All About the Development and History Of The Computer

Computers have been known probably your whole life; however, did you know that they have been present not a very long time?

During the 1960’s, big companies started to popularized the use of computers.  Computers were not well known to schools and homes that time until the 1980’s.

HOW DO WE USE COMPUTER?

There are many ways on how people use computers. To send money around the world without more hassles, banks use computers. Even store owners use computers to check and keep track of the products.

In schools, teachers do not use manual computation of the grades of the student instead, they use computers. Even their lessons are encoded through the use of it, unlike before where they have to use their pen writing on a lesson plan book.

Computers help students learn and research things in one setting without a mountain of books that needs to be scan and read throughout long hours. It will let us get together worldwide through the internet.

Research problems by the scientist will also be solved with the use of computers. To make trucks, airplanes, cars, or any machines, engineers need the power of the computer. To design a building like house and palace, architects use computers. To track criminals, police officers uses a computer. To read or to make coded messages, military uses it too.

Computers are not only laptops and desktops but they are everywhere around us. There are computers, tiny computers inside your television set, in your microwave oven, digital video disc players and even in your video cassette recorders. Your cars also have tiny computers that help them run smoothly.

SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE

In order for a computer to work, it needs software and hardware. The so-called hardware is your laptop and desktop and all the other parts inside. The computer will also work because of the CPU or the Central Processing Unit. The piece of computer hardware includes the mouse, keyboard, monitor, and the printer.

In order for instructions and information to be stored in a computer, it needs memory chips, hardware. The hard disk drive can also use store information.

The software is the programs that run the computer. It is the computer operating system.  Programs or applications are software that does a specific task. An example is a word-processing program that let you write articles, letters, and office reports.

COMPUTERS CAN DO SO MUCH

Computers have a special language that tells them what to do, which is one of the reasons why it can do so much. Ones and zeros are the only two letters that computer language has. Computers can read these zeros and ones very fast.

Each of the one or zero is called a bit. We can also call a byte those eight zeros and ones together. Bytes and bits are being stored in the memory chips of a computer. The computer engineers make chips every year that can hold extra bytes. More applications are continually written by the programmers that can do more things.

WHO THOUGHT AND CREATED COMPUTER?

The development of the modern computers has been contributed by many inventions. Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician in the 1600’s together with other inventors began creating machines that could subtract and add numbers. In order for these machines work, they use levers, wheels, and other moving parts. Augusta Ada Byron, countess of Lovelace, and Charles Babbage, British mathematicians, do some plans for machines that can pile information on cards with a prick that punched in them during the 1800’s.

Herman Hollerith, an American inventor, made the machine that totaled the figures of population of the United States census in 1890 automatically. In 1924, Hollerith’s company joined other big companies to become IBM or International Business Machines. Thus, other inventors create upgraded computers. Although, those early computers were not digital compared to modern computers- that is, none used the one and zero digits.

ENIAC, that was developed in the 1940’s was the first ever computer that is digital. It was a huge computer. It was the size of a house. It weighted more than the weight of five elephants and it has glass tubes inside, which is more than 18, 000.

UNIVAC was the first used computers for business. Mainframes were what the inventors called the big computers like UNIVAC and ENIAC. Those big machines are nothing compared to the laptop and desktop that we are using nowadays because they are more powerful.

The scientist-invented transistor, a tiny electric switch, in the 1940s of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. During the 1960s, engineers and scientists developed the computer chips or the integrated circuits. Those computer chips permitted to be bigger than the computer. The chips fill up millions of transistors into space, which is as small as your smaller fingernail.

In the 1970s, PCs or the personal computers were invented and most of it is intended to be used by one individual at a time. They are sized to be fit on a desk. The first invented PC is the Altair 8800. In 1977, the first PC of Apple Computer was made. The first PC of IBM company was also made in 1981.

INVENTORS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMS

As mentioned, computer programs tell a computer what to do. They are sets of instructions. There is a lot of people who worked on the first computer programs, which is extremely hard to understand and write. They are very long strings of ones and zeros.

Grace Murray Hopper, an American mathematician, and a naval officer wrote the first program in 1952. The first program turned the strings of zeros and ones from an English computer instruction that makes computer works. They called the programs as compilers. Grace helped in developing the first programming language in 1957, which companies could use and buy. They called it FLOW- MATIC. The bug was the word that is first used by Hopper to mean a problem within a computer. In one of the computers that she worked with, she found a moth trapped in, and that is where she carried the word bug. “First actual case of a bug being found”, that was what she wrote after she taped the moth into her notebook.

LATEST COMPUTER DEVELOPMENTS

Operating systems have become very difficult as computers become widespread and even powerful. In 1969, the scientists of the AT&T developed the UNIX, which is an operating system. Linux, a related operating system, and the UNIX were popular along with computer experts and at universities. Bill gates with his friend Paul Allen founded the Microsoft Corporation and wrote a program in 1975 for the Altair 8800. Windows operating system and DOS was later developed by Microsoft, which is used on office PCs and on many homes.

As computers are upgraded, it also keeps getting more powerful and smaller. Those personal computers nowadays that are fit on the desktop are even more powerful compared to the first computers or the so-called “supercomputers” that is as big as a room. Watches and cell phones today have extremely small computers that can stockpile information such as addresses, telephone numbers, and appointments. These gadgets grant you to play online games and surf the Web. Lots of computer professionals deliberately saying that the long history of computers has only begun.

As being observed today the development of computers is very quick. Almost everyone has computers and that we could easily make our works even easier through it. Thanks to the scientist, inventors, engineers and developers who made these tool just for us.