Cirpaci Cristian Alex
            Student number:2308291


The history of the computer is a very interesting one, which has rapidly caught up to the development of the rest of the world around it in a very short time. The first true computer was the abacus. It was the very first device to ever be used for the purpose of aiding computation. The abacus originated in around 300 BC and was devised by the Babylonians. In truth, the computer’s history would not exist without the mathematical aids that came before it.

In 1617, the logarithm was invented by a Scotsman named John Napier. Logarithms allow multiplication to be performed using addition. In fact, Leonardo Da Vinci had several drawings for a calculator run by gears, though none ever came to fruition. The first gear driven calculator was made in 1642 by Blaise Pascal. 


The Pascaline was his invention, made to assist his father, who was working as a tax collector. They were crude, and slightly inaccurate, but the idea of having automated calculations done by machine was a big leap forward.
The punch card was an important part of the history of the computer. 

In 1801, the French Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a power loom that would read instructions from a punch card and base its weave upon the punch card’s instructions. This new technology made weaving much more easy and cost efficient, but put many loom operators into unemployment. The history of the computer is filled with such cases. A new technology that allows work to be accomplished faster has the downside of taking less workforce to complete.


In 1822, Charles Babbage proposed steam driven calculating machines that could compute vast amounts of information. The device never came to fruition. Babbage then sought out another invention, called the Analytic Engine. Babbage made a design change to Jacquard’s punch cards. He decided to put holes in the punch cards. The punched card could be used as a storage mechanism. This invention worked much like a modern computer. It had a “store” to hold data, and a “mill” to weave new threads of data. In the punch card, threads could pass through holes and those patterns could be used to represent information.

In the late 1800’s, Herman Hollerith built a company called the Tabulating Machine Company. After changing ownership several times, it became International Business Machines, also known as IBM. As IBM grew, punch card technology became more prevalent. It became essentially ubiquitous. 

Bills would arrive with punch cards that would have to be returned with payments. These cards would be punched to store all of the information of the individual, such as a person’s name, address, and other important information. Punch cards were used for toll booths, elections, and almost all other things in life that could or would need any form of recording.
IBM worked on mechanical calculators for accounting purposes. They could only add and subtract, and negative numbers did not exist in their calculations. 

The U.S. Military sought mechanical calculation capabilities during World War 2, as they needed to be able to launch shells as heavy as cars across very long distances. The military couldn’t afford to have these computations made by hand, as they wouldn’t apply to newer artillery that could come in during the war. This problem was dealt with by the Harvard Mark I. Computer. The computer was the first of its kind, as it was digital and programmable. The machine used switches, relays, rotating shafts, and clutches to function, and was a massive piece of equipment. 

At over 5 tons, the machine was 8 feet tall, 51 feet long, and had to be turned by a 5 horsepower motor. The machine used a paper tape of continuous punched information, so that dropped punch cards would not be an issue.
The term “bug,” which today means an unresolved issue in a program or piece of software, was coined by one of the programmers of the Mark I. Grace Hopper found a dead moth whose wings were blocking part of the paper tape. Hopper was a very significant figure in the history of the personal computer. The COBOL programming language was written by Hopper, and is known recently for its issue with the Y2K switch. 

COBOL was the first high level programming language, and it served the purpose of being more understandable to humans than the binary that the computing machinery understands. A compiler was used to translate the high level language into binary. The Mark I ran for 15 years without ever stopping.
As decades have passed, the parts that make up modern computers have gotten much smaller. 

In 1959, the IBM Stretch computer needed a length of 33 feet to hold its 150,000 transistors. In the early 1980’s, that same number of transistors could be placed on a single integrated circuit. The Pentium 4 processor contains 42,000,000 transistors in a single chip that is smaller than a quarter. The very first all digital computer was built in 1941 by J.V. Atanasoff at Iowa State University. The computer stored data as a charge, much like today’s computers.
The true forefather of modern computing, though, is ENIAC. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator. 

It was built at the University of Pennsylvania from 1943 to 1945 by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. ENIAC was of an incredible scale. Its footprint required a 20 by 40 foot room. It weighed in at 30 tons, and it needed more than 18,000 vacuum tubes. ENIAC used used paper cards from IBM. ENIAC could be reprogrammed using patch cords and switches. ENIAC was funded by the military, but Mauchly and Eckert staffed junior members of the University to avoid employing the aid of skeptics.

The big concern with ENIAC was that there was seemingly no way that 18,000 vacuum tubes could work together. Even television sets with as little as 30 tubes could often have problems. Eckert found a way to make the tubes work properly, though, through very careful circuit design. The ENIAC was several times faster than the Mark I. ENIAC cost the U.S. Military $500,000 to build, and its very first project was to determine the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb. ENIAC’s calculations determined it was, and the project is still classified to this day.

ENIAC had one major problem in the eyes of the military. Although they felt it was well worth the cost of development, the method of reprogramming it was quite tedious. It took days to change the ENIAC’s program. Eckert and Mauchly worked with mathemetician John von Neumann to build ENIAC’s replacement, EDVAC. EDVAC stored programs electronically as data. Once a computer could have its programs represented electronically, programs could be rewritten as fast as a computer could calculate it. Programs could modify themselves while running, which was a first. Programs could now fail in the case of faulty logic. If a program modifies itself in a way that causes the program to fail, it will crash. Two modern examples are the “blue screen of death,” in Microsoft’s Windows operating system and the “kernel-panic,” in Apple’s Macintosh operating system.


By the 1960’s IBM was the most powerful computer seller in the world, and had a level of dominance that was untouchable to its seven low-sales competitors. 

From 1969 to 1982, IBM was fighting anti-trust proceedings from the federal government, as the government felt that IBM was actively preventing the growth of its competitors. The reason that they were able to stop the growth of their competitors was their hiring of the software development firm known as Microsoft. Their contract with Microsoft was exclusive, and thus, IBM did not have to spend money on the development of its software. It only had to pay Microsoft for the terms of the contract. Competing companies could not compete with Microsoft’s software platform, and no company has even come close to meeting Microsoft’s software quality in the eyes of the general public until Apple in the early 2000’s.


IBM’s deal with Microsoft allowed Microsoft to control the software market around the world, and their operating system has been the most widely used in the world since its conception, currently encapsulating 90% of all computer users worldwide. Because of that contract with IBM, Microsoft was able to mold the entire software industry in such a way that hardware companies needed their software to be able to compete.
Today, the world of computing continues to change. Personal computing is a very powerful form of media technology, as it is all around us. It is continuing to change so rapidly, as the average consumer has access to the tools and education for programming. Companies spend millions of dollars developing software that is supposed to be secure from software piracy, yet consumers find ways to hack software so that they can use it for free. The Linux advocates are the best example of the future of personal computing. The many versions of Linux are developed by the community and distributed for free. Both Apple and Microsoft have learned from this, and made major overhauls in their most recent operating systems specifically to meet and exceed the demands of their consumers.

Thank you