Brief History Of Computers Research Paper

The History of Computers

Computers have been around for quite some time and were developed over many years with contributions from philosophers, inventors, engineers, mathematicians, physicists, technicians, visionaries, and scholars. The first computers were calculating machines and over time evolved into the digital computers as we know them today. It has taken over 180 years for the computer to develop from an idea in Charles Babbage head into an actual computer developed today by many different companies. Therefore, it was a long and tedious path in order to make the computer into what we now use today.

Before computers, people had to do calculations using such tools as a Chinese abacus or a slide rule to work

The next step in the development of computers was commercial machines. In the early 1820, Thomas de Colmar came up with the first successful commercial calculator, called the arithmometer, and it was able to perform the four basic arithmetic functions (Palfreman and Swade 22). The next progression of computers came in 1896, when the U.S. Census Bureau could not keep up with the reading and organizing of their surveys. Herman Hollerith invented the electric tabulating system, which could read the data in coded punched cards (Palfreman and Swade 24).

During, the 1930, there were two main sub-divisions in the computer world, the calculator industry and the office machine industry. In 1936, Alan Turing wrote a paper posing the question, Could a machine be designed which could compute all mathematical statements (Palfreman and Swade 29), he showed theoretically that you could use a tape with the directions on it and make the computers one function to follow directions. Turing also wrote a report on the prospects of building a model of this machine, which was later called a digital computer. Two years later in 1938, Konrade Zuses mechanical programmable calculator was developed and in 1939, the first machine to calculate using vacuum tubes was completed

One of these computers was UNIVAC, which was the first commercially successful electronic computer (White). This computer could handle both numbers and text and used magnetic tape to input information. Some years later, in 1959, the second generation of computers was developed. These were based on transistors and printed circuits, resulting in a much smaller and more flexible computer. The next generation of computers, began in 1964. These third generation computers were based on the first integrated circuits (White). Thus this produced even smaller computers, which could be found in smaller