History of the Personal Computer: Not as Complicated as You Think
The volume and use of computers in the world are so great, they have become difficult to
ignore anymore. Computers appear to us in so many ways that many times, we fail to see
them as they actually are. People associated with a computer when they purchased their
morning coffee at the vending machine. As they drove themselves to work, the traffic
lights that so often hampered us are controlled by computers in an attempt to speed the
journey. Accept it or not, the computer has invaded our life.
The origins and roots of computers started out as many other inventions and technologies
have in the past. They evolved from a relatively simple idea or plan designed to help
perform functions easier and quicker. The first basic type of computers were designed to
do just that; compute!. They performed basic math functions such as multiplication and
division and displayed the results in a variety of methods. Some computers displayed
results in a binary representation of electronic lamps. Binary denotes using only ones
and zeros thus, lit lamps represented ones and unlit lamps represented zeros. The irony
of this is that people needed to perform another mathematical function to translate
binary to decimal to make it readable to the user.
One of the first computers was called ENIAC. It was a huge, monstrous size nearly that
of a standard railroad car. It contained electronic tubes, heavy gauge wiring,
angle-iron, and knife switches just to name a few of the components. It has become
difficult to believe that computers have evolved into suitcase sized micro-computers of
the 1990's.
Computers eventually evolved into less archaic looking devices near the end of the
1960's. Their size had been reduced to that of a small automobile and they were
processing segments of information at faster rates than older models. Most computers at
this time were termed "mainframes" due to the fact that many computers were linked
together to perform a given function. The primary user of these types of computers were
military agencies and large corporations such as Bell, AT&T, General Electric, and
Boeing. Organizations such as these had the funds to afford such technologies. However,
operation of these computers required extensive intelligence and manpower resources. The
average person could not have fathomed trying to operate and use these million dollar
processors.
The United States was attributed the title of pioneering the computer. It was not until
the early 1970's that nations such as Japan and the United Kingdom started utilizing
technology of their own for the development of the computer. This resulted in newer
components and smaller sized computers. The use and operation of computers had developed
into a form that people of average intelligence could handle and manipulate without to
much ado. When the economies of other nations started to compete with the United States,
the computer industry expanded at a great rate. Prices dropped dramatically and computers
became more affordable to the average household. Like the invention of the wheel, the
computer is here to stay.
The operation and use of computers in our present era of the 1990's has become so easy
and simple that perhaps we may have taken too much for granted. Almost everything of use
in society requires some form of training or education. Many people say that the
predecessor to the computer was the typewriter. The typewriter definitely required
training and experience in order to operate it at a usable and efficient level. Children
are being taught basic computer skills in the classroom in order to prepare them for the
future evolution of the computer age.
The history of computers started out about 2000 years ago, at the birth of the abacus, a
wooden rack holding two horizontal wires with beads strung on them. When these beads are
moved around, according to programming rules memorized by the user, all regular
arithmetic problems can be done. Another important invention around the same time was the
Astrolabe, used for navigation.
Blaise Pascal is usually credited for building the first digital computer in 1642. It
added numbers entered with dials and was made to help his father, a tax collector. In
1671, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a computer that was built in 1694. It could
add, and, after changing some things around, multiply. Leibnitz invented a special
stopped gear mechanism for introducing the addend digits, and this is still being used.
The prototypes made by Pascal and Leibnitz were not used in many places, and
considered weird until a little more than a century later, when Thomas of Colmar (A.K.A.
Charles Xavier Thomas) created the first successful mechanical calculator that could add,
subtract, multiply, and divide. A lot of improved desktop calculators by many inventors
followed, so that by about 1890, the range of improvements included: Accumulation of
partial results, storage and automatic reentry of past results (A memory function), and
printing of the results. Each of these required manual installation. These improvements
were mainly made for commercial users, and not for the needs of science.
While Thomas of Colmar was developing the desktop calculator, a series of very
interesting developments in computers was started in Cambridge, England, by Charles
Babbage (of which the computer store "Babbages" is named), a mathematics professor. In
1812, Babbage realized that many long calculations, especially those needed to make
mathematical tables, were really a series of predictable actions that were constantly
repeated. From this he suspected that it should be possible to do these automatically. He
began to design an automatic mechanical calculating machine, which he called a difference
engine. By 1822, he had a working model to demonstrate. Financial help from the British
Government was attained and Babbage started fabrication of a difference engine in 1823.
It was intended to be steam powered and fully automatic, including the printing of the
resulting tables, and commanded by a fixed instruction program. The difference
engine, although having limited adaptability and applicability, was really a great
advance. Babbage continued to work on it for the next 10 years, but in 1833 he lost
interest because he thought he had a better idea; the construction of what would now be
called a general purpose, fully program-controlled, automatic mechanical digital
computer. Babbage called this idea an Analytical Engine. The ideas of this design showed
a lot of foresight, although this couldn't be appreciated until a full century later.
The plans for this engine required an identical decimal computer operating on
numbers of 50 decimal digits (or words) and having a storage capacity (memory) of 1,000
such digits. The built-in operations were supposed to include everything that a modern
general - purpose computer would need, even the all important Conditional Control
Transfer Capability that would allow commands to be executed in any order, not just the
order in which they were programmed.
As people can see, it took quite a large amount of intelligence and fortitude to come to
the 1990's style and use of computers. People have assumed that computers are a natural
development in society and take them for granted. Just as people have learned to drive an
automobile, it also takes skill and learning to utilize a computer.
Computers in society have become difficult to understand. Exactly what they consisted of
and what actions they performed were highly dependent upon the type of computer. To say a
person had a typical computer doesn't necessarily narrow down just what the capabilities
of that computer was. Computer styles and types covered so many different functions and
actions, that it was difficult to name them all. The original computers of the 1940's
were easy to define their purpose when they were first invented. They primarily performed
mathematical functions many times faster than any person could have calculated. However,
the evolution of the computer had created many styles and types that were greatly
dependent on a well defined purpose.
The computers of the 1990's roughly fell into three groups consisting of mainframes,
networking units, and personal computers. Mainframe computers were extremely large sized
modules and had the capabilities of processing and storing massive amounts of data in the
form of numbers and words. Mainframes were the first types of computers developed in the
1940's. Users of these types of computers ranged from banking firms, large corporations
and government agencies. They usually were very expensive in cost but designed to last at
least five to ten years. They also required well educated and experienced manpower to be
operated and maintained. Larry Wulforst, in his book Breakthrough to the Computer Age,
describes the old mainframes of the 1940's compared to those of the 1990's by
speculating, "...the contrast to the sound of the sputtering motor powering the first
flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk and the roar of the mighty engines on a Cape
Canaveral launching pad" (126).
Networking computers derived from the idea of bettering communications. They were medium
sized computers specifically designed to link and communicate with other computers. The
United States government initially designed and utilized these type of computers in the
1960's in order to better the national response to nuclear threats and attacks. The
Internet developed as a direct result of this communication system. In the 1990's, there
were literally thousands of these communication computers scattered all over the world
and they served as the communication traffic managers for the entire Internet. One source
stated it best concerning the volume of Internet computers by revealing, "... the number
of hosts on the Internet began an explosive growth. By 1988 there were over 50,000 hosts.
A year later, there were three times that many" (Campbell-Kelly and Aspray 297).
The personal computers that are in large abundance in the 1990's are actually very
simple machines. Their basic purpose is to provide a usable platform for a person to
perform given tasks easier and faster. They perform word processing, spread sheet
functions and person to person communications just to name a few. They are also a great
form of enjoyment as many games have been developed to play on these types of computers.
These computers are the most numerous types in the world due to there relatively small
cost and size.
The internal workings and mechanics of personal computers primarily consisted of a
central processing unit, a keyboard, a video monitor and possibly a printer unit. The
central processing unit is the heart and brains of the system. The functions of the
central processing unit were based on a unit called the Von Neumann computer designed in
1952. As stated in the book The Dream Machine, the Von Neumann computer consisted of an
input, memory, control, arithmetic unit and output as basic processes of a central
processing unit. It has become the basic design and fundamental basis for the development
of most computers (Palfreman and Swade 48).
Works Cited
Wulforst, Harry. Breakthrough to the Computer Age. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1982.
Palferman, Jon and Doron Swade. The Dream Machine. London: BBC Books, 1991.
Campbell-Kelly, Martin and William Aspray. Computer, A History of the
Information Machine. New York: BasicBooks, 1996.
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