Today we all depend on smart phone devices, from our Car’s music system to our washing machines, all our devices have processing chips to help us live our lives better but have you ever thought where from the journey begin? How powerful was the first generation of computer and how big it was? Computers have transformed from room size to wall size, from wall size to desk size and from desk size to desktop size in the period of about 90 years!
First Freely Programmable Computer: Build in 1936, first freely programmable computer was designed by Konrad Zeus and used to read instructions from a punched tape. It was the first computer to use Boolean Logic and floating-point numbers and was first freely programmable computer. It was damaged in 1943 during World War II during Bombardment of Berlin.
First Automatic Electronic Digital Computer: Successfully tested in 1939, First Automatic Electronic Digital Computer was ABC Computer i.e. Atanasoff-Berry Computer. It used to run on 5.8Megahertz Processor that was quite powerful that time. The machine was designed only to decipher systems of the linear equation. It was first to use Vacuum tubes instead of Mechanical Switches.
Universal Automatic Computer: Successor to ENVAC 1, it was first installed in United States Census beau in 1951. It used 5,200 Vacuum tubes and consumed about 12KW electricity. It was able to perform 1,905 operations per second!
First High Level Programming Language: First High Level Programming language was FORTRAN introduced by IBM for IBM computer 704. Its initial release in 1954 contained only 32 statements.
Integrated Circuit: the development that led to the introduction of Microprocessor, IC chips were proposed back in 1949 but started working in 1958. United States Air Force and IBM system/360 took the idea.
Space war: First game ever released/produced and thought of was Space war. It was released back in 1962, and two players could play simultaneously. It was played on PDP 10 or PDP 11 and was ported to all other computer systems as well. It was the most popular game of that time.
IBM 5100: Shipped with APL and BASIC programming language, IBM 5100 could be called as Portable Computer with great functionalities. It was released in 1975; it came with 16-bit processor, 64KB memory, and CRT display of 5 inches, Tape Drive and 700KB read - only memory. It was the most compact system of that time.
MS-DOS: MS-DOS can be called as most popular operating system back in 80’s, it was released in 1981 for IBM PC Compatible as PC-DOS 1.0. It was a flexible programming system and consumed little amount of installation space. It uses X86 bit processing system; Supports FAT32 file system and its newest version was released with Windows XP.
Apple Lisa: Personal Computer Designed by Apple back in 1983 and it was the First Personal Computing Device ever to Offer Graphical User Interface! It was the most important invention of that time with 2MB of RAM, built in Screensaver, Operating system with drive protection and high-resolution display!
Microsoft Windows: 1983 was the year when they announced Graphical User Interface based Operating System, naming it Microsoft Windows, earlier in 1981, project Interface Manager was tested by Microsoft but was not perfected. Windows 1.0 was released in 1985 and was actually an operating environment for MS-DOS.
References
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Computing History Organzation, 2014. Computer History timeline. [Online] Available at: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/cgi/computing-timeline.pl[Accessed 2 december 2014].
Old Computers.net, 2014. History of Computers. [Online] Available at: http://oldcomputers.net[Accessed 2 december 2014].
Soft Schools, 2014. Soft Schools history of computers. [Online] Available at: http://www.softschools.com/timelines/computer_history_timeline/20/[Accessed 2 december 2014].
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