Evolution of Computer Devices

 

Abacus (3000BC)

Developed around 3000 years BC by the Mesopotamians and later improved by Chinese, an abacus consists of beads divided into two parts which are movable on the rods of the two parts. Addition and multiplication etc. of numbers is done by using the place value of the digits of the numbers and position of beads in the abacus.

Napiers logs and Bones  (1550-1617)

Also called Napier's rods, are numbered rods (10 in total) which can be used to perform multiplication of any number by a number 2-9.

Blaise Pascals Adding Machine (1642)

A machine made up of gears which were used for adding numbers quickly. It consisted of numbered toothed wheels having unique position values. The rotation of wheels controlled the addition and subtraction operations. This machine was capable of carry-transfer automatically.

Leibnitz Calculator (1671)

Gottfried Leibnitz, a German mathematician, improved the adding machine and constructed at new machine that was able to perform multiplication and division as well.

Jacquards loom (1801)

Joseph Jacquard manufactured punched cards and used them to control looms in. Thus the entire control weaving process was automatic. The entire operation was under a program's control. With the historic invention of punched cards, the era of storing and retrieving information started that greatly influenced the later inventions and advancements.

Babbages Difference Engine (1822)

Charles Babbage, a professor of mathematics, developed Difference Engine machine to calculate logarithmic tables to a high degree of precision. The difference engine was made to calculate various mathematical functions such as polynomial evaluation by finite difference.

Analytical Engine (1833)

Charles Babbage designed an Analytical Engine, a general-purpose machine, a real ancestor of the modern day computer. The Analytical Engine was mainly in Conceptual phase and was never completed in form of a real machine.
• Analytical Engine was capable of performing different functions based on programming, came up with important concepts like central processor, storage area, memory, input-output devices and two major innovations like comparisons and modification of stored information.

First Program (1834)

Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace (Daughter of poet Lord Byran) impressed with the concept of the Analytical Engine created plans for how the machine could calculate Bernoulli numbers. This is regarded as the first "computer program," and she is the first "programmer."
• The US Department of Defense named a language Ada in her honour in

Holleriths Machine (1887)

Herman Hollerith (1869-1926) fabricated what was dreamt of by Charles Babbage. He fabricated the first electromechanical punched-card tabulator that used punched cards for input, output and instructions.
• This machine was used by American Department of Census to compile their 1880 census data and was able to complete compilation in 3 years which earlier used to take around 10 years.
• Later Hollerith founded a company that became International Business Machines (IBM) to market the technology.

First Electronic Computer (1939)

The prototype of first electronic computer was assembled by John Atansoff and Cliford Barry, which was completed in 1942 using 300 vacuum tubes. John Atansoff came up with the concept of using binary numbers, which is still in use.

Mark-I (1943)

Prof. Howard Aiken constructed Mark-I, an automatic, general purpose electro-mechanical computer, which could multiply two 10-digit numbers in 5 seconds - a record at that time.

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) (1946)

Developed by Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, ENIAC was made up of 18,000 vacuum tubes and occupied a 30 x 50 feet room. Programming was done by plugging wires into a patch panel and was 5000 times faster than the Harvard MARK-I.

John van Neumann Architecture - Stored-Programming Concept

Dr. John van Neumann suggested the pioneer stored program concept that proposed:
(i) Data and instructions are stored in a single read-write memory.
(ii) The memory contents are addressable by locations
(iii) Execution takes place in a sequential fashion i.e., from one instruction to the next unless modified explicitly.