History Of IT

The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present.

1. First Tries.
- Early 1940s
- Electronic vacuum tubes.

2. Eckert and Mauchly.

• The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum Tubes: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)The ENIAC team (Feb 14, 1946). Left to right: J. Presper Eckert, Jr.; John Grist Brainerd; Sam Feltman; Herman H. Goldstine; John W. Mauchly; Harold Pender; Major General G. L. Barnes; Colonel Paul N. Gillon.
  · Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
  - 1946.
  - Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its calculations (Hence, first electronic computer).
  - Developers John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical engineer
  (The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania)
  - Funded by the U.S. Army.
  - But it could not store its programs (its set of instructions)


• The First Stored-Program Computer(s)
  - Early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert began to design the EDVAC - the Electronic Discreet Variable Computer.
  - John von Neumann's influential report in June 1945: "The Report on the EDVAC"
  - British scientists used this report and outpaced the Americans. (Max Newman headed up the effort at Manchester University ), Where the Manchester Mark I went into operation in June 1948--becoming the first stored-program computer. (Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at Cambridge University, completed the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two years before EDVAC was finished. ), thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program computer in general use (i.e., not a prototype).


• The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).
  · Late 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly began the development of a computer called UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) : Remington Rand, First UNIVAC delivered to Census Bureau in 1951.
  · But, a machine called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) went into action a few months before UNIVAC and became the world's first commercial computer.
  

3. The Four Generations of Digital Computing.

• The First Generation (1951-1958).
  1. Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.
  2. Punch cards to input and externally store data.
  3. Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs
  - Programs written in:
  - Machine language
  - Assembly language->Requires a compiler.
• The Second Generation (1959-1963).
  1. Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic element.
  - AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in the 1940s
  - Crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor
  2. Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.
  3. Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology.
  - High-level programming languages
  - E.g., FORTRAN and COBOL
• The Third Generation (1964-1979).
  · Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.
  · Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external storage devices.
  · Magnetic core internal memories began to give way to a new form, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) memory, which, like integrated circuits, used silicon-backed chips.
  o Operating systems
  o Advanced programming languages like BASIC developed.
  - Which is where Bill Gates and Microsoft got their start in 1975.
• The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).
  1. Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)
  2. Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an entire CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip.
  o Which allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC.
  - Apple II released to public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs.
  - Initially sold for $1,195 (without a monitor); had 16k RAM.
  - First Apple Mac released in 1984.
  - IBM PC introduced in 1981.
  - Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)
  o Fourth generation language software products
  - E.g., Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Microsoft Word, and many others.
  - Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in early 1980s
  · MS Windows debuts in 1983, but is quite a clunker.
  · Windows wouldn't take off until version 3 was released in 1990
  · Apple's GUI (on the first Mac) debuts in 1984.

Reference by this Bibliography:

1. Kenneth C. Laudon, Carol Guercio Traver, Jane P. Laudon, Information Technology and Systems, Cambridge, MA: Course Technology, 1996.
2. Stan Augarten, BIT By BIT: An Illustrated History of Computers (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1984).
3. R. Moreau, The Computer Comes of Age: The People, the Hardware, and the Software, translated by J. Howlett (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984).
4. Telephone History Web Site. http://www.cybercomm.net/~chuck/phones.html, accessed 1998.
5. Microsoft Museum. http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/museum/home.asp, accessed 1998.