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A Brief History of Computers
A Brief History of Computers
A Brief History of Computers
Pre-Mechanical Computing:
From
The Abacus
c. 4000 BCE
to
Charles Babbage
and his Difference Engine (1812)
Mechanical computers:
The Abacus (c. 3000 BCE)
Napier’s Bones and
Logarithms (1617)
From
Herman Hollerith’s
1890
Census Counting Machine
to
Howard Aiken
and the Harvard Mark I (1944)
Herman Hollerith and his
Census Tabulating Machine (1884)
A closer look at the Census
Tabulating Machine
The Harvard Mark I (1944)
aka IBM’s Automatic Sequence
Controlled Calculator (ASCC)
The first computer bug
Rear Admiral Dr. Grace
Murray Hopper
Electronic digital computers
From
John Vincent Atanasoff’s
1939
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
to
the present day
Alan Turing
1912-1954
Physics Prof
At
Iowa State
University,
Ames, IA
Clifford Berry (1918-1963)
PhD student
of
Dr. Atanasoff’s
1939
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
The Enigma
Machine
1946
The ENIAC
Whatever next?…
Acknowledgements (continued on next slide)
For one of the best written books on the history of computers, check out Engines of the Mind : The
Evolution of the Computer from Mainframes to Microprocessors -- by Joel N. Shurkin (Paperback)
A movingly beautiful book on Alan Turing is Alan Turing: the Enigma, by Andrew Hodges
An excellent, readable book on Cryptography is Simon Singh’s THE CODE BOOK. The Secret History of
Codes and Code-Breaking
Tutorials on the encryption software PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) can be found at
http://www.pitt.edu/~poole/PGPintro.htm
All pictures and some of the information were obtained from various sites on the World Wide Web.
Complete list follows:
Abacus: http://qi-journal.com/action.lasso?-Token.SearchID=Abacus&-Response=culture.asp
Napier: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Napier.html
http://www.maxmon.com/1600ad.htm
Slide Rules: http://www.hpmuseum.org/sliderul.htm
Pascal’s Pascaline: http://www.thocp.net/hardware/pascaline.htm
Leibnitz Stepped Reckoner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepped_Reckoner
Jacquard looms: http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/jacquard1.html
http://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstell/meister/e_web.htm
Acknowledgements (continued)
Charles Babbage: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/babbage/index.asp
Lady Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace: http://www.well.com/user/adatoole/bio.htm
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Electricity: http://www.mediaeng.com/historyelect.html (beautifully written pocket history of
electricity & magnetism)
Herman Hollerith: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hollerith.html
Howard Aiken & The Harvard Mark I: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Aiken.html
Alan Turing: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Turing.html
John Vincent Atanasoff: http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/books/mollenhoff/overview.shtml
Biographies of Atanasoff and Clifford Berry: http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/ABC/Biographies.html
J. Presper Eckert: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Eckert_John.html
John Mauchly: http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Mauchly.html
The patent controversy: http://www.library.upenn.edu/special/gallery/mauchly/jwm7.html
ARPANet: http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa.html
Thanks to the following EDTECH listserv colleagues and friends who have reviewed the presentation
and provided amendments and additional material for inclusion on the slides and in the notes.
Nancy Head, online instructor, Michigan Virtual High School (MVHS), U.S.A., on the web at
www.mivhs.org