The first computer or "computing machine" was built by an English inventor named Charles Babbage in 1822. He also built the first automatic digital computer in 1834. Babbage combined his mathematical talents with machines. He thought this was important because machines could perform the same task over and over again without making mistakes and mathematics was a task that had a lot of repetition. This mathematician tried to design a computer like a modern one but ran out of money before it was completed.
Almost fifty years later, an American named Herman Hollerith used Babbage's ideas to produce an electromechanical machine. He built this to make computing the United States Census of 1890 easier. His machine used punch cards to store data. The punch cards were then fed into the machine to calculate the results. It had taken almost ten years to get the results of the Census of 1880. With Hollerith's computer it took six weeeks! In 1896, Hollerith started a private company with this computer and named it the Tabulating Machine Company. This became one of the largest computer companies in the world : International Business Machines - IBM. Punch cards were used until the early 1960s for calculating data.
Hollerith's computer was not was we have today and many versions have been developed since his. In 1931, Vannevar Bush worked with others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and created an analog computer that could solve differential equations. This machine used gears and shaft motion to perform calculations. Ater versions of the analog computer used vacuum tubes.
The first electronic digital computer was designed by John V. Atanasoff, an American theoretical physicist at Iowa State College between 1937 and 1942. The computer had 300 vacuum tubes for control and arithmetic calucalations, used binary numbersmemory capacitors and logic operations. This was able to be 1000 times more accurate than Bush's differential analyzer. Many of the qualities of Atanasoff's computer can still be found in today's computers. During the 1940s, the development of computers exploded. These are called the first generation computers. They were different because of their massive size, mainly due to the use of vacuum tubes, and their instructions were computer specific.
In the late 40s, the transitor was invented. These were used instead of vacumm tubes and thus smaller computers could be built. This brought second generation computers. The transitor also made it possible to make supercomputers. IBM and Sperry-Rand were the first companies to do this. Another change came with assembly language rather than the computer specific instructions. The second generation computers were used by the government, colleges, and large businesses. Small businesses and other institutions could not afford this technology.
Another breakthrough came with the development of the integrated circuit. An engineer at Texas Instruments, Jack Kilby, produced the first integrated circuit in 1958. This tiny device provided a miniaturization of transistors, diosdes, resistors connections between them. The .25 inch silicon chip made it easier to build faster and more efficient computers at a lower price.
Microprocessors quickly followed this invention. Intelcorp produced the first chip, 8080, in 1974. These new technologies made it possible to make the microcomputer, often refered to as the desktop or personal computer. No longer to people have to go to room-size computers with punch cards to calculate information. Noew, we have machines that are the size of portable television sets that fit conveniently on desks. We can play games, search for information and still use computers to calculate numbers.
References
Jones Telecommunications & Multimedia Encyclopedia. URL http://www.digitalcentury.com/encyclo/update/comp_hd.html
The New Encyclopaedia Britannica Macropaedia, vol 16. Chicago : Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1998.
Sally Noseall
Sanguine JHSchool