History of Computer

 

Important Inventions

1. ABACUS

• Inventor: Chinese people
  
• When: 2500-3000 BC
  
• First calculating machine
• Made up of wooden frames with beads.
• It has 2 parts: Upper part called "Heaven" and Lower part is called "Earth"
• Value of beads in Heaven is 5 and value of beads in Earth is 1. 

2. Napier's Bone

• Inventor: John Napier
  
• When: 1617
• Multiplying Machine
• Madeup of  ivory bones engraved with number as multiplication table
• Also used for division and taking square root. 

  3. Slide Rule

• Inventor: William Oughtred
  
• When: 1622
• Also known as slipstick
• Works on Logarithm principle
• Used for multpication, division, root, trigonometry, exponentiation
• Normally not used for addition and substraction

4. Pascaline

• Inventor: Blaise Pascal (Inventor of Calculator)
  
• When: 1642
• First Mechanical Calculator
• Also known as pascal's calculator or arithmetic machine
• Capable of addition and substraction
• Have toothed metal wheels having digit 0 to 9

5. Stepped Reckoner or Leibnitz's Calculator

•  Inventor: Gootfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz
  
• When: 1673
• Used to find  square roots and arithmetic operation
• Improved version of Pascaline

6. Jacquard Loom or Punch Card

• Inventor: Joseph Marie Jacquard
  
• When: 1801 but patented at 1804
• Used to give pattersn for textiles using punched card  

7. Difference Engine

• Inventor: Charles Babbage
  
• When: 1822
• Decimal Digital Machine capable of performing complex mathematical calculations
• Used to solve polynomial equations
• Also known as Automatic Mechincal Calculator
• Can maitain precision upto 31 digits  

8. Analytical Engine

• Inventor: Charles Babbage
  
• When: 1837
• General Programmable Machine which used to stored program
• Able to add, substract, multiply, divide
• Used punch card for input and storing the data permnently

9. Tabulating Machine

• Inventor: Herman Hollerith
  
• When: 1890
• Used to sort or summarize and accounting or count data
• Also know as electronic punch card tabulator
• Note: Punch card is invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard and Herman Hollerith invent electronic pucnch card tabulator not the punch card itself.

10. ABC (Atnasoff Berry Computer)

• Inventor: John Vincent Atnasoff 
• When: Introduced at 1939 but released at 1942
• First automatic Electronic Digital Computer

11. Mark I

• Inventor: Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper
• When: 1944
• First Automatic Electromechanical Computer
• Also called Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC)

12. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator)

• Inventor: John Mauchly and J, Presper Eckert
• When: 1946
• First General Purpose Electronic Digital Computer

13. EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)

• Inventor: John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
• When: 1949
• First Stored programmed computer

14. EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer)

• Inventor: John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
• When: 1949
• First Practical Stored Programmed Computer

15. UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)

• Inventor: John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
• When: 1951
• First Commercial Computer

Point to remember

1. First Super Computer - CDC 6600
2. First Mainframe Computer - UNIVAC I
3. First Mini Computer - PDP 1 (Programmed Data Processor)
4. First Micro Computer -  Altair 8800
5. Father of Computer - Charles Babbage
6. Fater of Computer Science - Alan Turing
7. Father of AI - John McCarthy
8. First Computer Programmer - Lady Augusta Ada Lovelace