History and Generations of Computer, Famous Inventors

• Manual mechanical device - a device with simple mechanism powered by hand.
• Manual mechanical device required some sort of physical effort from the user when used.
• The earliest data processing equipment were all manual mechanical devices due to the absence of electricity and adequate industrial technology.
• Abacus is the first computer ever made.
• Napier's bone was developed by John Napier who became famous because of his invention of logarithms.
• Napier's bone - the use of “logs” enabled him to reduce any multiplication problem to a problem of addition.
• Oughtred's Slide Rule was invented in 1650 by two Englishmen William Oughtred and Edmund Gunter, based on Napier’s logarithms, to become the first analog computer (of the modern ages).
• Pascaline was invented by the famous French philosopher, Blaise Pascal in 1642.
• Leibniz calculator was invented by Baron Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz in 1674.
• Leibniz calculator utilizes the same techniques for addition and subtraction as Pascal’s device but could also perform multiplication and division, as well as extract square roots.
• Analytical engine was invented by Charles Babbage in 1822.
• Charles Babbage is known as the Father of Computing because of his contribution to the basic design of the computer.
• Analytical Engine was designed to use two types of cards – operation cards, to indicate the specific functions to be performed, and variable cards, to specify the actual data.
• An electromechanical device is usually powered by an electric motor and uses switches and relays.
• Hollerith's punch-card machine was invented by Herman Hollerith in 1880.
• Hollerith's punch-card machine - machine to tabulate census data easier during the WW2
• Jacquard loom was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804.
• Jacquard loom used punched cards to create patterns on fabric woven on a loom.
• Mark I was invented by Howard Aiken in 1943. Mark I was put into operation 1944.
• The official name of the Mark I was Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.
• Mark I could perform the four basic arithmetic operations and could locate information stored in tabular form.
• An electronic device such as a modern digital computer, has its principal components circuit boards, transistor or silicon and chips.
• Atanasoff-Berry Computer - invented by John Atanasoff in 1942.
• Atanasoff-Berry Computer - The first digital computer that used binary logic circuitry and had regenerative memory.
• ENIAC means Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator
• ENIAC is the first large-scale general purpose digital electronic computer
• ENIAC was invented by Presper Eckert Jr. and John Mauchly in 1943 to 1946.
• ENIAC could perform 300 multiplications per second.
• EDVAC means Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer
• EDVAC have more internal memory that any other computing device to date.
• EDVAC - Memory was to be provided through the use of mercury delay lines.
• EDVAC - Invented by John Von Neumann.
• EDSAC means Electronic Delayed Automatic Calculator
• EDSAC - The first full-scale computer with electronic stored programs, with its design based off of Von Neumann's.
• Maurice V. Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge constructed the EDSAC
• Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC)
• UNIVAC - A computer milestone achieved by Dr. Presper Eckert and Dr. John Mauchly, the team that invented the ENIAC computer
• UNIVAC - first commercially available computer
• 1st gen - Vacuum tubes
• 2nd gen - transistors