Today's modern age computers are a result of years of thorough research and innovation. This is not the end. Computers are going to get more powerful and innovative in years to come. It's interesting to know how computers were evolved the way they are today.
Computers are meant to do computing, taking place of "human computers". The time when computers didn't exist, humans did computations (e.g mathematical) by hand. The first person to envision machines doing computation was Charles Babbage in 1830s. He is often called as "Father of the computers". His simple work for arithmetic machine computing proved to be so important that many more complex machines were designed later on based on his work. This eventually gave birth to computers after 1950s. Charles Babbage's machine was referred to as "Analytical Engine", a very first representation of the modern age computer.
Years later, several advancements were made in various computer parts(around 1950s). Grace Murray Hopper developed a notion of compiler, John Backus developed the first programming language - FORTRAN and Jack kilby & Robert Noyce invented integrated circuit. Computer networks also saw advancement such as ARPAnet, which proved to be a precursor to today's Internet. Other areas such as Operating systems, Theory of databases and Computer architecture also saw an advancement over the span of subsequent twenty years.
These advancements eventually ended up with an introduction of personal computers which hit the market for the very fist time during 1974 to 1977. Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair, IBM 5100 and RadioShack's TRS-80 were some of the computers launched during this period. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak introduced Apple computer in 1976.
The term "PC - Personal Computer" originated when IBM released their first personal computer named "Acron" in 1981 (shown in the picture above) running Microsoft MS-DOS operating system. Following the release of Apple's first computer with GUI, Microsoft responded with the release of Windows operating system. Since then the war has continued and many gradual advancements were made to computers. As a result, today computers are an integral part of every possible engineering, medical and science field. It has brought revolution in each of this field and have made our life much easier and safer.
No comments:
Post a Comment