...Neumann was aware of this: he justified it as being faster than any other method at his disposal, and also noted that when it went awry it did so obviously, unlike methods which could be subtly incorrect. While consulting for the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania on the EDVAC project, von Neumann wrote an incomplete First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. The paper, whose public distribution nullified the patent claims of EDVAC designers J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, described a computer architecture in which the data and the program are both stored in the computer's memory in the same address space.[50] John von Neumann also consulted for the ENIAC project, when ENIAC was being modified to contain a stored program. Since the modified ENIAC was fully functional by 1948 and the EDVAC wasn't delivered to Ballistics Research Laboratory until 1949, one could argue that ENIAC was the first computer to use a stored program. John von Neumann also designed the instruction set for the modified ENIAC, and he should be given credit for this. The stored program version of ENIAC ran 6 times slower, but it was still entirely I/O bound, and...
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...and personal information stored on computers has increased far beyond expectations. Governments, the military, and the economy could not operate without the use of computers. Banks transfer trillions of dollars every day over inter-linking networks, and more than one billion pieces of electronic mail are passed through the world's networks daily. It is the age of the computer network, the largest of which is known as the InterNet. A complex web of communications inter-linking millions of computers together -- and this number is at least doubling every year. The computer was originally designed as a scientific and mathematical tool, to aid in performing intense and precise calculations. However, from the large, sixty square foot ENIAC (Electronical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) of 1946, to the three square foot IBM PC of today, their uses have mutated and expanded far...
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...History of Computer “Computer” is probably one of the most heard words nowadays. When we hear this word, we can picture a monitor with a rectangular box, keyboard and a mouse in technical sense. But literally what is computer? A computer is a general purpose device that can be programmed to carry out a set of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. Since a sequence of operations can be readily changed, the computer can solve more than one kind of problem. Conventionally, a computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit (CPU), and some form of memory. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logic operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored information. Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source, and the result of operations saved and retrieved. But the computer that we are used to seeing now is not a result of one day. It’s a result of many years. Many scholars have shared their idea to develop this device, though Charles Babbage is called the main person behind the invention of computer. A brief history of computer is provided below: I would divide the history behind computer into two parts. First one is history before birth of Jesus and second one is history after birth of Jesus. History before birth of Jesus: Actually there are not many events in this period that contribute to today’s computers but this period has...
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...With the advances in computer technology it is now possible for more and more Canadians to have personal computers in their homes. With breakthroughs in computer processing speeds and with computer storage capacity, the combination of this with the reduced size of the computer have allowed for even the smallest apartment to hold a computer. In the past the only places to have computers were military institutes and some universities; this was because of their immense size and price. Today with falling computer prices and the opportunity to access larger networks, the amount of computers has grown from just 10% in 1986 to 25% in 1994. Also, of the 25%, 34% of them were equipped with modems, which allow for connection to on line services via telephone lines. The primitive start of the computer came about around 4000 BC; with the invention of the abacus, by the Chinese. It was a rack with beads strung on wires that could be moved to make calculations. The first digital computer is usually accredited to Blaise Pascal. In 1642 he made the device to aid his father, who was a tax collector. In 1694 Gottfried Leibniz improved the machine so that with the rearrangement of a few parts it could be used to multiply. The next logical advance came from Thomas of Colmar in 1890, who produced a machine that could perform all of the four basic operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. With the added versatility this device was in operation up until the First World War. ...
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...THE HISTORY OF COMPUTER One of the earliest machines designed to assist people in calculations was the abacus which is still being used some 5000 years after its invention. In 1642 Blaise Pascal (a famous French mathematician) invented an adding machine based on mechanical gears in which numbers were represented by the cogs on the wheels. Englishman, Charles Babbage, invented in the 1830's a "Difference Engine" made out of brass and pewter rods and gears, and also designed a further device which he called an "Analytical Engine". His design contained the five key characteristics of modern computers:- 1. An input device 2. Storage for numbers waiting to be processed 3. A processor or number calculator 4. A unit to control the task and the sequence of its calculations 5. An output device Augusta Ada Byron (later Countess of Lovelace) was an associate of Babbage who has become known as the first computer programmer. An American, Herman Hollerith, developed (around 1890) the first electrically driven device. It utilised punched cards and metal rods which passed through the holes to close an electrical circuit and thus cause a counter to advance. This machine was able to complete the calculation of the 1890 U.S. census in 6 weeks compared with 7 1/2 years for the 1880 census which was manually counted. In 1936 Howard Aiken of Harvard University convinced Thomas Watson of IBM to invest $1 million in the development of an electromechanical version of Babbage's analytical engine...
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...to assist with the US Census * 1933 Telex was conceived during at the time Germanys Third Reich, it allowed input of information to be delivered worldwide on paper as an output. * 1937-1942 John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry created the first digital electronic computer known as the Atansasoff-Berry Computer ABC for short. It was the first to use modern digital switching techniques and vacuum tubes as switches, and it introduced the concepts of binary arithmetic and logic circuits. * 1943 during WWII Military needs leads Tommy Flowers in completing a secret British codebreaking computer called Colossus and was named appropriately so due to its size and used vacuum tubes and 1,500 of them. * 1946 Hitler is defeated, and ENIAC was constructed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania by John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchly and their associates. It operated on a 10-diget numbers and could multiply numbers at the rate of 300 products per second. It was 1000 times faster...
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...I. Thinking Machines: The Creation of the Computer * High speed, small package * Two states: a.) ON b.) OFF * Creates its magic by calculating with the speed and accuracy that far surpasses its human inventors * Takes information , processes it, and outputs result, which is done by the partnership of the ff.: * HARDWARE – comes in boxes, physical components * SOFTWARE – disks, consists of instructions that tell the comp what to do (Example: using the keyboard to type in the input) * CPU (Central Processing Unit) – comp’s brain; processes input; magic is its blinding speed * Modern Processors are measured in mips (millions of instructions per second) * Processing CPU may retrieve data stored in Ram (random-access memory)or data stored on a hard drive * Modern ram – so quick. Every second, it can send the equivalent of ten thousand typed written pages of information to the CPU * Modern hard drives – can store the equivalent of 250,000 pages of typed material II. Calculating By Steam 19th century European Industrial revolution was underway; the development and production in commerce came from the maturing fields in engineering, navigation, surveying, finance, and science. The practical application of these fields relied on volume after volume of tables- for trigonometry, tides, interest rates, multiplication, and gravity. Tables were critical. The actual figuring was by people who specialized in mathematical computation. Surprisingly, these...
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...Eniac Babbage's big mistake was being born in an age which had the basic knowledge to design such a machine, but no technology with which to build it. LJISD 10/16/2012 Maria G. Picazo This is a short summary of what eniac is. ENIAC was the world's first general purpose, electronic, digital computer. "General purpose" means that ENIAC could be reconfigured to solve a variety of problems; "electronic" means ENIAC used electronic devices (i.e., vacuum tubes instead of mechanical methods like the relay switches that were used on most previous computers) for the actual computations; and "digital" means that ENIAC performed computations in discrete steps, unlike the analog computers prevalent at that time. ENIAC is the acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. Eniac is short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The first one was made by time during world war2.It is an acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, as it was the first operational electronic digital computer in the U.S. It was developed by the Army Ordnance. It was used as World War II ballistic firing tables. The ENIAC, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and consisting of 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductor, was completed in 1945. It was heavy, as a matter of fact according to calculations, cosmic-ray studies, thermal ignition, random-number studies, wind-tunnel design, and other...
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...First Generation (1941-1956) World War gave rise to numerous developments and started off the computer age. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was produced by a partnershp between University of Pennsylvannia and the US government. It consisted of 18,000 vacuum tubes and 7000 resistors. It was developed by John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly and was a general purpose computer. "Von Neumann designed the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) in 1945 with a memory to hold both a stored program as well as data." Von Neumann's computer allowed for all the computer functions to be controlled by a single source. Then in 1951 came the Universal Automatic Computer(UNIVAC I), designed by Remington rand and collectively owned by US census bureau and General Electric. UNIVAC amazingly predicted the winner of 1952, presidential elections, Dwight D. Eisenhower. In first generation computers, the operating instructions or programs were specifically built for the task for which computer was manufactured. The Machine language was the only way to tell these machines to perform the operations. There was great difficulty to program these computers ,and more when there were some malfunctions. First Generation computers used Vacuum tubes and magnetic drums(for data storage). Second Generation Computers (1956-1963) The invention of Transistors marked the start of the second generation. These transistors took place of the vacuum tubes used in the first...
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...The History of Computers Thousands of years ago calculations were done using people’s fingers and pebbles that were found just lying around. Technology has transformed so much that today the most complicated computations are done within seconds. Human dependency on computers is increasing everyday. Just think how hard it would be to live a week without a computer. We owe the advancements of computers and other such electronic devices to the intelligence of men of the past. The history of the computer dates back all the way to the prehistoric times. The first step towards the development of the computer, the abacus, was developed in Babylonia in 500 B.C. and functioned as a simple counting tool. It was not until thousands of years later that the first calculator was produced. In 1623, the first mechanical calculator was invented by Wilhelm Schikard, the “Calculating Clock,” as it was often referred to as, “performed it’s operations by wheels, which worked similar to a car’s odometer” (Evolution, 1). Still, there had not yet been anything invented that could even be characterized as a computer. Finally, in 1625 the slide rule was created becoming “the first analog computer of the modern ages” (Evolution, 1). One of the biggest breakthroughs came from by Blaise Pascal in 1642, who invented a mechanical calculator whose main function was adding and subtracting numbers. Years later, Gottfried Leibnez improved Pascal’s model by allowing it to also perform such operations as...
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...remotely on the CNC using a Teletype connected via special telephone lines. This is the first demonstration of remote access computing. • 1941 Konrad Zuse finishes the Z3 computer. Using 2,300 relays, the Z3 used floating point binary arithmetic and had a 22-bit word length. • 1942 The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) is completed. The ABC was designed and built by Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry between 1939 and 1942. • 1944 Harvard Mark-1 is completed. Created by Howard Aiken, and designed and built by IBM, the Harvard Mark-1 was a room-sized relay-based calculator. This machine had a fifty-foot long camshaft that synchronized the machine’s thousands of component parts. • 1946 The first glimpse of the ENIAC, a machine built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert that improved by 1,000 times on the speed of its contemporaries. • 1949 Maurice Wilkes assembled the EDSAC, the first practical stored-program computer, at Cambridge University. For programming the EDSAC, Wilkes established a library of short programs called subroutines stored on punched paper tapes. • 1950 The first commercially produced computer was built called the ERA 1101 by the Engineering Research Associates of Minneapolis. • 1953 IBM shipped its first electronic computer, the 701. During three years of production, IBM sold 19 machines to research laboratories, aircraft companies, and...
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...I am pleased to give you information on the history of computers. I learned a lot of important things about computers from our time and our past. Take a moment to enjoy my paper on the history of computers. I hope it’s as enlightening to you as it was to me. “Who invented the computer”? is not a question easily answered. The answer is that many inventors contributed to the history of computers. Computers are complex pieces of machinery made up of many parts each of which can be considered a separate invention. This paper covers some of the milestones in computer history, concentrating more on the history of personal home computers. For instance, in 1936 Konrad Zuse made the first freely programmable computer called the Z1. In 1944, Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper created the Mark1. Then in 1951 John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly produced the first commercial computer called the Univac. In 1953 I. B.M (International Business Machines Corporation) enters into the history of computers. At one time hardly anyone could access a computer simply because it was not at our grasp. Computers weren't considered mainstream until the 1980's, before that we had several other ways of getting work done. In corporate settings, secretaries and typewriters were used to do the bulk of the paperwork, most executives utilized more than one secretary. The issue with that would be that human error comes into play they had to correct mistakes using liquid paper. ...
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...Eleonor Lopez Cos 101 Prof. K. Lee Assignment #1 Chapter 1 What is the most important difference between a computer and a calculator? [RQ, no. 2] The most important difference between a computer and a calculator is that in the computer you can write, navigate in the web, investigate about anything, play games, and other things meanwhile in the calculator you only can do math work. How are computers today similar to those from World War II? How are they different? [RQ, no. 3] The similarities between today’s computer and World War II are that they have the same technology and they use the same chips. There was only one electronic computer in World War Two, which was called ENIAC, and was a building full of vacuum tubes. It was built to calculate artillery projectile paths, and had to have the program wired in. It had no memory, and displayed the output with glowing lights. World War 2 computers were huge that have to take of a whole room, lag a lot, and much more complicated to use. Today’s computers are a lot faster, smarter, better technologies and more compact, and easy to use. The way people use the Internet has changed since the early days. How? [RQ, no. 4] Yes, because we use internet to find information, to communicate with others around the world and it’s a lot faster to obtain information then reading a book. Is a smart phone a computer? Explain your answer. [RQ, no. 7] Yes, because you have the ability to do everything such...
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...The History of Computers From primitive abaci to lab tops and calculators, the computer has evolved through time to become the essential part of our technocratic society. The development of the computer has shaped the way technology and science is viewed in different cultures around the world. The connotation of what a computer is nowadays brings to mind a monitor, keyboard, processor and its other electronic components; however, that is not how things have always been. From the Chinese using abaci to count, to the Druids' usage of stones to follow the seasonal changes, to the Europeans using Pascalines and calculators to work out mathematical problems the concept of the computer has been around for hundreds of years (Hoyle). Therefore, the history of computers is important to observe not only for the influence it brought to our culture, but the progress it has made through time. The history of modern computers has been influenced by the earlier advancement of primordial technology. The abacus developed in circa 500 B.C for example, used pebbles, rocks, beads, or shells to keep track of the counters numbers. Furthermore, "the abacus was man's first attempt at automating the counting process" (Hoyle). In addition, the Pascaline, invented and built by a French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, was the first mathematical adding machine (Long 54). The Pascaline was a gear-driven machine that allowed the user to calculate answers without doing arithmetic (Hoyle). In...
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...Computer Structure and Logic Unit 4 Research Paper 1 The ENIAC Computer 4/26/13 World War II was knocking on the United States front door when the decision to develop a computer to handle complex mathematical calculations was made. The United States was in a dire need for a machine that could make accurate, precise, and fast calculations. The United States government and military turned to John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert to build the first Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator; or for short the ENIAC. The United States was ill prepared and forced into the war which meant that it had few resources to accomplish the task of defeating the enemy. The ENIAC was purposefully designed to calculate all variables such as wind speed, trajectory, and distance so that each shot fired from the military was done with devastating precision and accuracy. The ENIAC enabled the military to do these calculations in a matter of hours and minutes versus days. John Mauchly and John Eckert designed artillery tables using the ENIAC to make these vital calculations that were much faster than manually calculating. Unfortunately the design of the Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator was not completed until after the war. Although the ENIAC was designed for World War II, it had other uses for that time period. One of the greatest contributions that ENIAC had was with the development of the Hydrogen bomb. The ENIAC was able to calculate the complex mathematical formulas needed...
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