Essay on the History of Computing

The progress of computing development to date is considered the greatest progress in human
engineering. It has also been a great benefit to humanity, globalizing the world to modernization in
the performance of tasks, encompassing different fields.

There are different antecedents that have propitiated to a greater or lesser extent the development
of the computer, which resulted from the need of man to find quick methods to solve his
calculations.

The abacus is the oldest instrument registered as an antecedent in the history of computing that
served for counting in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. It consisted of a wooden frame with
parallel bars along which movable balls slid.

The antecedent that provided more, considered the most fundamental step in the development of
computers, are the mechanical calculating machines made by B. Pascal and G. Leibnitz.

Later, the analytical machine was built, which is the first general-purpose machine capable of
performing mathematical operations with great capacity and had a storage unit, a processing unit, a
data input unit and an output unit.

It was not implemented due to technological difficulties, but its structure is still maintained in
modern computers.

The history of computing is divided into 5 main generations, which are differentiated by the
technological advance that each generation contributed, in addition to the architecture they
present.

In the first generation, the development of the first completely electronic machine “Colossus”,
designed by the English, stands out.

It is interesting how the English hid the production and subsequent use during World War II and later
years of this surprising machine, as well as the Americans kept their devastating nuclear weapon
secret.

The Colossus was used to decipher the secret messages of the Nazi Germans that A. Turing, T.
Flowers and M.H.A. Newman presented in December 1943 and made operational at Bletchley Park.
Like the other machines of the first generation, it was made up of electronic valves or also called
vacuum diode valves.

This marked the beginning of the English school of electronic computing, which gave the world the
first stored-program computer in history, the first micro-programmed control unit, and many other
valuable contributions to modern computing.

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) is considered the first electronic
computer. Built at the University of Pennsylvania by J.P. Eckert and J.W. Mauchly, it weighed 30 tons
and consumed 150 KW. It was built with 18,000 vacuum tubes and allowed calculations to be
performed at a speed 100 times faster than a person. It was programmable, and programming was
done through cables and switches. Data was entered through punched cards.
Its main drawbacks were the tedious task of programming and the limited storage capacity.

To avoid manually programming the computer, J. Von Neumann proposed a stored-program

computer called EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer). Its design is today called
the “Von Neumann model” and is still used in most current computers, with an arithmetic-logic unit,
control unit, input/output units, and memory.

Based on the ideas of the EDVAC, M. Wilkes of the University of Cambridge built the EDSAC
(Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in 1949, which used the notion of hierarchical
memory and an accumulator-based architecture.

The first commercial computers, such as the UNIVAC I and II (Universal Automatic Computer),
manufactured by Eckert and Mauchly, and the IBM 700 series, also emerged in the 1950s. These
computers had several shortcomings, such as their large size, limited ease of use, and difficult
maintenance, as well as generating too much heat.

In the second generation, transistors were created as a new technology used in the advancement of
modernism in computers, replacing vacuum tubes. This innovation improved the performance and
speed of computers, as well as drastically reducing their size compared to the enormous computers
of the first generation.

In 1961, the IBM 7030 or Stretch appeared, the first computer to use segmentation. It also had
interleaved memory and branch prediction. It was not commercially successful due, among other
reasons, to not achieving the expected performance because the recovery time from a prediction
error was too long.

In addition to the IBM 7000 series, another commercial machine of this generation was the PDP-1,
launched in 1960 by DEC. One of the interesting innovations of the PDP-1 was the use of a video
terminal, as well as a certain degree of graphical capabilities on the screen. With these computers,
the use of high-level programming languages, such as FORTRAN.

The main issue with computers in this generation was their high cost. This was due to the fact that
they were primarily constructed with transistors, resistors, and capacitors, each of which was
assembled individually.

In the third generation, the invention of the integrated circuit in the late 1950s (J. Kilby of Texas
Instruments built the first in 1958 and R. Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor built another in 1959)
was a major breakthrough for the computer industry. This allowed for the miniaturization and cost
reduction of computers.

Micro-programming, introduced by IBM with the release of the IBM System/360 family, was another
significant development of this generation. In this architecture, all but the most advanced models
were micro-programmed.

In 1965, Willis proposed the concept of cache memory, which involves adding an intermediate level
of memory between the processor and main memory. This memory has a smaller capacity than main
memory but a much faster access time. The first commercial implementation was by IBM in its
360/85 model in 1968, and it quickly became standard in large machines and minicomputers.
Minicomputers also saw significant progress, with the introduction of the PDP-8 from DEC in 1965.
While most computers at the time required an air-conditioned room, the PDP-8 could fit on a
laboratory table. Later models of the PDP-8 were among the first to use a bus architecture.

The first multitasking operating system, OS/360, was developed by IBM. Multics (1965) and Unix
(1970), created by D. Ritchie and K. Thompson at Bell Labs, followed.

In the fourth generation, in 1970, there was a flourishing development of computers and
semiconductors for the creation of microprocessors. with the first being the Intel 4004, designed by
T. Hoff and built by F. Faggin in 1971.

The Intel 4004’s first application was a desktop calculator, but within two years it was being used in a
wide variety of embedded systems, such as elevators.

From then on, a new generation of microprocessors appeared every two or three years, and
designers used them in any product that could benefit from some amount of intelligence, from toys
to pocket calculators to personal computers.

Over the past 25 years, the microprocessor has revolutionized many industries and society at an
astonishing pace.

The fifth generation saw a significant drop in the cost of computers while their capabilities improved
over time, with the emergence of VLSI technology in the early 1980s.

Due to the rapid advancements in microelectronics, industrial society has undertaken the task of
also raising the development of software and the systems with which computers are now managed
to that level.

In conclusion, computing has had a profound impact on human history, as it has represented a great
change by facilitating the development of human life in all its aspects. Thanks to the effort and
dedication of many collaborators and companies, a great improvement was developed from the
application of certain technological discoveries that made computing the main source of information
and communication, considered an essential tool for work.

REFERENCES

* Ábaco. (2006). es.wikipedia.org. Retrieved September 9, 2017, from

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81baco

* Colossus. (2006). es.wikipedia.org. Retrieved September 9, 2017, from

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus

* Hidalgo, J. Evolución histórica de los computadores (1st ed., pp. 1-40). España: Universidad
Complutense de Madrid. Retrieved September 9, 2017, from
http://www.dacya.ucm.es/hidalgolestructura/historia.pdf

* Historia de la Computación - Monografias.com. (1999). Monografias.com. Retrieved September 9,

2017, from http://www.monografias.com/trabajos/histocomp/histocomp.shtml