Evolution of Computers and Its Effects

Computers are an essential tool for the professional in today's age. They help us with everything including work in school nowadays and at our home, but back then we didn't have the privilege to use computers at there house they were so big they couldn’t fit in our average room size today. It takes multiple rooms to fit one computer in because it needed all this space to fit everything in. When the computer was first invented it was very interesting. It is amazing how far computers have come today. Computers were once super big and about the size of an average room and they weighed around 50 tons. Nowadays our calculators are smarter than the computers they used for the moon landing. The computer as we know it today had its beginning with a 19th century English mathematics professor named Charles Babbage. He designed the Analytical Engine and it was this design that the basic framework of the computers of today are based on.The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out of a need to solve a serious number-crunching crisis. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the U.S. population had to a number so astounding that it took more than seven years to tabulate the U.S. Census results. The government sought a faster way to get the job done, giving rise to punch card based computers that took up entire rooms.

Alan turing was another person who helped make the computer. What mathematicians called an “effective” method for solving a problem was simply one that could be carried by a human mathematical clerk working by rote. In Turing’s time, those rote-workers were in fact called “computers,” and human computers carried out some aspects of the work later done by electronic computers. The Entscheidungsproblem sought an effective method for solving the fundamental mathematical problem of determining exactly which mathematical statements are provable within a given formal mathematical system and which are not. In 1945, the war over, Turing was recruited to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London to create an electronic computer. His design for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was the first complete specification of an electronic stored-program all-purpose digital computer. Had Turing’s ACE been built as he planned, it would have had vastly more memory than any of the other early computers, as well as being faster. However, his colleagues at NPL thought the engineering too difficult to attempt, and a much smaller machine was built, the Pilot Model ACE 1950.

In 1822 an english mathematician named Charles Babbage thought up, and invented a steam driven early calculator, it had the ability to compute large amounts of numbers in the form of tables,The english government funded project was a failure, but it did pave the way as a concept for the computers of the future, Around 68 years later, a man named Herman Hollerith designed a sort of punch card reader that had the ability to calculate numbers, it ended up calculating the 1880 census in around 3 years, this saved the government around 5 million dollars, (which would have the buying power of 123 million in today's economy). These computers that took up entire rooms, and required handfed paper punch cards, led way to the computer giant of old, IBM.

In 1936, a man named Alan Turing, who created the concept “Turing machine” which could calculate anything that is computable, the current computer was modeled after his original concept. In 1939 the company Hewlett-packard, is created by David Packard, and Bill Hewlett, in a garage, now a household name, along with IBM they helped get the idea of personal computers to be a reality. The first computer that could solve 29 equations at the same time, was created by a grad student named Clifford Berry, and his professor, Atanastoff. This computer was a lot different than the computers that had come before it, this computer could store information on the onboard memory.

The first computer that was designed for commercial use was the UNIVAC, this was built by two people named Mauchly and Presper. They received funding from the Census Bureau. Though this computer still had to be fed punch cards. The first computer language COBOL was developed in 1953 by a man named Thomas Watson, coincidentally the son of the CEO of IBM. He also came up with the idea of the EDPM during the North Korean war to help keep tabs. The first computer chip was unveiled in 1958 by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, they received the Nobel Prize in 2000. In 1964 something entirely new was unveiled, the first computer with a GUI, (or Graphics user interface) This was the catalyst that would start the transformation for the computer from a specialized machine, to something that is a bit more accessible to the general public. Though computers were now outfitted with a graphics interface they still did not have any sort of operating system that was portable across multiple platforms, the operating system UNIX became the program of choice for large companies and some branches of government. Though the general public shied away due to the program lagging behind pretty significantly.

Intel the then newly formed, but now current largest producer of computer processors unveils the 1103, the first Dynamic Access memory chip in 1970. The floppy disc was one of the most widely used forms of storing information before hard drives, and USB drives became popular, they allowed you to store a DOS, and some files on them, it was the preferred way to share information between computers. This was unveiled in 1971. The ethernet cable was developed to connect multiple PC’s to others, or some sort of homebrew network, along with other forms of hardware. On May 22, 1973, Bob Metcalfe (then at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, PARC, in California) wrote a memo describing the Ethernet network system he had invented for interconnecting advanced computer workstations, making it possible to send data to one another and to high-speed laser printer.

Computers have all kinds of parts inside of them like the GPU, Motherboard Which is the most important, the CPU, PSU, and the Hard drive. All these parts help run a computer today but back then it wasn't this way. None of these parts existed except the CPU back then. All that connected the people were wires that ran from computer to computer. The motherboard was the brain of the computer and was invented by IBM in 1981 but at first they called it a breadboard. The first working CPU was invented in 1971. They called it a microcomputer on a chip (they didn't use microprocessor until 1972). The first microprocessor is called the intel 4004. This microprocessor was then later replaced by an 8 bit microprocessor called the 8008 which was made in 1972.

The first computer graphic to be used on a computer was in the 1940s, when the Whirlwind I was developed for the U.S. Navy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Whirlwind was a flight simulator that could locate objects. Dr. Ivan Sutherland, an MIT graduate, wrote Sketchpad in 1963. In 1956, the first hard drive was sold commercially and was invented by IBM. This hard drive could hold up to 5Mb and was the size of two refrigerators This hard drive shipped with RAMAC 305 system and is 10,000 dollars and weighed around 1 ton. Back in the mid 1900 1 gigabyte was around 500,000 and compared to today that is very expensive and is as much as a car. Nowadays 1 gigabyte is about $0.03 and that is cheap.

Alternatively referred to as main memory, primary memory, or system memory, RAM (random access memory) is a hardware device that allows information to be stored and retrieved on a computer. RAM is usually associated with DRAM, which is a type of memory module. Because information is accessed randomly instead of sequentially like it is on a CD or hard drive, access times are much faster. However, unlike ROM, RAM is a volatile memory and requires power to keep the data accessible. If the computer is turned off, all data contained in RAM is lost.Over the evolution of the computer, there have been different variations of RAM. Some of the more common examples are DIMM, RIMM, SIMM, SO-DIMM, and SO-RIMM.

Computers back then and computers now were totally different. We went from these gigantic 50 ton computers to computers that weigh just a few ounces. We went from hard drives that weigh a ton to weighing in at ounces also. We went from having to put in punch cards to typing everything in. Computers today are so much more helpful now. If we had the computers we had back then today we would not be able to have as much brain power as we have now. Computers would be connected through cables and now they are connected through the internet and LAN. Today we play with people all over the world and it takes a click of a button to play with anyone. You connect with people by your IP address. It justs like your house address except it is on a computer and on the internet. The IP address says what town you live in and all your information about your router. Nowadays there are apps that can hack your IP address and find out where you live.