10. HISTORY OF COMPUTERS Essentially there are three kinds of calculating devices viz. Manual, Mechanical and Automatic.

An early manual device was the Abacus. Abacus is a frame with beads string on wires or rods. Arithmetic calculations are performed by manipulating the beads. Later on in 1647, the first mechanical calculating device. Later or in 1647, the first mechanical calculating machine, known as Pascals Machine was developed by Blaise pascal, About 50 years later in 1694 Gottfried Von Leibinz, Improved upon Pascals invention by providing a calculating machine which could add, subtract, multiply, divide and extract square roots. Although this machine was able to do such calculations, but the resulting information was relatively in accurate and often late. So there was a need for inproved data processing methods. In 1820, Joseph Jackquard developed first punch card machine. The important breakthrough at this time was development of Electro Mechanical Punched Card Equipment, developed by Dr. Herman Hollerith, in 1887. He developed his machine readable card concept and designed a device known as the Census Machine. Punch Card processing is based on a simple idea that input data are first recorded in a coded form by punching holes on cards. These cards are fed into a number of Electro Mechanical Machine that perform processing steps. Its obvious that punched card data processing was a significant improvement over manual methods wherever speed and accuracy was concerned. But it was still necessary to have people handle trays of cards between each steps. Before the Hollerith efforts, in 1833, Carles Babbage, proposed a machine known as Analytical Engine. It incorporated a punch card input, a memory unit or store an arithmetic unit, an output unit and a control unit of 20 place accuracy. In short we can say, that this machine was designed as a prototype computer. 11. INPUT DEVICES 11.1 KEYBOARD The Keyboard resembles a typewriter. But there are additional keys that handle control function. The computer keyboard has three categories of keys : Alphnumeric Keys SpecialKeys Functions Keys The Alphanumeric Keys comprises of alphabets (A-Z OR a-z), numbers (0-9) and other special characters, like space ,./;{}[]:\|%^&*$%#()etc. The Special Keys performs specific tasks. Some of the Special Keys are enter or the Return key, Esc Key, Backspace key, Ins key, Del key. Caps Lock key, Num Lock key, Alt key, Ctrl key etc. The Shift key alters the meaning of a character key which is depressed at the same time. The Control Key generates control functions while the alt+key often gives graphic characters. The Esc Key is generally used to signify that the current function is no longer required. The program would return the control to an earlier, master function allowing the user to choose again. The Cursor Keys are supplied to movethe cursor about the screen. The cursor is a symbol displayed on the screen at the position where the next character is to be keyed in, altered or deleted or edited. The Function Keys are used to perform a set of operations by a single key stroke. The function keys can be used for various functions. Theycan be used as shorthand for a sequence of keystrokes, configured accordingly. 11.2 MOUSE One of the most popular types of specialized input devices for terminal or microcomputer is a mouse. Used as a pointing device, the mouse is a small box about the size of a

tape cassette with a round ball on the bottom and one or more buttons on the top. The mouse is attached to a terminal or microcomputer by a cable. A mouse enables the user to manipulate a pointer or an arrow on a termnal or microcomputer screen. When the user rolls the mouse across a flat surface, the screen cursor moves in the direction of the mouse movement (this movement is measured in hundredths of an inch). It the user rolls the mouse forward and to the right, the cursor moves up and to the right on the screen. Such movements enables to user to : 1. POINT TO ICONS OR TINY PICTURES THAT IDENTIFY PROCESSING CHOICES 2. POINT TO LINE ITMES IN LISTS 3. DRAW TO LINES AND PICTURES ON A SCREEN Sinceh the cursor follows the way the users hand moves the mouse, the user has a sense of pointing something on the screen. With proper softwaremouse can be used to draw pictures and edit text. 12. OUTPUT DEVICES 12.1 VISUAL DISPLAY UNIT The Visual Display Unit (VDU) is a device used for interactive processing i.e. data that is being keyed in, is displayed on the screen or monitor messages and processed information are also displayed on the screen. The combination of keyboard and the VDU is usually referred to as Vedio Display Terminal (VDT) which is an Input/Output (I/O) device. The character are keyed into the memory of the VDU and then on depression of return key, the entire contents of the memory, or selected parts are transmitted to the computer. The character are keyed into the memory of the VDU andthen on depression of return key, the entire contents of the memor, or selected parts are transmitted to the computer. For display of characters, the scan is divided into matrix of rows and columns with each cell in the matrix being used for acharacter. Typically, 80 character positions are provided on one line with 20 to 25 character lines on a screen. VDU is basically of two types monochrome (Black & White) and color. 12.2 PRINTERS The most common form of computer output is printed output-also called hard copy output (output on the printer). In other words output device which prints results on paper. Printers are classified by how they and how fast they operate. On the basis of how the printer prints printer are classified int otwo categories : 1. Impact Printer : Printer which create an image by thephysical contact ofa printhead shaped as the required character. In other words impact printer like a typewriter, pressing the typeface against between a printhead and paper. 2. Non-Impact Printer : Printing technique which create an image on paper without physical contact between a printhead and paper. On the basis of speed the printers are classified as follows : 1. Character Printer : Character Printer prints one character at a time and are used for low-volume printing jobs for e.g. Dot Matrik, Ink Jet, Daisy Whell etc. 2. Line Printer: Line printers use impact methods to print one line at a time. The line printer composes one line at a time. A line is thus not necessarily printed from left to right. Line printers normally print 132 characters per line. Line printer can print 300 to 3000 lines per minutes. For e.g. Chain printer, band printer etc. 3. Page Printer : unlike character printers and line printer page printers print one page at a time. For e.g. Laser printer. 1.3 PRINTER BUFFER Printing takes time, and often the CPU is idel while the printing process takes place. Techniques of spooling or printer buffer is used to optimize CPU resources. 13.1 SPOOLING

SPOOL-SIMULTANEOUS PERIPHERAL OPERATION ON LINE Using sopooling technique output is not sent directly to the printer. The output is first transferred to an intermediary storage medium, such as a disk file. Outputs can be stored in separate files and printed out at a later stage as time and resources permit. 13.2 Printer Buffer The CPU transfers print output to temporary memory called a Buffer. The printer then accesses this information and prepares one or more lines of printed output. During this time the CPU performs othe tasks. When all the information is printed, the CPU refills the buffer with more data. Some printers contain built-in buffer. 14. SECONDARY STORAGE DEVICES These units are used to store the data and programs permanently. It is obvious from here that, if they are being used to store the data, then there would be times, when the computer would use this device as output device to write (store) the data. Data stored is of no use, if it cannot be read. So it is also obvious that there would be times when computer will use these devices as input devices to read (input the data). Since these devices perform both types (input output) of operations hence secondary storage units are also called I/O devices. Following are some devices that are used as secondary storage units in computers. 14.1 HARD DISK DRIVE Hard disk drive is also a secondary storage device of a computer, which can store much more information than a floppy disk. It is a multiple disk pack system. Multiple access arms and read/write heads are used with disk packs. The arms move in and out in unison among the individual disks. Two heads are frequently mounted on each arm to access two surfaces. The Hard Disk Storage system was developed, to reduce the problem of diskettes frequently getting damaged. In a hard disk the whole disk system is packed and fixed in the computer. The hard disk are generally of 1.2 GB, 2.1GB, 4.3 GB and above capacity. 4.2 FLOOPY DISK The floopy gets its name from the fact that it is made of flexible plastic material plastic base is coated with iron-oxide recording substance (that similar to the material applied to the plastic ribbon of a magnetic tapes). Data are recorded as tiny invisible are know that genetic spots on this coating. Each floopy disk is packaged in a protecting paper or plastic envelops from which it is easily removed. Floopy disk are mainly for the purpose of back and transportability of data, for small data volumes. As we know that floopies are made in the different sizes. 8 inch floopy inch floopy inch floopy Most commonly used floopy are 51/4 inch floppies. When formatted the floopy are divided into tracks and tracks get divided into sectors. Where traks are logical concentric circles and sector is a small portion of a track, where the data gets physically recorded, sector has its own capacity in terms storing the data, which depends upon the type of floopy becomes full, the data storing is done in the next sector and so on. When all the sector, of a track is full, drive starts using the next track. When all the tracks of the floopy become full, the floopy becomes full. The capacity of floppy depends upon the density of recording, which is characterized by the tpi known per inch. Types of floppies and their capacities are as follows: 48 TPI DOUBLE SIDED DOUBLE DENSITY This type of floppy is double sided having 40 tracks/side andsectors pertrack capacity of each sector is 512 bytes and capacity of the floppy is 360 KB. 96 TPI DOUBLE SIDED DOUBLE DENSITY These are also double sided ploppies having 80 tracks/side and 9 sectors/ track total capacity of these floppy is 720 KB. These type of floppies are not in common use. 96 TPI DOUBLE SIDED HIGH DENSITY

These are also double sided high speed density floppies having 80 tracks/side and 15 sectors/track total capacity of these floppy is 1.2 MB.a