PhiladelphiaUniversity

               School of Business Administration

B122 Information Systems                             Prof London

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           Lecture #13  History of Computing Devices

This discussion will describe the evolution of calculating devices, and how they were combined with industrial production technology, to create the modern concept of a programmed computer system.  The important contribution of the Textile industry to the development of the computer will be described.  Also to be presented: how the Philadelphia area was prominent during the years when the Electronic computer was first introduced.

 Milestones:

Fingers - Digits - Decimal counting system

Abacus - approx 2000 BC

  Roman abacus

  Chinese Suan-Pan

  Japanese Soroban  

 

Symbolic Numbering systems:  View Notes

  BC

  Early cultures - Sumerians, Babylonians - Cuneiform

  Use of alphabet - Greek, Hebrew

  Roman numerals

  Chinese bamboo numerals

  AD

  Hindu/Arabic numerals - approx 300 AD - 400 AD  View Notes

    Zero - Positional Number System - approx 600 - 800 AD

     Arithmetic - Al-Khwarizmi 820 AD (Algorism)

     Started use in Europe - 1150 - 1250 AD -  Fibonacci

       Slowly accepted between 1200 – 1600 

       Counting table

       Algorismists vs Abacists

Logarithms --> Slide Rule  1614 – 1633.   Napier’s Bones

 

Mechanical Devices:

 

Blaise Pascal - 1642-45 Adding Machine - 'Pascalene' - Add & Subtract

  Leibnitz - 1670-90 - Multiply & Divide

       View Notes on Pascal

Joseph-Marie Jacquard - 1801 - Loom, programmed with punched cards

 

Charles Babbage - 1830's - Difference Engine    View Notes on Babbage

  First Digital computer concept

  Combination of concepts of Pascal and Jacquard

  Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace

    First person to program a computer

 

Pascal + Jacquard ŕ Babbage  The evolution of the Difference engine.

 

Georg & Edvard Scheutz - 1854 - Printing Difference Engine

 

Herman Hollerith - Late 1880's - Census of 1890

  Punch Card Accounting - Tabulating

 

     View Notes on Hollerith

     View Notes on Adding Machines 19th & 20th Centuries
                                               Computing History - 2

                                                             

 

Electronic Devices:

 

John V Atanasoff - 1942 - Electronic Calculator - workable model

  Special purpose - not programmable

 

ENIAC - 1946 (Nov 1945) - First fully functional Electronic Calculator - Programmable

J Presper Eckert & John Mauchly - U of Pa Moore School of Electrical Eng
Eniac part in ENIAC museum at Penn (May 17, 2004)

Univac I - 1951 - Census Bureau - first commercial use of computer

  Built in Philadelphia - Univac Corp. had been established by Eckert & Mauchly.

  1952 - Univac computer delivered to General Electric

 

IBM enters computer market - 1954

 

Pocket Calculator - 1971 - mass produced

 

Personal Computer - 1975 - Altair

 

Apple Computer - 1977

 

IBM enters Personal Computer (PC) market - 1981

 

 

Generations of Computers:

  I         1950's    Vacuum Tubes

  II        1960-64   Transistors

  III       1965-71   Integrated Circuits (Chips)

  IV        1971---   Large Scale Integration (LSI)

                     Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI)

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Further Reading:

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General history and concepts of computers:

 

Augarten, Stan, Bit by Bit, An Illustrated History of Computers, Tickman     & Fields, New York, 1984

 

Goldstine, Herman H, The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann, Princeton      University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1980

 

MacAuley, David, The Way Things Work, Houghton & Mifflin, Boston, MA,        1988, pp 330ff

 

Use of numbers and number symbols:

 

Asimov, Isaac, Asimov on Numbers, Pocket Books, New York, 1977