History of Computers
One could say that the history of the computer started with the abacus, a wooden frame holding two wires with beads strung on them. The beads were moved around, and the abacus was used to solve arithmetic problems. Blaise Pascal built the first digital computer in 1642, which added numbers that were entered with dials. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz built a computer in 1694 that could add and multiply (Meyers). Thomas of Colmar (Charles Xavier Thomas) created the first mechanical calculator that added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided (Augarten 37).
During this time, in Cambridge, England, Charles Babbage began designing an automatic mechanical calculating machine, called the difference machine. He started manufacturing it in 1823. It was supposed to be steam powered and fully automatic, capable of printing result tables, and run by an instruction program. He worked on it for the next ten years (Meyers).
Herman Hollerith and James Powers, who worked for the US Census Bureau, were the first to successfully use punch cards in 1890. Information could be punched into the cards automatically, and they developed devices to read the information, so reading errors were reduced, work flow increased, and the punched cards could be used as easily accessible memory. International Business Machines (IBM), Remington, Burroughs, and other corporations developed better punched cards. These computers used electromechanical devices in which electrical power provided mechanical motion -- like turning the wheels of an adding machine. Such systems included features to: feed in a specified number of cards automatically, add, multiply, and sort feed out cards with punched results (Meyers). They were slow compared to today computers, only processing 50-220 cards per minute, each card only holding 80 characters. Punched cards were a big advancement in their day, providing greater memory storage. Punched cards performed most of the world first business computing and much scientific computing work (Meyers).
World War II created a great need for the military to have computer capacity; trajectory tables and other information were required for new weapons. John Eckert, John Mauchly, and their associates at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of University of Pennsylvania built a high-speed electronic computer, the ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) in 19 42.
Technology is constantly evolving. Computers, tablets, and cell phones have changed drastically over the past several years. For many years, computers were not available for personal use. Computing machines did not emerge until the 1940’s and 1950’s. Questions about the ownership of the first programmable computer are still disputed today. It appears as if each country wants to take credit for this accomplishment. Computer enthusiasts believe that Great Britain’s Colossus Mark 1 computer in 1944 was the first programmable computer and others give credit to the United States’ ENIAC computer in 1946. However, in 1941, a relatively unknown German engineer built a programmable binary computer. His name was Howard Zuse and his Z3 computer has been acknowledged as the first electromechanical binary programmable computer.
The question always asked is "Who invented the computer?" this seems to be a simple answer with a little bit a research and a punch of a button. “The real answer is that many inventors contributed to the history of computers and that a computer is a complex piece of machinery made up of many parts, each of which can be considered a separate invention “The First computers were built and designed in the 1940’s by several different inventors. David Packard and Bill Hewlett found Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto, California garage. The first product that they had made was the “HP 200A Audio Oscillator” (reference 1), which became popular test equipment for engineers during that time. To get even more specific Dr. John V. Atanasoff and his assistant Clifford Berry built the first electronic digital computer.
The first substantial computer was the giant ENIAC machine Created by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) used words of 10 decimal digits instead of binary ones like the previous automated calculators/computers. ENIAC was also the first machine to use more than 2,000 vacuum tubes, It used nearly 18,000 vacuum tubes. And storage of all those vacuum tubes and the machinery required to keep the machine cool took up over 167 square meters (1800 square feet) of floor space. Never the rest, it had punched-card input and output and arithmetically had 1 multiplier, 1 divider-square rooter, and 20 adders employing decimal "ring counters," which served as adders and also as quick-access (0.0002 seconds) read-write register storage.
In the 1890’s, metal rods were used to read cards or data was introduced by Herman Hollerith, a statistician, with the U.S Bureau of the Census. Hollerith was the first American to use that device. He later founded the Tabulation Machine Company. The tabulation of numbers soon became the way of sorting and counting cards. Tabulating also became the way of doing business for many companies.
In the early 1820s, Charles Babbage conceived the idea of the "Difference Engine". It was meant to be a steam-powered calculator for printing astronomical tables (PBS). He attempted to build it, but the ...
...n programing. These punched cards are “orders” for the machine or in modern concept, they are software for the hardware machine. However, the machine requires the space as large as a football field and he ended up with only a small model. Thus “Babbage fell from the status of national celebrity to that of a national joke in a matter of a few years, and he died a bitter, unheralded man”. (2) The invention for digital computers then suspended for nearly 100 years.
In 1822, a computer was a human worker that solved trigonometric functions much like computers do today. However, because the workers were human, they made mistakes, and data was incorrectly calculated. By 1832, a man named Charles Bavage came up with the patented “difference engine” that he created to correct mistakes on the mathematical functions. His invention did not inspire others until the industrial revolution in 1890, when the American census started using punch cards.
Computer engineering started about 5,000 years ago in China when they invented the abacus. The abacus is a manual calculator in which you move beads back and forth on rods to add or subtract. Other inventors of simple computers include Blaise Pascal who came up with the arithmetic machine for his father’s work. Also Charles Babbage produced the Analytical Engine, which combined math calculations from one problem and applied it to solve other complex problems. The Analytical Engine is similar to today’s computers.
...ere are gears used to select which numbers you want. Though Charles Babbage will always be credited with making the first “true” computer, and Bill Gates with popularizing it, Blaise Pascal will always have a place among the first true innovator of the computer. There is even a programming language called Pascal or Object Pascal which is an early computer program.
Herman Hollerith (1860 - 1929) founded IBM ( as the Tabulating Machine Company ) in 1896. The company renames known as IBM in 1924. In 1906 Lee D. Forest in America developed the electronic tube (an electronic value). Before this it would have been impossible to make digital electronic computers. In 1919 W. H. Eccles and F. W. Jordan published the first flip-flop circuit design.
Neumann, John von. 1945. 'First Draft of a Report on The EDVAC' in Stern.N. From ENIAC to UNIVAC: An Appraisal of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Berdford. Mass Digital Press.
Technology continued to prosper in the computer world into the nineteenth century. A major figure during this time is Charles Babbage, designed the idea of the Difference Engine in the year 1820. It was a calculating machine designed to tabulate the results of mathematical functions (Evans, 38). Babbage, however, never completed this invention because he came up with a newer creation in which he named the Analytical Engine. This computer was expected to solve “any mathematical problem” (Triumph, 2). It relied on the punch card input. The machine was never actually finished by Babbage, and today Herman Hollerith has been credited with the fabrication of the punch card tabulating machine.
The fist computer, known as the abacus, was made of wood and parallel wires on which beads were strung. Arithmetic operations were performed when the beads were moved along the wire according to “programming” rules that had to be memorized by the user (Soma, 14). The second earliest computer, invented by Blaise Pascal in 1694, was a “digital calculating machine.” Pascal designed this first known digital computer to help his father, who was a tax collector. Pascal’s computer could only add numbers, and they had to be entered by turning dials (Soma, 32). It required a manual process like its ancestor, the abacus. Automation was introduced in the early 1800’s by a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage. He created an automatic calculation machine that was steam powered and stored up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Unlike its two earliest ancestors, Babbage’s invention was able to perform various operations. It relied on cards with holes punched in them, which are called “punch cards.” These cards carried out the programming and storing operations for the machine. Unluckily, Babbage’s creation flopped due to the lack of mechanical precision and the lack of demand for the product (Soma, 46). The machine could not operate efficiently because technology was t adequate to make the machine operate efficiently Computer interest dwindled for many years, and it wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that people became interested in them once again.
The first major use for a computer in the US was during the 1890 census. Two men, Herman Hollerith and James Powers, developed a new punched-card system that could automatically read information on cards without human intervention (Gulliver, 82).
The development of electronics led to the first computers. Once electromechanical technology entered the world, calculators began being produced. The first electronic calculator was built by IBM. This is known as the IBM 603, which was created by Byron E. Phelps. Building upon this model, steps were taken towards the first computer. “The IBM Selective Sequence-Controlled Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was created between the years 1945 and 1948 by a group led by Frank Hamilton, one of the engineers who worked on the building of the Harvard-IBM machine” (Moreau 39). Disregarding calculators, the first real useable computer began with the vacuum tube.