COMPUTING DEVICES II, FROM 20TH CENTURY TO DATE

COMPUTING DEVICES II, FROM 20^TH CENTURY TO DATE

Computing devices from the 20^th century to date includes:

ENIAC

 This means Electronic numerical integrator and calculator. ENIAC was built at the University of Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1945 by two professors John Mauchly and prosper Eckert. T. who got funding from the war department after would replace all the “computers”
(the woman who were employed to calculate the firing tables for the army’s artillery guns.) ENIAC filled a 20 by 40 foot room, weighed 30 tons, and used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes generated waste heat like a light bulb and all this heat (174,000 watts of heat) meant that the computer could only be operated in a specially designed room with its own heavy duty air conditioning system.

EDVAC

 This means Electronic Discrete variable Automatic computer.

     Eckert and Manchly next teamed up with the mathematician John von Neumann to design EDVAC, which pioneered the stored program. Because he was the first to publish a description of this new computer. Von Neumann is often wrongly credited with the realization that the sequence of computation steps could be represented electronically just as the data was. But this major breakthrough was found in Eckert’s notes long before he ever started working with von Neumann.

UNIVAC

 This means universal Automatic computer. By the end of the 1950’s, computers were no longer one-of-a-kind hand built devices owned by universities and government research labs. Eckert and Mauchly left the University of Pennsylvania over a dispute about who owned the patents for their invention. They decided to set up their own company. Their first product was the famous UNIVAC (that is, mass produced) computer. UNIVAC was also the first computer to employ magnetic tape.

PERSONAL COMPUTERS (PC)

Personal Computers came in varieties such as desktop and tower units, laptops, note book, PDAS and so on. In this sense, the term “desktop” refers specifically to a horizontally oriented case placed on to save space on the desk.

     The first “personal computer” was the sphere 1 computer, created in Bountiful, Utah in 1975 by computer pioneer Michael D. wise (1949-2002). A first, sphere 1 was sold as a kit, but was later sold as fully assembled PC, including a keyboard, a number pad, and a monitor. PCS then were generally expensive specialized computers sold for business or scientific uses.

The introduction of the microprocessor, a single chip with all the circuitry that formerly occupied large cabinets, led to the proliferation of personal computers after 1975.

     Early personal computers generally called microcomputers were sold in kit form and in limited volumes, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians. Minimal programming was done with toggle switches to enter instructions, and output was provided by front panel lamps. Practical use required peripherals such as keyboards, computer terminals, disk drives and printers.

Micral N was the earliest commercial, non-kit microcomputer based on a microprocessor, the Intel 8008. It was built starting in 1972 and about 90,000 units were sold. In 1976, Steve Jobs and steve wozniak sold the Apple 1 computer circutboard, which was fully prepared and contained about 30 chips. The first successfully mass marketed personal computer was the commodore PET introduced in Tannery 1977, which bore a striking resemblance to sphere 1 of two years earlier. It was soon followed by the TRS-so from Radio shack and the popular Apple II.