Milestone of science and technology

Charles Babbage, Konrad Zuse and the computer

Who invented it? The cradle of the computer was not in Silicon Valley, but in Germany.Here the engineer Konrad Zuse created from 1936, the first program-controlled and freely programmable electronic brain of the story.

From: A film by Thomas Ammann

Stand: 10.05.2012

With purely mechanical means already in the Baroque era mathematician calculators had built. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) constructed a calculating machine, which worked with the familiar decimal system and was very awkward to use. But they nevertheless facilitated the addition of large numbers. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716) built a little later a calculating machine that already mastered all basic arithmetic operations.

Punch cards to control looms

The Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) used to control its mechanical loom already punched cards. On this principle the end of the 19th century the German-Americans Hermann Hollerith resorted (1860-1929), as of the data of that census in the United States was punch in punch cards, which were then evaluated by counting in electromechanical time unmatched speed. This machine sat soon in general authorities and offices by.

The Unfinished professor of mathematics

Far more demanding computing tasks should resolve as early as 1830, the "difference machine" of the English mathematics professor Charles Babbage (1791-1871), a behemoth with hundreds of gears, which, however, was never quite finished. Later, he planned a more universal purpose machine incorporating a calculating device and control work, but could not be built with the former mechanical means.

Z1 to Z4 - the ancestors of all the electronic brains

Konrad Zuse

Since the 1920s, an electromagnetic switch and memory element had in the automatic telephone exchange technology proven, the relay. It basically consists of a wire coil with an iron core, before, is attached a movable piece of sheet metal, the so-called anchor. If the coil traversed by a direct current, so it attracts the armature closes or opens one or more mechanically coupled contacts. With this device began in 1936, the German mechanical engineer Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) to construct a calculating machine, which should relieve him of the lengthy calculations. So a two times two meters large unit, the Z1 was built. In the period of World War II, the Z3, the arithmetic unit consisted of 2,000 relay originated. A functional replica is located in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. With the Z4 Zuse had yet another machine to follow, but the line of the German Wehrmacht did not recognize the importance of its development.

Intensifier tubes instead of relays: The USA win the race

In the US, computer development has been heavily promoted during the 2nd World War.1945 the first large-scale computer system was completed with a total of 17,000 intensifier tubes, the "ENIAC". She counted a thousand times faster than the systems with relays. At the same time, the American mathematician John von Neumann described the structure of today's computers with arithmetic unit, control unit and memory, as well as input and output devices.

Transistors make the breakthrough

Advances in electronics have benefited even the computers. In the 1960s, the tubes were replaced by transistors, the revenue only 1/100 of the power and 1/100 of the volume of tubes and also were more reliable. With the so-called planar technique, it was possible to produce a plurality of transistors and other components on a silicon wafer at the same time. The previously soldered onto printed circuit boards assemblies were in a tiny package to a so-called integrated circuit - called IC - -. In English Integrated Circuit united, not only at least 100 times smaller, special also to manufacture much cheaper. Today up to 100 million transistors on a so-called. Microchip integrated and the development is not yet over. In parallel with the advances in hardware and operating systems and application software have been continuously improved and adapted to the needs of even computer laymen.

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The five genirations of computer

The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory, and were often enormous, taking up entire rooms. They were very expensive to operate and in addition to using a great deal of electricity, generated a lot of heat, which was often the cause of malfunctions.

First generation computers relied on machine language, the lowest-level programming language understood by computers, to perform operations, and they could only solve one problem at a time. Input was based on punched cards and paper tape, and output was displayed on printouts.

The UNIVAC and ENIAC computers are examples of first-generation computing devices. The UNIVAC was the first commercial computer delivered to a business client, the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951.

A UNIVAC computer at the Census Bureau.
Image Source: United States Census Bureau

Second Generation (1956-1963) Transistors

Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and ushered in the second generation of computers. The transistor was invented in 1947 but did not see widespread use in computers until the late 1950s. The transistor was far superior to the vacuum tube, allowing computers to become smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable than their first-generation predecessors. Though the transistor still generated a great deal of heat that subjected the computer to damage, it was a vast improvement over the vacuum tube. Second-generation computers still relied on punched cards for input and printouts for output.

Second-generation computers moved from cryptic binary machine language to symbolic, or assembly, languages, which allowed programmers to specify instructions in words. High-level programming languageswere also being developed at this time, such as early versions of COBOL and FORTRAN. These were also the first computers that stored their instructions in their memory, which moved from a magnetic drum to magnetic core technology.

The first computers of this generation were developed for the atomic energy industry.

Third Generation (1964-1971) Integrated Circuits

The development of the integrated circuit was the hallmark of the third generation of computers. Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, called semiconductors, which drastically increased the speed and efficiency of computers.

Instead of punched cards and printouts, users interacted with third generation computers through keyboardsand monitors and interfaced with an operating system, which allowed the device to run many differentapplications at one time with a central program that monitored the memory. Computers for the first time became accessible to a mass audience because they were smaller and cheaper than their predecessors.

Fourth Generation (1971-Present) Microprocessors

The microprocessor brought the fourth generation of computers, as thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip. What in the first generation filled an entire room could now fit in the palm of the hand. The Intel 4004 chip, developed in 1971, located all the components of the computer—from the central processing unit and memory to input/output controls—on a single chip.

In 1981 IBM introduced its first computer for the home user, and in 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh. Microprocessors also moved out of the realm of desktop computers and into many areas of life as more and more everyday products began to use microprocessors.

As these small computers became more powerful, they could be linked together to form networks, which eventually led to the development of the Internet. Fourth generation computers also saw the development ofGUIs, the mouse and handheld devices.

Fifth Generation (Present and Beyond) Artificial Intelligence

Fifth generation computing devices, based on artificial intelligence, are still in development, though there are some applications, such as voice recognition, that are being used today. The use of parallel processing and superconductors is helping to make artificial intelligence a reality. Quantum computation and molecular andnanotechnology will radically change the face of computers in years to come. The goal of fifth-generation computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-organization.

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Who really invented the computer

If someone up and asked you “who invented the computer,” how would you respond? Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? Al Gore? Or say you’re more historically savvy, might you venture Alan Turing? Perhaps Konrad Zuse? Turing is the guy who, in the 1930s, laid the groundwork for computational science, while Zuse, around the same time, created something called the “Z1,” generally credited as “the first freely programmable computer.”

And yet all of the above could prove wrong, depending on what a British research team and millions of dollars turn up over the next decade.

(PHOTOS: A Brief History of the Computer)

The team’s question, as posed by the New York Times: “Did an eccentric mathematician named Charles Babbage conceive of the first programmable computer in the 1830s, a hundred years before the idea was put forth in its modern form by Alan Turing?”

You know, Charles Babbage? Born in 1791, died in 1871? Who attempted to build something called a “Difference Engine” during the first half of the nineteenth-century, a kind of mechanical calculator designed to compute various sets of numbers? Some argue that he, not Turing or Zuse, is the true father of the modern computer.

I worked for a company named after the guy back in 1994. You know, Babbages, the mall-based chain that eventually merged with Software Etc. before its parent company went bankrupt, was picked up by Barnes & Noble’s Leonard Riggio, and eventually folded into the existing GameStop chain. I remember our store had a silver plaque on the frontside of the cash-wrap with an etching of Babbages and a brief overview explaining who he was and why the odd-sounding name fit a store that, at the time, sold mostly PC-based products.

Babbage never built his Difference Engine—a mechanical calculator with thousands of parts—because of cost overruns and political disagreements, but the inventor passed on plans for its completion, and in 1991, the Science Museum in London actually built it (the printing component was finished in 2000). As suspected, it actually works.

But the Difference Engine could only do rote calculations and was incapable of checking its results to alter course. Babbage thus had bigger plans to construct something called an “Analytical Engine,” a monster-machine the size of a room with its own CPU, memory and capable of being programmed with punch cards, that he’d imagined but never had the wherewithal to build, beyond a trial piece, before his death. The problem: Where the Difference Engine’s plans were complete, the Analytical Engine’s were a work-in-progress.

Enter the Science Museum of London, which plans to build Babbage’s Analytical Engine a century-and-a-half later, and remedy the work-in-progress hurdle by putting the plans online next year and inviting passerby to weigh in. One of the central questions the project’s designed to answer is whether Babbage would have been able to actually build it at all.

If the answer’s ultimately “yes, he could have,” it could challenge the prevailing academic belief that Alan Turing, not Babbage, designed the first general purpose computer. And while the question today is purely academic, the machine’s construction, assuming it really is doable, should prove fascinating to wa

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First generation of first computer in 1940-1959

The first generation of computer were huge, slow, expensive and often unreliable. In 1946, two Americans, Presper Eckert and Willian Mauchly build the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It use vacuum tube instead of mechanical switches of the MARK 1.

Presper Eckert and Willian Mauchly and Vacuum Tube

ENIAC

In 1951, Eckert and Mauchly build the UNIVAC, which could calculate at the rate of 10,000 addition per seconds.

UNIVAC

MARK 1

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When was the firts computer invented

When was the first computer invented?

There is no easy answer to this question due to the many different classifications ofcomputers. The first mechanical computer, created by Charles Babbage in 1822, doesn't really resemble what most would consider a computer today. Therefore, this document has been created with a listing of each of the computer firsts, starting with the Difference Engine and leading up to the computers we use today.

Note: Early inventions which helped lead up to the computer, such as the abacus,calculator, and tablet machines, are not accounted for in this document.

The word "computer" was first used

The word "computer" was first recorded as being used in 1613 and originally was used to describe a human who performed calculations or computations. The definition of a computer remained the same until the end of the 19th century, when the industrial revolution gave rise to machines whose primary purpose was calculating.

First mechanical computer or automatic computing engine concept

In 1822, Charles Babbage conceptualized and began developing the Difference Engine, considered to be the first automatic computing machine. The Difference Engine was capable of computing several sets of numbers and making hard copies of the results. Babbage received some help with development of the Difference Engine from Ada Lovelace, considered by many to be the first computer programmer for her work and notes on the Difference Engine. Unfortunately, because of funding, Babbage was never able to complete a full-scale functional version of this machine. In June of 1991, the London Science Museum completed the Difference Engine No 2 for the bicentennial year of Babbage's birth and later completed the printing mechanism in 2000.

In 1837, Charles Babbage proposed the first general mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine contained an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), basic flow control, and integrated memory and is the first general-purpose computer concept. Unfortunately, because of funding issues, this computer was also never built while Charles Babbage was alive. In 1910, Henry Babbage, Charles Babbage's youngest son, was able to complete a portion of this machine and was able to perform basic calculations.

First programmable computer

The Z1 was created by German Konrad Zuse in his parents' living room between 1936and 1938. It is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable computer, and the first really functional modern computer.

First concepts of what we consider a modern computer

The Turing machine was first proposed by Alan Turing in 1936 and became the foundation for theories about computing and computers. The machine was a device that printed symbols on paper tape in a manner that emulated a person following a series of logical instructions. Without these fundamentals, we wouldn't have the computers we use today.

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