Computer evolution
If you are reading this text, it means that a couple of seconds ago your computer performed a huge number of complex operations. Today we will talk about those times when the same process would take a couple of minutes, and even about those times when it was simply impossible. The evolution of the computer - in the new materialAmateur.mediaand Rostec.
Computer man
Computers appeared in England around the 15th century - and this is no joke
Computers appeared in England around the 15th century - and this is not a belated April Fool's joke. Computers were originally called in England people whose job was to carry out complex arithmetic calculations. The word computer itself, in fact, comes from the Latin "computo" - I calculate. Of course, the functionality of modern computers has long gone beyond purely mathematical operations, but the first ones, known by the abbreviation ECM (electronic computers), were created for this very purpose.
"Global Village"
In 1822, the young English mathematician Charles Babbage (in the future, by the way, a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg) brought to the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society a mechanism with many gears and levers. The difference engine, as the inventor himself called it, shocked everyone present: it could, for example, calculate the values of polynomials of the 7th degree. However, this invention remained just a successful experiment, since her small memory did not allow her to perform the calculations necessary for astronomers.
Computing part of the difference engine
After the Difference Engine, Babbage decided to take on something more grandiose and created a project for the Analytical Engine, in the image of which modern computers are built. The Analytical Engine was never built: in its final form, it had to be no smaller than a railway locomotive. The device of Babbage's analytical engine was more like a description of a village: inside there was a "warehouse" (now we would call it memory), a "mill" (in modern terminology - a processor), a control element (Babbage probably could not come up with a rural name) and a device for input and output of data. In fact, to create a computer, all that remained was to come up with a scheme with a stored program. It took over a hundred years.
Charles Babbage described an approximate design of a computer in the middleXIXcentury
IBM- "blue giant" with giant computers
The company "IBM" (then it, however, was also called "TMC") appeared in 1896, its founder was a descendant of German emigrants Herman Hollerith. Initially, the company specialized in the production of calculating machines. In 1911, Hollerith felt it was time for him to retire and sold the company to the extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, millionaire Charles Flint. One of the reasons for Flint's success is that he did not shy away from any orders: the company carried out US government orders, and at the same time, according to Edwin Black, author of the book "IBM and the Holocaust", statistics on imprisoned Jews in Nazi Germany were kept exactly on machines from IBM.
IBM employees include five Nobel laureates
In 1941, as World War II shook Europe, Harvard mathematician Howard Aiken and his four assistants assembled the first American programmable computer, the MARKI, at IBM. The giant weighed 4.5 tons, reached a length of about 17 meters, and surpassed any person in height. The total length of the wires in it was almost 800 kilometers. One logarithm "MARKI" calculated more than a minute, but he could make a division in just 15 seconds. Each program for him was a huge roll of tape, from which he read the instructions. At the same time, many researchers call it the first really working computer, since there was no need for a person to interfere in its work. Later, Howard Aiken left IBM and continued to develop the Markov line on his own, in 1952 he created the MARKIV.
A small part "MARKI»
« PDP-1 "- expensive pleasure
1960 was a turning point for computer technology: DEC introduced the first PDP-1 minicomputer to the market.
1960 was a turning point for computer technology: DEC introduced the first minicomputer, the PDP-1, to the market, which was equipped with a keyboard and monitor. True, only 50 copies were sold, and only three have come down to us.
This car was sold for $120,000
By the way, the first computer mouse was wooden.
A few years later, the last attribute was created, without which it is difficult to imagine a modern computer - Douglas Engelbart invented the computer mouse. By the way, it was wooden, and initially the scientist planned to make five buttons on it for each finger of the hand. And the inventor called it a mouse because the wire coming out of the back looked like a tail. The cursor, in turn, also received a funny name: at first it was called a bug. In the USSR, the Kolobok Manipulator computer mouse was released much later.
Such a mouse was soon replaced by mice with a ball drive.
The era of the computer began then
If in the 60th year computer technology made a significant step forward, then in 1969 it ran a marathon distance. That year, the Pentagon created the ARPAnet network, which is rightfully considered the forerunner of the Internet, at the same time the first floppy disk was at the final stage of development (by the way, they are still used in the US presidential administration), and at the same time, Honeywell announced the release of the "Kitchen Computer" H316. It was the H316 that became the world's first home computer.
The world's first home computer was the H316 from Honeywell
Then, in 1969, schoolboy Steve Jobs met graduate Steven Wozniak. These two, starting to build their own computers in the garage, take over the field of computer technology for a long time and become one of the most famous people of our time. Read more about them in this article.
Ivan Steinert
