How Did The Computer Evolve And Where Did It All Start history lesson

[dundun2007 0]

As we go about our everyday lives things seem to just pass by and technology is all around us. When we go into a grocery store and the cashier scans the items we don’t think how that scanner works, and where the information goes. Sometimes we use credit cards to process our transactions when we are paying for our bill, but how does this all work? Computer’s abilities are often overlooked whether it is at the home or the office. Most people don’t realize all the work computers are doing when you are browsing the Internet or typing a paper on Microsoft word. The command codes used to script these programs contain thousands to millions of lines of code, so every time you go to click on something a new command must be executed. The whole computer process, which you could say, started back in the 300 B.C all came together today, and we use it everyday of our lives. In today’s world phone calls, businesses, drive thru, cars, and everything from online gambling to online shopping is being done with the use of the computer. Anywhere you go today you can find the use of a computer somewhere. Every new car today along with older cars comes with computer systems that your whole car relies on. From this newfound technology in which we run our country on, there is also centuries of development and work behind it. The computer first started with a machine that could calculate math problems known as a calculator to us today, but known as the difference engine to Charles Babbage in 1833. The main purpose of the machine was to calculate astronomical tables. The machine was never built because the government ignored his ideas. In 1940 an idea of the Analytical machine, which claimed could perform any mathematical calculation. The machine was built but there were too many bugs and defects that made the machine incompatible of doing a lot of mathematics. The U.S Bureau of the Census liked the Analytical machine but wanted it revised to make it easier to take a population census. Herman Hollerith stood up to the challenge and redesigned Babbage’s machine in 1890, which he called the Hollerith Tabulating System. The government liked his progress making the machine and funded him the money to continue it. The Tabulating machine was a hit and became a corporation in 1896. By the late months of 1924, the Tabulating Co. changed its name to IBM, which we now know today. The first computer costs over a million dollars, and the first personal computer was around 10,000 dollars. The computer system used punch cards to record numerical data. “The computer took up a whole room and consists of; 19,000 vacuums, weighed over 30 tons, and consumed over 200 kilowatts of energy. In comparison the first calculator had a 5 horsepower engine, measured 2x51 feet, weighed 5 tons, and contained hundreds of miles of wiring, which could do less math than a calculator we use today.” IBM created the very first realistic personal computerized machine called the Mark II, which ran on an operating system called DOS. There were many operating systems out at the time but the one most popular and cheapest was DOS at $40. From there Microsoft very quickly released DOS 5.0, which would provide more space and programs in1991. From this point started the revolution of computers that is still going on today. Soon after the releases of the IBM computers a company called Apple emerged. Apple Company was the first company to massively produce and sell personal computers. “The first computer model they were selling costs about $2880. The specifications on the computer was 4.77 mhz, 16kb of ram, 160kb floppy disk, and a mono 8 inch display.” It was far different than today’s 2500 MHz, 10000 KB of ram, and 80000 KB of hard rive space. From the point when personal computers became popularly known the computer world was in a drastic change that would affect the world for years to come. Today over 60% of the metropolitans in the U.S have families with access to computers. Likewise General Motors has a 1:2 ratio of computers in their workplace for their employees. The Microsoft Corporation hit big with its operating system and had 3 major changes in their lives. In 1992 Microsoft’s stock reached a record high of $113 a share, it shipped windows 3.1 and sold the most number of copies, and established a separation from IBM and became an independent company. With Microsoft in control they sent out over 1,000 upgraded computer components from 1990 to 2000. In 2006 a computer record was released followed by many statistics that astounding the computer companies. “The annual search revenue was around $4,000,000,000, ? of Americans spent 12 hours on the computer a week, Spam on the internet increases 60%, 70% of Americans said they would rather shop online than go to a store, and windows newest release xp had 50 million lines of code, which grows over 20% more each year.” As soon as the business world noticed the drastic change in computers in the 1990s a revolution of the business world was soon to come.Today we use computers everyday, we dont think about how it all started or how many years and hard work there is behind every program, operating system, and website, that make a computer what it is today.Any thoughts?

Edited April 11, 2007 by dundun2007 (see edit history)

[seez 0]

Sorrry man but I don't know. I only know that is EXTREMELY complicated and very hard to create. Linked by thousands of networks and satelites and amazing technology... created around 1995. Your question is one for Google or Wikipedia or some other way powerful search engine, I would think.

[Saint_Michael 3]

Actually interesting that someone brough this up since I had to do a lot of background research for my research paper about this of course I used wiki as a stepping stone since they are not reliable and this is mostly accurated but gives you an idea how we got the computer today.

 

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