-: COMPUTER :-
A computer is in fact a machine that had been designed by the people to carry out some numerical and mathematical operations. Due to its numerical ability it is known as a computer and it provides the solution to the people at much greater speed. At a single time the computer can solve many problems and thus this is one of the oldest devices that had been used by the ancient people and till now many new implementations had been seen in it too. Computer in fact is the most important electronic device created for the people and at time it is found to be quite helpful for the people too.
The computer itself is comprised of many different parts. The main important part of the computer is the central processing unit without which nothing can be done. The other item that comprises the computer are its hardware and software’s. The hardware includes the items which can be touched by the person such as the mouse, keyboard and others where as software are the items which are installed within the computer for many different purposes. On the other hand the most important thing that is to be possessed with the computer is its memory storage that how much of the information can be stored in it. The computer also contains the RAM and ROM units too for memory storage.
Computers are used on a larger scale among many people as they had changed the lives of people. Computer had been provided people with each and every service and now each and every person tends to posses computer. Moreover it had been seen that in today’s world many different types of activities are being carried out on computer. The invention of computer had been one of the most beneficial machines for the people. Through computers people can gather a larger amount of information .
Computer History
ENIAC, 1946
In February, the public got its first glimpse of the ENIAC, a machine built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert that improved by 1,000 times on the speed of its contemporaries.
Start of project : | 1943 |
Completed : | 1946 |
Programmed : | plug board and switches |
Speed : | 5,000 operations per second |
Input/output : | cards, lights, switches, plugs |
Floor space : | 1,000 square feet |
Project leaders : | John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. |
An inspiring summer school on computing at the University of Pennsylvania´s Moore School of Electrical Engineering stimulated construction of stored-program computers at universities and research institutions. This free, public set of lectures inspired the EDSAC, BINAC, and, later, IAS machine clones like the AVIDAC. Here, Warren Kelleher completes the wiring of the arithmetic unit components of the AVIDAC at Argonne National Laboratory. Robert Dennis installs the inter-unit wiring as James Woody Jr. adjusts the deflection control circuits of the memory unit.
SAGE, 1954
The SAGE program significantly advanced the state of the art in human-computer interaction, influenced the thinking of J.C.R. Licklider, caused the establishment of the MIT Lincoln Laboratorywhere Lawrence Roberts later worked, and established one of the first wide-area networks.
Thanks in part to Vannevar Bush's funding, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became a hotbed of advanced research. One of their most influential projects was the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, established in 1954 by the US Air Force to develop a continental air defense system to protect against a nuclear bomber attack from the Soviet Union.
MIT established the Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts, to produce the SAGE system design. Lincoln Labs went on to do a great deal of useful later research, and gave their best network scientist, Lawrence Roberts, to the IPTO to help create theARPANET. In 1958, the MITRE Corporation was formed from the Computer System Division of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratories, and conducted the software development of SAGE's digital computer system. The System Development Corporation in Santa Monica was created to develop the software. The program drove the discovery of several seminal software engineering concepts, such as multi-user interaction, advanced data structures, structured program modules, and global data definitions.
MIT and IBM developed the IBM AN/FSQ-7 computer to run the SAGE centers. The final model was the largest computer ever built, and weighed 250 tons, took up twenty thousand square feet of space, and was delivered in eighteen large vans. It had 50,000 vacuum tubes, more than 150 CRT monitors, needed more than a million watts of power, and took up two stories of a building. The vacuum tubes generated so much heat that human beings couldn't stand close to the computer for more than a few seconds, and the whole computer would melt and self-destruct within sixty seconds if the air conditioning ever failed. The US Air Force bought twenty-seven.
Operators accessed the SAGE system through the first "cathode ray displays" or monitors, and used a light pen to select tracks of potential incoming hostile aircraft and manage their status. When SAGE was deployed in 1963, it consisted of 24 Direction Centers and 3 Combat Centers, each linked by long-distance telephone lines to more than 100 radar defense sites across the country, thereby establishing one of the first large-scale wide-area computer networks. This had a great influence on a lot of people who worked on the program, including Licklider, who later became the first Director of the IPTO and initiated the research that led to creation of the ARPANET. SAGE remained in continuous operation until 1983.
NEAC 2203, 1960
Nippon Electric Company (NEC), Japan |
Manufactured by the Nippon Electric Company (NEC), the drum-based machine was one of the earliest transistorized Japanese computers. It was used for business, scientific and engineering applications.
IBM System/360, 1964
CDC 6600, 1964
For a time the fastest machine in the world, Control Data Corporation' s 6600 machine was designed by noted computer architect Seymour Cray. It retained its speed crown until 1969, when Cray designed his next supercomputer.
DEC PDP-8, 1965
The first successful commercial minicomputer, the PDP-8, made by the Digital Equipment Corporation, sold more than 50,000 units upon its release, the most of any computer up to that time. Years before Apple and Gnu/Linux offered alternatives to the dominant IBM/Microsoft paradigms, DEC proposed its own vision, by encouraging users to educate themselves and take part in the evolution of the line.
