History of Computer

Let us take a look at the history of the computers that we know today. The very first calculatingdevice used was the then finger of a man's hand. tis, in fact, is why today we still cound in tens and multiples of tens. then the abacus was invented, a bead frame in which the beads are moved from left to right. people went on using some form of abacus well into the 16th century,and it is still beung used in some parts of the world because it can be understood without knowing how to read.

During the 17th and 18th centuriesmany people tried to find easy ways of calculating. J.Napier, a scotsman, devised a mechanical way of multiplaying and dividing, which is how the modern slid rule works. henry briggs used napier's ideas to produce logarithm tables which al mathematicians used today. Calculus, another barnch of mathematics, was indepently invented by both. Sir Isaac Newton, an Englisman, and Leibnitz, a German mathematician.

The first real calculating machine appeared in 1820 as the result of several people's experiments. This type of machine, which save great deal of time and reduce the pssibility of making mistake, depends on a series of ten-toothed gear whels. In 1830 Charles Babbage, an Englishman, designed a machine that was called 'The Analitycal Engine'. This machine, which Babbage snowed at the Paris Exhibition in 1855, was an attemp to cut out the human being altogether, except for providing the machine with the necessary facts about the problemto be solved. He never finished this work, but many of his idea were the basis for building today's computers.

In 1930, the first analog coomputer ws built by an American named Vannevar bush. This device was used in World war II to help aim guns. Mark I, the name given to the first digital computer, was completed in 1944. The man reponsible for this invention were Professor Howard Aiken and some people from IBM. This was the first machine that could figure out long list of mathematical problems, all at a very fast rate. In 1946 two engineers at University of pennsylvania, J.Eckert an J.Mauchly, built the first digital computer using part called vacuum tubes. The named their new invention for the computer inside the computer's memory.

The first generation of computers, which used vacuum tubes, came out in 1950. Univac I is an example of these computers which could perform thousand of calculations per second. In 1960, the second generation of computer was developed and these could perfrom work ten times faster than their predecessors. The reason for this extra speed was the use of transistors instead of vacum tubes. Secon generation computers were smaller, faster and more dependable than first generation computers. The third generation computers appearednon the market in 1965. These computers could do a million calculations a second, which is 1000 times as many as first generation computers. Unlike second generation computers, these are controlled by tiny integrated circuits and are consequently smaller and more dependable. Fourth generation computer have now arrived, and the integrated circuits that are being developed have been greatly reduced in size. This is due to microminiaturization, which means that the circuits are much smaller than before ;as many as 1000 tiny circuits now fit on to a single chip. A chip is square or rectangular piece of silicon, ussualy from 1/10 to 1/4 inch, upon which several layers of an integrated circuit are eteched or imprinted, after which the circuit is encapaulated in plastic, ceramic or metal. Fourth generatinon computers are 50 times faster than third generation computers and can complete approximately 1,000,000 intruction per second.

At the rate computer technology is growing, today's computers might be obsolete by 1988 and most certainly 1990. It has been said that if transport technology had developed as rapidly ascomputer technology, a trip across the Atlantic Ocean today would take a few seconds.