History Of Operating System

1182 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Introduction to operating systems study

An Operating System (OS) is an interface between a computer user and computer hardware. An operating system is a software which performs all the basic tasks like file management, memory management, process management, handling input and output, and controlling peripheral devices such as disk drives and printers. Operating systems have evolved through a number of distinct phases or generations and we will describe these successive generations of computers to see what their operating systems were like.The first true digital computer was designed by the English mathematician Charles Babbage (1792–1871). Babbage was trying to build his analytical engine for that he hired a young woman named Ada Lovelace,as the world’s first programmer. The programming …show more content…

At the same time Z3 computer built out of ectromechanical relays. In 1944, the Colossus was built and then the Mark I was built and then ENIAC was built and so on. Some were binary, some used vacuum tubes, some were programmable, but all were very primitive. In this early time, Programming languages were unknown (not even assembly languages). Operating systems were unheard of. All programming was done in machine language by wiring up electrical circuits by connecting thousands of cables to plugboards to control the machine’s basic functions. By 1950s, procedure improved with the introduction of punched cards. It was now possible to write programs on cards and read them in instead of using plugboards. The Second Generation (1955–65): Transistors and Batch Systems In the early 1950's, The first operating system was introduced and they were called single-stream batch processing systems. These new machines were called mainframes and these were built with the use of transistor in it. They were programmed in FORTRAN and assembly language. Due to their high prizes only government agencies or large corporations were able to afford …show more content…

Gary kildall then came up with a disk based operating system called Cp/m(control program for microcomputers). In 1977 this CP/M was able to run on many micro computers using the 8080, zilog Z80 and many other cpu chips. IBM also needed a software to manage their hardware,which opened an opportunity for Bill Gates to write OS for them. Gates approached a local computer manufacturer and asked him if he could provide him with a suitable OS. Gates after sme modifications in the OS offered IBM with MS-DOS which quickly started to dominate IBM PC market. By 1983 MS-DOS held a firm hold in the market while CP/M was on its last legs.MS-DOS began to be widely used in many other computers with some advanced featres though from UNIX. But all these OS were based on typing in commands from keyboards. xerox parc adopted all new GUI concept proposed by Doug Engelbart. Steve Jobs then embarked on building an apple with GUI which led to creation of LISA and subsequently apple macintosh which inspired Gates to build a successor of MS-DOS. after about 10 years in 1995 microsoft came up with windows 95 which incorporated many OS features and contain large amount of 16 bit intel assembly language. then came windows NT which was full 32 bit system. windows NT was renamed to windows 2000 including some modifications which was not a great success either. on the other hand

Show More
Related

  • Battle Of The Bytes: Macintosh Vs. Windows 95

    1138 Words  | 3 Pages

    Windows, and of course over DOS, but it still didn't compete against the ease of

    Read More

  • Desktop Computer vs. Laptop Computers

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    The history of computers is an amazing story filled with interesting statistics. “The first computer was invented by a man named Konrad Zuse. He was a German construction engineer, and he used the machine mainly for mathematic calculations and repetition” (Bellis, Inventors of Modern Computer). The invention shocked the world; it inspired people to start the development of computers. Soon after,

    Read More

  • International Business Machines (IBM)

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    was introduce in 1971. IBM then came out with more advance computers such as System/38 in 1978 and the AS / 400 in 1988.

    Read More

  • The Impact of Technology

    1424 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many different beginnings to the origins of computers. Their origins could be dated back more than two thousand years ago, depending on what a person means when they ask where the first computer came from. Most primitive computers were created for the purpose of running simple programs at best. (Daves Old Computers) However, the first ‘digital’ computer was created for the purposes of binary arithmetic, otherwise known as simple math. It was also created for regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions. Built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry during 1937-1942, it was dubbed the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC).

    Read More

  • The History of Linux

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    It all began in 1991, during the time of monumental computing development. DOS had been bought from a Seattle hacker by Bill Gates, for a sum of $50,000 – a small price for an operating system that had managed sneak its way across the globe due to a clever marketing strategy. Apple’s OS and UNIX were both available, though the cost of running either was far greater than that of running DOS. Enter MINIX, an operating system developed from the ground up by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a college professor. MINIX was part of a lesson plan used to teach students the inner-workings of an operating system. Tanenbaum had written a book on MINIX called “Operating System” and anyone who had picked up a copy would find the 12,000 lines of code that comprised MINIX itself. This was a big issue; due to the fact that all know (well published) operating systems to that point had been well guarded by software developers, thus making it difficult for people to truly expand on operating system mechanics.

    Read More

  • History of Computer Programming

    1261 Words  | 3 Pages

    In previous years, the first computers were mechanical, not electronic. One of the first computers ever made was the Difference Engine, designed by Charles Babbage. (Babbage, C, n.d.). The Difference Engine was able to calculate polynomials using the differences method. After the Difference Engine, Babbage began his work on an improved calculating engine, the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine used punch cards to operate, just like the Jacquard Loom. The Jacquard Loom used punch cards to control weaving that created interesting patterns in textiles. The punch cards were used in the Analytical Engine to define the input and the calculations to carry-out. The Analytical Engine had two major parts. The first part was the mill, which is similar to a modern day computer processing unit, or a CPU. The CPU is the brain of a modern day computer; it is what carries out modern day instructions inside a computer. The mill would execute what it received from the store. The second part was the store, which was the memory of the computer. “It was the world’s first general-purpose computer.” (Babbage, C, n.d.)....

    Read More

  • The History of the Disk Operating System (DOS)

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    IBM tried to purchase CP/M from its inventor Gary Kildall, but he proved to be elusive and refused to sell. IBM through Microsoft and owner Bill Gates, acquired and licensed a similar program, the Q-DOS program. The first commercially available operating system, PC-DOS, was based upon this purchase.

    Read More

  • Comparing Linux And Microsoft Windows And Windows Microsoft

    2315 Words  | 5 Pages

    An Operating system is system software that controls the system’s hardware that interacts with users and the application software. As we all may know, Windows Microsoft has always been a commercial high-level sale in the retail industry and an in domain operating system used today. But there are more operating systems than just Windows Microsoft than the general population may assume. Linux is another well-known operating systems, which is free and open-source software. Linux is also used in companies we would have never thought of like Google, NASA, USPS, Amazon and many more companies. Linux and Microsoft operating systems have been in competition to see which one is the best operating system in the market. There are so many resemblances

    Read More

  • The History of The Microprocessor

    1787 Words  | 4 Pages

    Prior to the revolution in technology that was microprocessors, making a computer was a large task for any manufacturer. Computers used to be built solely on discrete, or individual, transistors soldered together. Microprocessors act as the brain of a computer, doing all mathematics. Depending on how powerful the machine was intended to be, this could take weeks or even months to produce with individual components. This laborious task put the cost of a computer beyond the reach of any regular person. Computers before lithographic technology were massive and were mostly used in lab scenarios (Brain 1).

    Read More

  • The History Of Computers

    649 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1953 it was estimated that there were 100 computers in the world. Computers built between 1959 and 1964 are often regarded as the "second generation" computers, based on transistors and printed circuits - resulting in much smaller computers. 1964 the programming language PL/1 released by IBM. 1964 the launch of IBM 360. These first series of compatible computers. In 1970 Intel introduced the first RAM chip. In 1975 IBM 5100 was released. In 1976 the Apple Computer Inc. was founded, to market Apple I Computer. Designed to Stephen Wozinak and Stephan Jobs. In 1979 the first compact disk was released around 1981 IBM announced PC, the standard model was sold for $2,880.00.

    Read More

  • The History of Computers

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    In order to fully understand the history of computers and computers in general, it is important to understand what it is exactly that lead up to the invention of the computer. After all, there was a time when the use of laptops, P.C.s, and other machines was unthinkable. Way back in the fourth century B.C., the abucus was an instrument used for counting in Babylonia. Many scholars believe that it likely started out as pebbles being moved over lines drawn in the dirt and then evolved into a more complex counting tool (Aspray 7). About 1200 years later, Roman numerals were finally introduced, along with the idea of the zero and other mathematical basics. This helped lay the foundation for several different men who had findings that would eventually lead us to the beginnings of computers and computing. Though they are often referred to as scholars, many of these intellectuals were most likely just merely the nerds of their time. Take Wilhelm Schickard and Blaise Pascal of the 17th century, for example. Both of these men had enough time on their hands to individually build two of the first mechanical calculators in history. Unfortunately, Schickard calculator never even made it past the model stage and Pascal machine had several snags of its own; nevertheless, both of their discoveries helped lead to more advanced computing. The next so-called geek to make his way into the computing spotlight was Charles Babbage. In 1842, he developed ideas for a computer that could find the solution to a math problem. His system was rudimentary, using punch-cards in the computation; however, his ideas were far from basic. In fact, the analysis of his Analytical Engine includes fundamentals of computer programming, including data analysis, looping, and memory addressing (History).

    Read More

  • The History of Computers

    836 Words  | 2 Pages

    The history of the computer dates back all the way to the prehistoric times. The first step towards the development of the computer, the abacus, was developed in Babylonia in 500 B.C. and functioned as a simple counting tool. It was not until thousands of years later that the first calculator was produced. In 1623, the first mechanical calculator was invented by Wilhelm Schikard, the “Calculating Clock,” as it was often referred to as, “performed it’s operations by wheels, which worked similar to a car’s odometer” (Evolution, 1). Still, there had not yet been anything invented that could even be characterized as a computer. Finally, in 1625 the slide rule was created becoming “the first analog computer of the modern ages” (Evolution, 1). One of the biggest breakthroughs came from by Blaise Pascal in 1642, who invented a mechanical calculator whose main function was adding and subtracting numbers. Years later, Gottfried Leibnez improved Pascal’s model by allowing it to also perform such operations as multiplying, dividing, taking the square root.

    Read More

  • The First Generation Of Computers

    333 Words  | 1 Pages

    The First Generation of Computers The first generation of computers, beginning around the end of World War 2, and continuing until around the year 1957, included computers that used vacuum tubes, drum memories, and programming in machine code. Computers at that time where mammoth machines that did not have the power our present day desktop microcomputers. In 1950, the first real-time, interactive computer was completed by a design team at MIT. The "Whirlwind Computer," as it was called, was a revamped U.S. Navy project for developing an aircraft simulator.

    Read More

  • The Computer Evolution

    2687 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The History of Computing

    2208 Words  | 5 Pages

    They are now incorporated into every aspect of human life, especially for recreation and general home usage. It remains second in complexity to that of the human brain. And yet they still progress towards perfection. The idea of what is now modern computing originates (more or less) in the late 1700’s with the birth of computing’s conceptual father, Charles Babbage. He was born in London on December 26, 1791, the day after Christmas.

    Read More

More about History Of Operating System

Open Document