In 1623 the 1st mechanical calculator, capable of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing was developed by the German mathematician Wilhelm Schikard; the only 2 models Schikard made, however, were destroyed in a fire.
In 1642, French mathematician Blaise Pascal built the 1st of more than 4 dozen copies of an adding and subtracting machine that he invented.
In 1790, French inventor Joseph Marie Jacquard devised a new control system for looms. He "programmed" the loom, communicating desired weaving operations to the machine via patterns of holes in paper cards.
The British mathematician and scientist Charles Babbage used the Jacquard punch-card system in his design for a sophisticated, programmable "Analytical Engine" that contained some of the basic features of today's computers. Babbage's conception was beyond the capabilities of the technology of his time, and the machine remained unfinished at his death in 1871.
The 1890 U.S. census was expedited by the rapid processing of huge amounts of data with an electrical punch-card tabulating machine developed by American inventor Herman Hollerith, whose company in 1924 became International Business Machines (IBM).
On the eve of World War II researchers experimented with ways to speed up computation, since calculators using solely mechanical components were too slow. One approach was to use electromechanical relays, which basically are electrically controlled switches.
In 1940, Bell Laboratories mathematician George Stibitz completed the 1st electromechanical relay-based calculator. In the same year Stibitz provided the 1st demonstration of remote operation of a computer, using a teletype to transmit problems to his machine and to receive the results.
In 1941, German engineer Konrad Zuse completed the relay-based Z3, the 1st fully functional digital computer to be controlled by a program. In 1944, the 1st large-scale automatic digital computer, the Mark I, built by IBM and Harvard Professor Howard Aiken, went into operation; this relay-based machine was 55 feet long and 8 feet high.
Efforts were also under way to develop fully electronic machines, using vacuum tubes, which can operate much more quickly than relays.
Between 1937 and 1942 the 1st rudimentary vacuum-tube calculator was built by the physicist John Vincent Atanasoff and his assistant Clifford Berry at Iowa State College (now University).
More substantial electronic machines were the Colossus, developed by the British in 1943 to break German codes, and the Eniac (for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), a 30-ton room-sized computer with over 18,000 vacuum tubes, built by physicist John Mauchly and engineer J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania for the U.S. Army and completed in 1946. The Colossus was a special-purpose machine; its capabilities were powerful (for its time) but limited. Eniac was a general-purpose machine and could be programmed to do different tasks, although programming could take a couple of days, since cables had to be plugged in and switches set by hand.
In 1951, Eckert and Mauchly's Univac ("Universal Automatic Computer") became the 1st computer commercially available in the U.S.; the 1st customer: the Census Bureau. CBS-TV used a Univac in 1952 to predict the results of the presidential election.
The invention of the transistor in 1947 and the integrated circuit in 1958 paved the way for the development of the microprocessor (an entire computer processing unit on a chip), the 1st commercial example of which was the Intel 4004 in 1971. These advances allowed computers to become smaller, speedier, more reliable, and more powerful. In fact, a prediction made in 1965 by engineer and Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors that could be put on a computer chip would double every year (revised in 1975 to every 18 months) has largely held true, coming to be known as "Moore's Law."
In 1975 the 1st widely marketed personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800, was introduced in kit form, with no keyboard and no video display, for under $400. In the same year Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
In 1976 the 1st PC word-processing program, the Electric Pencil, was written.
In 1977 the Apple II was introduced by Apple Computer, which had been formed the previous year by Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak. Capable of displaying text and graphics in color, the machine enjoyed phenomenal success.
In 1981, IBM unveiled its "Personal Computer," which used Microsoft's DOS (disk operating system).
In 1984, Apple Computer introduced the 1st Macintosh. The easy-to-use Macintosh came with a proprietary operating system and was the 1st popular computer to have a GUI (graphical user interface) and a mouse-features originally developed by the Xerox Corporation.
In 1990, Microsoft released Windows 3.0, the 1st workable version of its own GUI.
In 1991, Linux, based on the Unix operating system used in high-power computers, was invented for the PC by Helsinki Univ. student Linus Torvalds and made available for free.
In 1996 the Palm Pilot, the 1st widely successful handheld computer and personal information manager, arrived.
In 1997 the IBM computer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a 6-game match, 3.5-2.5.
In 2001, Apple introduced a new Unix-based operating system called OS X for the Macintosh.
By Apr. 2002, according to computer industry research firm Gartner Dataquest, 1 billion personal computers (PCs), including desktop and laptop machines of all types, had been shipped by manufacturers since 1975, when the 1st commercially successful PC went on sale. The next billion were expected to ship within 5 or 6 years.
As of early 2003, Apple had only about 3% of the overall U.S. personal computer market, with machines using the Microsoft Windows operating system accounting for almost all the rest.
Source: The World Almanac & Book of Facts 2004. CD-Rom
No comments:
Post a Comment