Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Evolution of Computers

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Contents:

Introduction: Computing devices has rapidly evolved over the centuries, 21 century saw the gradual evolution of sotware over hardware. The invention of transistors and advanced fabrication traning has made computers accessible to all which lead to the massive usage and advancements in computers.

Timeline of Computing Technology:

  • Abacus - 500BC: Computing is attributed to the invention of ABACUS almost 3000 years ago. It was a mechanical device capable to doing simple arithmetic calculation only.
  • Pascaline-1642: Blaize Pascal invented a mechanical calculator known as Pascal calculator or Pascaline to do addition and subtraction of two numbers directly and multiplication and division through repeated addition or subtraction.
  • Analytical Engine-1834: Charles Babbage invented analytical engine, a mechanical computing device for inputting, processing, storing and displaying the output, which is considered to form the basis of modern computers.Charles babbage could only construct diffrence engine but Analytical was only designed but could not be made due to technological limitation of that time.
  • Tabulating Machine-1890: Herman Hollerith designed a tabulating machine for summarising the data stored on the punched card. It is considered to be the first step towards programming.
  • Turing Machine-1937: The Turing machine concept was a general purpose programmable machine that was capable to solve any problem by executing the program stored on the punched cards.
  • EDVAC/ENIAC-1945: John Von Neumann introduced the concept of stored program computer which was capable of storing data as well as program in the memory. The EDVAC and then the ENIAC computers were developed based on this concept.
  • Transistor-1947: Vaccum tubes were replaced by transistors developed at Bell Labs, using semiconductor materials.
  • Integrated Circuit-1970: An Integrated Circuit (IC) is a silicon chip which contains entire electronic circuit on a very small area. The size of computer has drastically reduced because of ICs.

Generation of Computers:

Generation Details Example
1st Generation 1946-1959
  • This generation used vacuum tubes
  • The computers were massive in size, weights in tones
  • Could store only small amount of data on magnetic drums
 ENIAC, EDVAC, UVINAC, IBM-701, IBM-650
2nd generation 1959-1965
  • Thus generation used Transistor instead of vaccum tubes
  • Assembly language and puch cards were used for input
  • Only used for specific purpose
 Honeywell 400, IBM 7094 etc
3rd Generation 1965-1971
  • This generation computers used Integrated circuits
  • They used Operating System for better resource management
  • The computers were fast, cheap and reliable compared to earlier
 PDP-8, PDP-11, IBM 370 etc
4th Generation 1971-1980
  • This generation used Microprocessor
  • Graphical User Interface(GUI) was also used in this generation
  • All high level language could be used
 IBM 4341, DEC 10, PUP 11
5th Generation 1980-onwards
  • This generation is based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
  • More focus on Software than hardware
  • Computer are smaller in size, more user friendly and augmented technology based
 Desktop, Laptop, Ultrabook, wearables etc

References:

  • NCERT for Class 11
  • https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/
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