Learnings Of The Week ( Tagaro)

♣LEARNINGS OF THE WEEK♣
By: Sharra Mae S. Tagaro IV- Rizal

Before being an expert on something, we must first have to know its properties, characteristics and from which it started from. Just like in computer, before being an expert we must first tackle and study its history so that we will be aware of the big contributions our ancestors made in the development of our modern computers.
From those past few weeks, I learned a lot about the development of our modern computers and how such simple beginnings contributed to make a big difference. I learned that there are four basic periods in the history of computer: the Pre- mechanical age, the mechanical age, the electromechanical age and the electronic age.
Pre- mechanical age (3000BC to 1450AD)

• First human communicated only through speaking and simple drawings known as petroglyths.
  
• Evolution of the alphabet: From petroglyths (signs or simple figures carved in rock) to the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (southern Irag) who devised cuneiform –the first true written language and the first real information system, to the Phoenicians who created symbols that expressed single syllables and constants (the first true alphabet). To the Greeks who adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.
• Their input technologies are the stylus, papyrus plant, and paper made from rags from which modern paper making originated. And their output technologies are the books, scrolls and vertically folded sheets of papyrus plant.
• Egyptian system: numbers 1-9 as vertical lines, 10 as a U or circle, 100 as a coiled rope, 1000 as a lotus blossom, 10000 as a finger and 100000 as a frog.
• The first numbering systems similar to those in use today were invented between 100 and 200 A.D. by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system. Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.
• The very first information processor the abacus was the very first calculator.

Mechanical age (1450- 1840)

• Johann Gutenberg invented the movable metal- type printing press in 1450.
  
• Actually people who who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."
  
• John Napier introduces logarithms in 1614. He was like a superstar for he has fans awaiting his next publication. Napier's greatest hits include A Description Of The Admirable Table Of Logarithms and his inventions of divining rods.
• In 1623, Wilhelm Shickard invented the first mechanical calculator. It works, but never made it beyond the prototype stage.
• Early 1600s, William Oughtred invented the slide rule which is an early example of an analog computer.
• Blaise Pascal invented a mechanical calculation machine called "Pascaline". it can solve basic operations like addition and subtraction.
• In 1671, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a machine called the stepped reckoner that could multiply 5 digit and 12 digit numbers gaining up to 16 digit numbers.
• In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard invented the automatic loom. The punch card idea was picked up by Babbage from Jacquard's loom.
• Arithmometer became the first mas produced calculator in 1820 and was developed by Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar in France. This was more reliable than Leibniz's stepped reckoner although they perform the same type of computations.
• In 1821, Charles Babbage invented the "the difference engine." This machine can automatically solve math problems. In 1832, Babbage also invented "the analytical engine." This engine was a machanical adding machine that took information from punched cards to solve and print complex mathematical operations. These two engines was regarded as the first " thinking machines," which helped him earn the title "father of modern computers."
• In 1842, Ada Augusta Lovelace ( Lady Byron) made the first stored program in the computer made by Charles Babbage. She is credited as the first computer programmer.
  

Electromechanical age (1840- 1940)
-The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses.

• Telecommunication began with the voltaic battery (invented by Alessandro Volta in 8th century), telegraph ( invented by Samuel F.J. Morse in 1832; constructed an experiment version in 1815), telephone and radio ( developed by Alexander Graham Bell in 1976).
• Alexander Graham Bell with his first working telephone, transmitted his now famous quotation " Watson, come here, I want you."
  
• In 1894, Guglielmo Marconi dicovered that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from its point of origin ( wireless communication).
• In 1852, George Boole developed the binary algebra which became known as Boolean Algebra.
  
• Electromechanical computing used the tabulating machine ( invented by Pehr and Advard Scheutz in 1853), comptometer ( invented in 1885 was a key drevin, adding and subtracting calculator) and comptograph( invented in 1889, can operate the MDAS) both invented by Dorr Felt and punched cards ( used succesfully by Herman Hollerith in 1890).
• Hollerith was the Father of information processing and found the Tabulating machine Company which later became the Computer Tabulating Recording Company and later on became the International Business Machines Corporation or IBM.
• In 1893, the first efficient four- function calculator was invented by Otto Shweiger and was called "The Millionaire."
  
• In 1906, vacuum tube was developed by Lee De Forest which provide electricity controlled switch, a necessity for digital electronic computers.
  

Electronic age (1941- present)

• Konrad Zuse built the first programmable computer called Z3 in 1941. Z3 is designed to solve engineering equations rather than basic arithmetic problems.
• Howard Aiken built the Mark I which is The First Stored Program Computer. It can calculate for about 3- 5 seconds.
  
• John Atanasoff and Clifford berry completed the first all-electronic computer the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry computer) in 1942. ABC was the first computer to use electricity in the form of vacuum tubes to make electric computation possible.

The First generation of Computers (1951- 1958)
- Used vacuum tubes as their main logic elements. Computers had vacuum tubes, resistors, and welded metal joints. They were large, slow, expensive and produced a lot of heat.

• lProgram written: machine language (instructions written as a string of 0s and 1s)

  lAssembly language (a language that allowed the programmer to write instructions in a kind of shorthand that would then be "translated" by another program called a compiler into machine language).
• In 1945, Presper Eckert and John Mauchly developed the first operational electronic digital computer, called ENIAC, for US Army. ENIAC was over 1000 times faster than Mark 1, and could perform 5000 additions per second. It had more than 1800 vacuum tubes, and took up to 1800 square feet of space.
• In 1951 the UNIVAC-1 became the first commercially available electronic computer. This computer was designed by Eckert and Mauchly (the designers of the ENIAC) and built by the Remington Rand corporation.
  
• Between 1951 and 1953 magnetic core memory was developed. This memory consists of tiny ferrite “donuts” that were arranged on a lattice of wires. It was the fastest type of memory until the late 1980s.
• IBM 701, IMB’s first electronic business computer.

The second generation of computers (1959- 1963)
- replaced vacuum tubes by transistors( John Barden, Walter Brattain and William Shockley of Bell Telephone Laboratories invented the transistor. A transistor is a small, solid-state component designed to monitor the flow of the electric current) as a main logic element

because it is faster and more reliable than the first generation.

• High-level programming languages (program instructions that could be written with simple words and mathematical expressions), like FORTRAN and COBOL, made computers more accessible to scientists and businesses.

• lUnlike first generations computers, second generations computers could run multiple programs (parallel processors) and could address input and output at the same time (multiprogramming).
  
• In 1961, Grace hopper, the woman that found the first computer bug, finishes developing COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language).
• In 1964, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), founded by Ken Olsen, release the first minicomputer, the PDP-8. IBM unveils the System/360, the first family of computers.
• In 1965, Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny of Dartmouth College developed BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) as a computer language to help teach people how to program.

Without our teacher, I won't learn all of these I have right now. I know, this is not the last, there are many more learnings to come...

♣Learnings of the Week♣

The third generation of computers (1963- 1974)
- Computers relied on a new technology called the Integrated Circuits (IC's). The Integrated Circuit is a single wafer or chip that can hold many transistors and electronic circuits.

• Jack Kilby invented the monolithic integrated circuit in 1959, which is still widely used in electronics system.
• Robert noyce founded Intel in 1968. He is one of the inventors of the IC.
• In 1969, ARPANET ( Advance Research Project Agency Network) was set- up. It later becomes the Internet.
• The C (combined) programming language was developed in 1972 at AT&T Bell Labs by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritche. The UNIX operating system( more stable compared to Windows) , also written at Bell Labs, is written using C.

The fourth generation of computers (1979- present)

• Microprocessor- designed by Intel Corporation. It was the first tiny computer on a chip. It is an integrated circuit built on a tiny piece of silicon. It made computers the fastest and the most powerful they have ever been. It is composed of two or more IC's.
  
• In 1971, 4004 was released. It was the first microprocessor. It served as a brain of the computer.
  
• In 1975, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems or MITS produced the first PC. They named the computer kit Altair 8080, after the Star Trek episode, "A Voyage to Altair". Altair 8080 made computers available to everyone. Also in this year was when Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded the Microsoft.
• In April 1976, Steve jobs and Steven Wozniak founded the Apple Computers.
• In 1978, Visicalc is released. This is the first spreadsheet program and it made microcomputers useful to business.
• In 1979, the first microcomputer word processor, Word Star, is released.
• Amiga was the first multimedia computer. The A1000 was the first Amiga model, which was introduced in 1985 by Commodore. For years, Amiga's were considered the best example of affordable graphics computers, providing sophisticated features available only on much higher-priced systems.
• In 1984, Apple Macintosh was introduced.
  

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