are often years (if not decades) away from realization, the most popular use today for computer networks such as the Internet is electronic mail, or E-mail, which allows users to type in a computer address and send messages through networked terminals across the office or across the world.

...That's how the computers were developed. And until now there are genuis people who are still studying on how to create and invent more anvanced computers, gadgets and many more in order to have business and have lots of money because people are craving for money, and that's the fact that we cannot deny.

Learnings... Learnings... Learnings...

Everybody have their own learnings... in different time... in different place... and different ways. We do all learn and learnings comes before success.

As I have surpassed the weeks that passed by, I have really learned a lot of things and new facts on the history of computers. The following are the things that I have learned from the past weeks' lessons.

• The Major Periods in the Development of Computer.

I have learned that there are four major periods in the history of computers; Pre-mechanical, Mechanical, Electromechanical and Electronic Period. This periods have different descriptions, invention and developments.

• Pre-mechanical Period

I have learned in this lesson about the start of the innovations on computation. I have also knew that the different groups in the Mesopotamia started communication like the Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks, Romans and others on the use of vowels, consonants and syllabication and other writing materials. And number system also started at this period by the Hindus and Egyptian major contributions. I have learned that computation start on this period because the people at this time are now used on using communication, symbol and signs on counting.

• Mechanical Period

As I have passed this lesson, I learned about the uses and inventions of simple to more complex machines that are used manually for computation and storage use. Some of the machines and ideas that I've known at this period are the printing press of Gutenberg, logarithms of Napier, slide rule of Oughtred, difference engine and analytical engine of Charles Babbage and many more to say. I have thought that at this period, the use of punched cards started the way of information storage by Charles Babbage. And this is the period were information explosion starts.

• Electromechanical Period

1840-1940, this is the duration of the electromechanical period that I've knew. As I study this lesson, I learned about the use of electricity on machines for faster computation and storage. I have also learned about the start of telecommunication by the discovery of Voltaic battery, telephone, telegraph, telegram, radio, wireless communication and many applications by the use of electric power. At this period, electromechanical computing also started. And this period had began the rapid inventions and discoveries on computer development.

• Electronic Period

The last major period of computers, the electronic period. I became very curious about this period because of very rapid invention and discoveries. Comptograph, comptometer, tabulating machines and the different kind of computers... these are one of the many inventions on computers at this point. Alttair 8800, Z1, EDSAC, Amiga, ABC and also with the computer companies like Compaq and Toshiba. But why is this so? That's what I really learned all about. I learned that the rapid invention connects with wars that happened for the past centuries. It is because of high demand and the pleasure of money that makes them to invent and invent. And up to now, we are still in the Period of Electronics.

• Four Generations of Computer

Actually, the main idea that I have learned about the four generations of computer are to the different ways of powering device used to run the computers. Each generation had changed the way they power their computers to run it faster like the vacuum tubes for the 1st generation, semiconductors in the 2nd generation, integrated circuits on the 3rd generation and microprocessors on the 4th generation. I have learned in this period that the better the powering device, the better the effect.

My learnings have been very wide on the history of the computer. The main thing that I have learned on the past weeks is that computers will never be invented without patience on step-by-step way, productivity and logic of the inventors. And its not just for the computer aspect, but also for the telecommunications , numbering ang language applications.

I can say that computers will never be computers without the mind of inventors. And computers are just one of the proof of man's intelligence.