FREE ESSAY ON COMPUTERS HISTORY

COMPUTERS HISTORY

Computers
This paper is about the computer. Today computers are used by hundreds of millions of
people. There have been many advances in the computer. The computer used to weigh 30 tons
and filled warehouse size rooms, but today can be as light as 3 pounds and fit in a
persons pocket.
There were basically three times the computer was mentioned. One as a mechanical
computing device, in about 500 BC The other as a concept in 1833, and the third as the
modern day computer in 1946. The first mechanical calculator was called the abacus. The
abacus is a is a string of moving beads.
The first concept of the modern computer was first outlined in 1833 by the British
mathematician Charles Babbage. His outline contained all of todays features in a computer
today. Those features are memory, a control unit, and output devices. Even though Babbage
worked on the machine for over 40 years he never actual saw it work. The modern computer
grew out of intense research efforts mounted during World War II. The military needed
faster ballistics calculators, and British cryptographers needed machines to help break
the German secret codes.
Early as the 1940's the German Inventor, Konrad Zuse, produced the first operational
computer. It was used in aircraft and missile designs, but the German government would
not let him improve the machine so it never reached its maximum capability. Two engineers
called John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr. from the University of Pennsylvania
constructed a calculator. Its construction was an enormous feat of engineering. The
30-ton machine was 18 feet high and 80 feet long, and contained 17,468 vacuum tubes
linked by 500 miles of wiring. This calculator performed 100,000 operations per second,
and its first operational test included calculations that helped determine the
feasibility of the hydrogen bomb. 
Computers were finally made to a smaller size in 1958 by Jack Kilby. He used less
expensive silicon chips, this made it possible to cram as many as 10 million components
on 1 chip. Another big step in the computer chip was made by American Engineer Marcian E.
Hoff. He combined the uses of a computer into 1 tiny silicon chip which he called the
microprocessor. This microprocessor was called the Intel 4004. By the mid 1970's the
microprocessor or microchip reduced the cost of computers. The first affordable desktop
computer designed specifically for personal use was called the Altair 8800 and was sold
by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems in 1974. In 1977 Tandy Corporation became the
first major electronics firm to produce a personal computer. They added a keyboard to
their computer and offered a way of storing programs on a cassette recorder. 
Later on companies started creating added features to the computer like the CD-ROM disc,
encyclopedias, almanacs, collections of reference books, interactive games using movie
footage, educational programs, movies. Also a great invention was the Internet and
e-mail. There will be many many advancements in the near future. And who knows what
computers will be like in 40-50 years.