Notes
Slide Show
Outline
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A Short History of Computing
  • Tim Bergin
  • Computing History Museum
  •  American University
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Ancient History
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Abacus
  • 3000 BCE, early form of beads on wires, used in China
  • From semitic abaq, meaning dust.


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Table Abacus
  • 100,000  ------l---l----------------------------
  •   50,000  -----l----------------------------------
  •   10,000  -----l--- l--- l-----------------------
  •     5,000  -----l----------------------------------
  •     1,000  -----l---l-----------------------------
  •        500  -----------------------------------------
  •        100  -----l---l---l---l--------------------             50 -----l--- -------------------------------
  •          10  ------------------------------------------
  •            5  ------------------------------------------
  •            1  -----l---l-------------------------------
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Chinese Swan Pan
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The Middle Ages
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Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
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Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
  • Born: December 26, 1791
  • son of Benjamin Babbage a London banker
  •    (part of the emerging middle class: property, education, wealth, and status)
  • Trinity College, Cambridge  [MA, 1817]
  •    with John Herschel and George Peacock, produced a translation of LaCroix’s calculus text.
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A vision of calculating by steam!
  • My friend Herschel, calling upon me, brought with him the calculations of the computers, and we commenced the tedious process of verification.  After a time many discrepancies occurred, and at one point these discordances were so numerous that I exclaimed, “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.”  1821


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Never to be completed
  • December 1830, a dispute with his chief engineer, Joseph Clement, over control of the project, ends work on the difference engine
  • Clement is allowed to keep all tools and drawings by English law


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Importance of the Difference Engine
  • 1. First attempt to devise a computing machine that was automatic in action and well adapted, by its printing mechanism, to a mathematical task of considerable importance.
  • 2. An example of government subsidization of innovation and technology development
  • 3. Spin offs to the machine-tool “industry”
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Science Museum’s Reconstruction
  • Difference Engine Number 2 (1847 to 1849) constructed according to Babbage’s original drawings (minor modifications)
  • 1991 Bicentenary Celebration
  • 4,000 parts
  • 7 feet high, 11 feet long, 18 inches deep
  • 500,000 pounds




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Science Museum Recreation 1991 (Doron Swade, Curator)
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Analytical Engine
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   Ada Augusta Byron, 1815-1852
  • born on 10 December 1815.
  • named after Byron's half sister, Augusta, who had been his mistress.
  • After Byron had left for the Continent with a parting shot -- 'When shall we three meet again?' -- Ada was brought up by her mother.



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Ada Augusta Byron,
Countess of Lovelace
  • Translated Menebrea’s paper into English
  • Taylor’s: “The editorial notes are by the translator, the Countess of Lovelace.”
  • Footnotes enhance the text and provide examples of how the Analytical Engine could be used, i.e., how it would be programmed to solve problems!
  • Myth: “world’s first programmer”
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Herman Hollerith and the Evolution of Electronic Accounting Machines
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 Herman Hollerith (1860-1929)
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Herman Hollerith
  • Born: February 29, 1860
    • Civil War: 1861-1865
  • Columbia School of Mines (New York)
  • 1879 hired at Census Office
  • 1882 MIT faculty (T is for technology!)
  • 1883 St. Louis (inventor)
  • 1884 Patent Office (Wash, DC)
  • 1885 “Expert and Solicitor of Patents”
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Census
  • Article I, Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several states...according to their respective numbers...(and) every ...term of ten years
  • 1790: 1st US census
  • Population: 3,929,214
  • Census Office


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Population Growth:
  • 1790 4 million
  • 1840 17 million
  • 1870 40 million
  • 1880 50 million
  •    fear of not being able to enumerate the census in the 10 intervening years
  • 1890 63 million
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Smithsonian Exhibit (old)
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Computing Tabulating Recording Company,(C-T-R)
  • 1911: Charles Flint
    • Computing Scale Company (Dayton, OH)
    • Tabulating Machine Company, and
    • International Time Recording Company (Binghamton, NY)
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"Thomas J."
  • Thomas J. Watson
  • (1874-1956)
  • hired as first president


  • In1924, Watson renames CTR as International Business Machines


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Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
  • 1st large scale electronic digital computer
  • designed and constructed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania
    • since 1920s, faculty had worked with Aberdeen Proving Ground’s Ballistics Research Laboratory (BRL)

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Inspiration and Perspiration Unite
  • 1943 Mauchly and Eckert prepare a proposal for the US Army to build an Electronic Numerical Integrator
    • calculate a trajectory in 1 second
  • May 31, 1943 Construction of ENIAC starts
  • 1944 early thoughts on stored program computers by members of the ENIAC team
  • July 1944  two accumulators working


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Accumulator
(28 vacuum tubes)
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ENIAC at Moore School, University of Pennsylvania
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Early Thoughts about
 Stored Program Computing
  • January 1944  Moore School team thinks of better ways to do things; leverages delay line memories from War research
  • September 1944  John von Neumann visits
    • Goldstine’s meeting at Aberdeen Train Station
  • October 1944  Army extends the ENIAC contract  to include research on the EDVAC  and the stored-program concept
  • Spring 1945  ENIAC working well
  • June 1945  First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC: Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer


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First Draft Report (June 1945)
  • John von Neumann prepares (?) a report on the EDVAC which identifies how the machine could be programmed (unfinished very rough draft)
    • academic: publish for the good of science
    • engineers: patents, patents, patents
  • von Neumann never repudiates the myth that he wrote it; most members of the ENIAC team ontribute ideas
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British Efforts
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Manchester Mark I (1948)
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Manchester Mark I (1948)
  • Freddy Williams and Tom Kilburn
  • Developed an electrostatic memory
  • Prototype operational June 21, 1948 and machine to execute a stored program
  • Memory: 32 words of 32 bits each
  • Storage: single Williams tube (CRT)
  • Fully operational: October 1949
  • Ferranti Mark I delivered in February 1951
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EDSAC
  • Maurice Wilkes, University Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge University
  • Moore School Lectures
  • Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, EDSAC operational May, 1949
  • J. Lyons Company and the LEO, Lyons Electronic Office, operational fall 1951
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National Physical Laboratory
  • Alan Turing
  • Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)
  • Basic design by spring, 1946
  • Harry Huskey joins project
  • Pilot ACE working, May 10, 1950
  • English Electric: DEUCE, 1954
  • Full version of ACE at NPL, 1959
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Alan Turing (1912-1954)
  • On Computable Numbers with an application to the Entscheidungs-problem
  • Code breaker
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Mainframe Computers
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John Mauchly leaning on  the UNIVersal Automatic Computer
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Remington Rand UNIVAC
  • 43 UNIVACs were delivered to government and industry
  • Memory: mercury delay lines: 1000 words of 12 alphanumeric characters
  • Secondary storage: metal oxide tape
  • Access time: 222 microseconds (average)
  • Instruction set: 45 operation codes
  • Accumulators: 4
  • Clock: 2.25 Mhz
47
IBM 701 (Defense Calculator)
  • Addition time: 60 microseconds
  • Multiplication: 456 microseconds
  • Memory: 2048 (36 bit) words using Williams tubes
  • Secondary memory:
    • Magnetic drum: 8192 words
    • Magnetic tape: plastic
  • Delivered: December 1952: IBM World Headquarters  (total of 19 installed)
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Second Generation (1958-1964)
  • 1958 Philco introduces TRANSAC S-2000
    • first transistorized commercial machine
  • IBM 7070, 7074 (1960), 7072(1961)
  • 1959  IBM 7090, 7040 (1961), 7094 (1962)
  • 1959 IBM 1401, 1410 (1960), 1440 (1962)
  • FORTRAN, ALGOL, and COBOL are first standardized programming languages


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Third Generation (1964-1971)
  • April 1964  IBM announces the System/360
    • solid logic technology (integrated circuits)
    • family of “compatible” computers
  • 1964 Control Data delivers the CDC 6600
  • nanoseconds
  • telecommunications
  • BASIC, Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
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Fourth Generation (1971- )
  • Large scale integrated circuits (MSI, LSI)
  • Nanoseconds and picoseconds
  • Databases (large)
  • Structured languages (Pascal)
  • Structured techniques
  • Business packages
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Digital Equipment Corporation

(Mini-computers)
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Assabet Mills, Maynard, MA
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Flipchip
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PDP-8, first mass-produced Mini
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PDP-11 (1970)
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Microcomputers


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Intel
  • Noyce, Moore, and Andrew Grove leave Fairchild and found Intel in 1968
    • focus on random access memory (RAM) chips
  • Question: if you can put transistors, capacitors, etc. on a chip, why couldn’t you put a central processor on a chip?
  • Ted Hoff designs the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor in 1969
    •  based on Digital’s PDP-8
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Microcomputers
  • Ed Roberts founds Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS) in 1968
  • Popular Electronics puts the MITS Altair on the cover in January 1975  [Intel 8080]
  • Les Solomon’s 12 year old daughter, Lauren, was a lover of Star Trek.  He asked her what the name of the computer on the Enterprise was. She said “ ‘computer’ but why don’t you call it Altair because that is where they are going tonight!”
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Altair 8800 Computer
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Intel processors
  • CPU Year Data Memory MIPS
  • 4004 1971 4 1K
  • 8008 1972 8 16K
  • 8080 1974 8 64K
  • 8088 1980 8 1M .33
  • 80286 1982 16 1M 3
  • 80386 1985 32 4G 11
  • 80486 1989 32 4G 41
  • Pentium1993 64 4G      111