A BRIEF History of Computing: People and machines

1. CSC 170 Computing: Science and Creativity A BRIEF History of Computing: People and machines Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE)‏

2. Computing • Computingis any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating algorithmic processes - e.g. through computers.Wikipedia • People started counting on their digits, toes, and would add twigs when count > 20, before numbers • Needed a way to measure months and seasons to know when to celebrate and plant • Inventors have been mechanizing counting and arithmetic for centuries Machu Picchu Hovenweep Abu Simbel 7 Moai at Ahu Akivi

3. Counting board 300 BC Salama’s Tablet (marble) • A surface marked with lines for calculation with counters • Earliest known form of a counting device • Performed mathematical calculations common in the ancient world • Precursor to the abacus

4. Euclid 300 BC • The Founder of Geometry • Euclid’s Algorithm (step-by-step set of operations): the oldest still in use today 1: Start with (a,b) such that |a|≥∣∣b∣∣ If b=0 then the GCD is a (stop) 2: set r ← remainder of a/b 3: Set a←b and b←r (and thus |a|≥∣∣b∣∣ again) 4: Repeat these steps until b=0 1: a ← 33 1: b ← 9 2: r ← 6 3: a ← 9 3: b ← 6 2: r ← 3 3: a ← 6 3: b ← 3 2: r ← 0 3: a ← 3 3: b ← 0 GCD is 3

5. Abu Jaafar Mohammad Ibn Mousa Al Khwarizmi 780 – 850 • Persion Mathematician, Astronomer • Founder of Algebra • Developed the concept of a written process for doing something • Published a book on the process of algorithms • The basis of software

6. Abacus with beads 190 AD • An early aid for mathematical computations • Aids the memory of the human performing the calculation • Skilled abacus operators add and subtract as quickly as a person using a hand calculator • The oldest surviving abacus was used in 300 B.C. by the Babylonians • Still used today

7. Napier bones 1617 • John Napier invented logarithms • Can do multiplication by adding • Led to the slide rule in 1632 • Slide rules were used the British to compute taxes without representation, and help land on the moon

8. PASCALINE 1642 • Blaise Pascal’s Calculator was the first mechanical device • Could add and subtract to help his father to collect taxes at Rouen • Had carry over by connected gears: 10 turns added 1 • Gottfried Leibniz extended this for multiplication 1960s

9. 10,000 cards to weave this self-portrait Jacquard Loom 1804 • First fully automated and programmable Loom • Punch cards used to “program” the pattern to be woven into cloth • Was a real boon to mill owners, but put many loom operators out of work • Angry mobs smashed Jacquard looms and once attacked Jacquard himself. • Another example of labor unrest following technological innovation • Most studies show that, overall, technology has actually increased the number of jobs

10. Charles Babbage 1791-1871 • English mathematician, engineer, philosopher and inventor • Originated the concept of the programmable computer, and designed one

11. Difference Engine DESIGN 1882 Built in 2002 • Numerical tables were constructed by hand using large numbers of humans • Annoyed by the many human errors this produced, Charles Babbage designed a “difference engine” that could calculate values of polynomial functions

12. 1837 – Analytical Engine • Charles Babbage first described a general purpose analytical engine in 1837, but worked on the design until his death in 1871 • It was never built • As designed, it would have been programmed using punch-cards and would have included features such as sequential control, loops, conditionals and branching. • If constructed, it would have been the first “computer” as we think of them today

13. Augusta Ada Byron King 1815-1852 • British Mathematician • Her notes on the analytical engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. • The world's first computer programmer

14. Alan Turing 1912-1954 • British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, mathematical biologist • Founder of computer science • Turing Test (for AI)‏ • Turing Machine • Helped build Colossus, a computer to break the Enigma code during world war two It’s been said their work ended the war 2 years early

15. TurinG MACHINE 1936 • A Turing machine is a hypothetical device with an unlimited memory capacity in the form of an infinite tape marked out into squares, on each of which a symbol can be printed • The machine can alter the scanned symbol • The tape can be moved back and forth through the machine, this being one of the elementary operations of the machine

16. TurinG MACHINE 1936 • Although simple, the Turing Machine is the essence of computation • All modern day digital computers do what a Turing Machine can do • It turned out that a Turing machine would have to exist for every problem you solve • Turing described the Universal Turing Machine • Universality: Any problem can be solved on one computer by allowing arbitrary input

17. Colossus Mark I & II 1943-1942 • The Colossus Mark I & II are widely acknowledged as the first programmable electric computers • Used at Bletchley Park to decode German codes

18. Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper,Harvard Mark I Computer, 1944 • Computer was created by IBM for Harvard University • Used to compute tables for the Navy and to determine whether implosion was a viable choice to detonate atomic bombs

19. 1946 –John Eckert & John W. Mauchly – ENIAC 1 Computer • ENIAC was short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer • It was the first general purpose (programmable to solve any problem) electric computer • It contained over 17,000 vacuum tubes, weighed 27 tones and drew 150 kW of power to operate • The six female first programmers weren’t given any manuals but had real programs and real bugs and real deadlines.

20. Claude shannon 1916-2001 • “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (1948) discussed (in 55 pages) how to have a message at one point be the same at another that proposed the binary digit (bit) • The Founder of Information Theory: information can be treated like a measurable physical quantity • helped translate circuit design from an art into a science

21. UNIVAC 1951 25 feet by 50 feet in size 5,600 tubes, 18,000 crystal diodes 300 relays Internal storage capacity of 1,008 fifteen bit words was achieved using 126 mercury delay lines • First commercial computer - Between 1951 and 1958, 47 UNIVAC I computers were delivered

22. UNIVAC 1951 • UNIVAC tube board and individual vacuum tube

23. 1947 –The transistor • Invented by William Shockley (seated) John Bardeen & Walter Brattain at Bell Labs • The transistor replaces bulky vacuum tubes with a smaller, more reliable, and power saving solid sate circuit

24. Grace Hopper 1906-1992 • Developed the first compiler at Remington Rand’s UNIVAC I • She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL • She won the first "man of the year" award from the Data Processing Manage-ment Association in 1969 • National Medal of Technology 1991 • Rear Admiral in the Navy

25. Grace Hopper FINDS THE FIRST BUG

26. 1954 – FORTRAN • John Backus & IBM invent the first successful high level programming language, and compiler, that ran on IBM 701 computers • FORmulaTRANslation was designed to make calculating the answers to scientific and math problems easier

27. 1958 – Integrated Circuit • Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments & Robert Noyce at Fairchild semiconductor independently invent the first integrated circuits or “the chip” • Jack Kilby was awarded the National Medal of Science and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame • Received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the integrated circuit

28. 1st commercial transistorized computers 1960 • DEC introduced the PDP-1 and IBM released the 7090 which was the fastest in the world

29. 1st computer game & word processor 1962 • Because the PDP-1 had a typewriter interface, editors like TECO (Text Editor and Corrector) were written for it. • Steve Russell at MIT invents Spacewar, the first computer game running on a DEC PDP-1

30. 1973-1976 – Ethernet • Robert Metcalfe at Xerox invents Ethernet so that multiple computers can talk to a new laser printer • We have an ethernet connection at every AV station on campus

31. 1974/1975 – Personal Computers • Scelbi Mark-8 Altair and IBM 5100 computers are first marketed to individuals (as opposed to corporations) • They are followed by the Apple I,II, TRS-80, and Commodore Pet computers by 1977

32. First individual productivity software 1978 • VisiCalc Spreadsheet software and WordStar word processor are the “killer applications” for personal computers • Especially for small business owners

33. Personal digit ASSIStant (PDA) 1980 • Hand held computers • Could connect to the internet • Out of use in 2010. Why?

34. IBM PC 1981 • The IBM PC is introduced running the Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) along with CP/M-86 • The IBM PC's open architecture made it the de-facto standard platform, and it was eventually replaced by inexpensive clones • CPU: Intel 8088 @ 4.77 MHz • RAM: 16 kB ~ 640 kB • Price: $5,000 - $20,000

35. 1984 – Apple Macintosh • Apple introduces the first successful consumer computer with a WIMP user interface (Windows Icons Mouse & Pointer), modelled after the unsuccessful Xerox Alto computer • Motorola 68000 @8Mhz • 128KB Ram • US$1,995 to US$2,495

36. Smart phones IBM Simon 1997 • The most common computing device today • New beneficial things possible even in poor parts of the world

37. Quantum computing • The next big thing? • Computing with atomic level • Qubits, not bits