Our time of computerization obliges every educated person to know a lot of things directly related to computer technology. And you can start by studying when the first computer appeared. Agree, few people think about the origin of the computer.

The history of the creation of the first computer

The computer as we see it now was not always like this. The "life path" of the computer can be easily traced. It began with the invention by Blaise Pascal in 1642 of a device capable of adding and subtracting decimal numbers- "pascaline". It was difficult to call the first computer in the world a computer, because it was something more like a calculator. This computer performed only two operations - addition and subtraction. Then, in 1653, multiplication and division were added to these functions. Further, the development of the functionality froze somewhat, the emphasis began to be placed on appearance, that is, they tried to wrap all the same options in a more compact and less cumbersome shell. It wasn't until 1822 that a machine was invented that could solve simple equations. It was a turning point in the history of development computer science. After that, automated computing devices evolved at a tremendous speed. Already in 1946, a new computer appeared to the world. Of course, comparing the first computer and a modern PC, one can smile skeptically, because it is not clear how a machine weighing 30 tons could turn into something that even a woman can easily lift.

Who is the developer of the first computer

Of course, the one who invented the first computer in the world, did a great job in the development of technology. So who is this person who introduced the first computer to the world? It was a scientist of German origin Konrad Zuse. The very first computer in the world, according to Wikipedia, is precisely the computer invented in the forties of the 20th century, since it contained all the basic functions of a modern computer. But the size of this technique was still incredibly large, sometimes taking up an entire room alone. And only with the invention of the microprocessor, for which thanks to Tedd Hoff, the computer began to approach in size to the PC familiar to us.

By the way, the PC gained wide popularity after the start of competition between two companies - Apple and Microsoft. In the battle for customers, these companies improved and improved their products, delighting us with compactness and functionality. Since the first PC was invented, relatively little time has passed, but the differences between that device and the current one are huge. We can only guess what improvements await the computer in the future.

today without personal computer it is impossible to imagine life, but not so long ago people lived without computers and everything suited them. Let's take a look at the history of the very first personal computer.

The role of the personal computer in our modern life cannot be overestimated. Right now, humanity has finally come close to its cherished dream - to have smart mechanical assistants in any area of ​​life. The personal computer has become simply indispensable for work, entertainment or leisure. The heirs of the first computers assembled in basements and garages now stand in chic offices, stylish offices and in our cozy apartments. It should be noted that not immediately Personal Computer made its way to the market, the fate of individuals and corporations that did a lot for the modern development of computer technology was not always successful.

How it all began

Herman Hollerith at the end of the 19th century in America invented counting and perforating machines. They used punched cards to save numerical information. G. Hollerith is the founder of a company that produces counting and perforating machines. IBM is the most popular computer corporation in the world today.
The first computer was invented in the USA in 1945. It was universal machine on the electronic tubes ah, it was designed by J. Mouchli and J. Eckert.

All electronic computers can be divided into generations. Generational change is mainly associated with progress electronic engineering. So:
- The 1st generation of computers are tube machines of the 50s. Punched tapes and punched cards were used to enter programs and data.
- 2nd generation of computers - transistors became the elementary base in the 60s. Computers are now more reliable, more compact, less energy intensive.
- 3rd generation of computers - created on integrated circuits. Appear magnetic disks, a new type of storage device.
- 4th generation of computers - a microprocessor was created in 1971 by Intel. By connecting the microprocessor with external memory, I / O devices, they invented a microcomputer.

Personal computers

The most popular computers today are personal computers.
The appearance of the PC is associated with the names of two American specialists: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. In 1976, their first PC -1 appears, and in 1977 - Apple-2.

A personal computer is a microcomputer with hardware and software that is loyal to the user. Software enables a person to easily communicate with a computer and benefit from it. PC is now just as ordinary household appliances like a radio receiver. Since 1980, the American company IB M has been the most popular on the PC market. Ten years later, Apple Corporatio machines become famous.

The appearance of the PC in terms of its significance for social development can only be compared with the emergence of book printing. It was the PC that made computer literacy to the masses. With the development of this type of electronic machines, the concept of " information Technology”and without them, in principle, humanity cannot do without them in any sphere of their life.

If you are asking the above question, be prepared to hear different answers. Since many have been created different types computers (or computing machines) since the 1800s, so answer unequivocally to this question just impossible. And now let's look at everything in detail.

The first programmable "computer"

P The first "computing machine" was created by Charles Babbage in 1822. His idea was not to create a prototype of a modern computer, he just wanted to build a machine that would calculate mathematical problems. Babbage was tired of human error in solving mathematical problems, so he sought to create an error-free machine. But, nevertheless, his creation served as the basis for the modern computer.

That is why Charles Babbage is considered the inventor of the first computer. His "Babbage Machine" was the first programmable analytical machine and, moreover, fully automatic. Essentially, computers today do the same thing: they read programs and execute them.

Charles Babbage was born in England, where he spent his life and career. After private school, Charles began studying at the academy in Enfield, where he began to show interest in mathematics. Then Babbage entered Trinity College, Cambridge University and completed his studies at St. Peter's College. His self-study of the basics of mathematics also meant a lot.

Babbage's education played a major role in his future inventions. England is very proud of their son and some of his works are now in one of the museums in London.

invention of the computer

The uniqueness of Babbage's computer is that it could be programmed. After all, calculator developments were then available, but they worked only according to fixed rules. Isn't it amazing that the invention that Babbage sought to create became insanely useful to mankind centuries later?

The scientist used his student knowledge to develop a machine that calculates mathematical problems. Unfortunately, he never completed his dream project due to lack of money. Although his machine was left unfinished, a little later his idea evolved into the version of the computer we know today, and Babbage is rightfully considered the "father of computers."

How did the computer get its name?

Have you ever wondered where the word "computer" came from? We should be grateful to Babbage for the name of the computer, as well as for its design.

Everything is quite simple. Babbage was trying to create a machine that would calculate mathematical problems in the same way as a person. And the very name of the computer came from the English “computer”, where “compute” is translated as “compute”. And it was Babbage's idea that became the basis for all future computers.

Alan Turing and his accomplishments

The development of electronic computers, which are very similar to modern ones, was carried out by Alan Matheson Turing, an English scientist.

Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in London, England. He was very interested in science and mathematics during his school days. However, he later entered Sherborne College, where the emphasis was on the liberal arts rather than the exact ones. But this did not stop him from studying higher mathematics. For example, while studying elementary calculus, he simultaneously considered Einstein's complex conclusions regarding Newton's Laws. Alan spent a lot of time in the library and was engaged in self-study.

Alan Turing began exploring the possibilities of computing while he was studying at King's College Cambridge for a bachelor's degree in mathematics. There he wrote science articles and successfully defended his doctoral dissertation. He also reformulated Kurt Gödel's theorem, replacing the universal formal language with simple hypothetical devices that later became known as Turing machines.

The Turing machine was the first device that could use algorithms to solve arithmetic problems. For many experts, this was the first theoretical concept of a modern computer. Interestingly, the basic concept of a Turing machine is still being studied in the field of computer science around the world.

ACE

Based on the machine he had invented, Turing worked on the ACE (the Automatic Computing Engine) between 1945 and 1947. He also gave a talk that a computer could store programs in memory (which is what modern computers). Alan Turing developed other theories and concepts, for example, speech cipher, Turing-Welshman "Bombe", "Colossus", "Hut 8", "the Naval Enigma", etc.

Alan Turing died on June 7, 1954 in England. The cause of his death was cyanide poisoning, and as the examination showed, he committed suicide. Prior to that, he was accused of homosexuality, which was considered a crime at the time.

In contact with

Can you imagine the modern world without computers? I - no, because every step we take is connected with computers. This story began back in the distant 40s, when the world had just begun to learn about the creation of the first "computers" (electronic computers).

The history of the creation of the world's first computer

In 1942, John Mauchley's project gave impetus to the creation of the first computer, although the project itself was initially ignored. Once one of the laboratories of the US Army became interested in him, and already in 1943 the first steps were taken to create a machine called "ENIAC". The money for the creation was given by the Pentagon (which needed to create new guns), and it took them a little less than $ 500,000.

By the way, in terms of electricity, ENIAC turned out to be very voracious when it was turned on - the lights of a nearby city dimmed each time. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) is truly the first computer that could be programmed.

Specifications of the first computer:

1. Weight reached 27 tons;
2. Power - 174 kW - this is how much a huge shopping center consumes on a day off;
3. It contained 18,000 vacuum tubes, because there were no transistors and processors at that time;
4. Memory - 4 kilobytes;
5. It had an impressive size - it occupied 135 sq.m.
6. Performed up to 5000 actions per second.

The most amazing thing is the kilometers of wires that the computer was wrapped around. It was programmed as a telephone communicator operated by telephone operators.

Later, it began to be used not only for the analysis of cosmic radiation, but also for the creation of a hydrogen bomb. While the computer was being created, the war ended, but research did not stop, and in 1945 the first official test was conducted, which it passed. At the same time, about 1,000,000 IBM punched cards were processed. Despite the huge size and weight, the computer worked for about 10 years.

After 5 years, the transistor was invented, which marked the beginning of a decrease in the size of computers.

Where and when was the first personal computer sold?

The concept of the personal computer changed little over the next two decades. The introduction of the microprocessor accelerated the process of building a computer. Back in 1974, IBM tried to create its first computer, but the attempt failed and sales were very low. IBM5100 - had cassettes as storage media, a fairly small weight and a serious cost of $ 10,000.

He was also able to independently execute programs written in programming languages ​​such as BASIC and APL (it was created at IBM). displayed 16 lines of 64 characters each, a memory of about 64 Kb, and these cassettes looked like stereo audio cassettes. But sales did not go, because there was no normal interface and the price was too high.

Have you ever wondered what computers will look like in 10 years?

Recently, IBM introduced its new mega-computer "Roadrunner". Its capacity is 1,000,000,000,000 (1 quadrillion) operations. It was created for the US Department of Energy, and consists of 6480 2 nuclear processors, and 12,960 processors from IBM called . It includes 278 huge cabinets, 88 kilometers of cables, weight - 226 tons, covers an area of ​​​​1100 m², power consumption of 3.9 MW, and the cost was $ 133,000,000.

People around the world use computers every day to work, communicate, search for information on the Internet, watch movies and TV shows, play games and much more. But when and who gave people the opportunity to do this? AT modern world technological progress is difficult to imagine life without a PC. Today's pupils and students cannot imagine life without a computer: writing abstracts and reports by hand, looking for information in libraries, not Wikipedia ... So, who and when invented the first computer in the world?

background

• The answer to the question of when the first computer appeared goes back to the distant past, the main purpose of which was to simplify mathematical calculations. For this, as early as the third millennium BC, ancient Babylon appeared the very first abacus(from Latin abacus "board, counting board"). However, they were used rather not to simplify the calculation, but to remember intermediate values. With the help of abacus, you can perform four arithmetic operations, as well as for calculations square roots and roots of the third degree.

Mechanical and automatic computers

• The next in the list of progenitors of the modern PC was an adding machine, designed to accurately calculate four actions, and an arithmograph, a mechanical calculating machine that automatically recorded numbers on a special tape. Known to the history of the whole world, Leonardo da Vinci was the one who first depicted a diagram of a mechanism similar to an adding machine, but his ideas were not recognized and disseminated.
• The first adding machine in history appeared in the middle of 1623 - counting clock by Wilhelm Schickard. The device consisted of series-connected gears and served to perform addition, multiplication and storage of intermediate calculations.
• Blaise Pascal's Pascalina, invented in 1642, had a similar internal structure, and for a long time was considered the first mechanical counting device. The summing machine was a box with gears, on the panel of which there were wheels with numbers from 1 to 9, designed to enter numbers that were added. The answer was displayed in the upper part of the body. Adding machine she could not only fold, although this required some additional effort.

• Also in the 17th century, the Leibniz adding machine (1673) and the Moreland machine (1674) were created. In 1709, the Marquis Giovanni de Poleni from Italy introduced his version of the adding machine. In the 50s of the XIX century, Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev created the first adding machine in Russia.
• At the beginning of the 17th century, the English astronomer Edmund Gunther proposed putting a logarithmic scale on a ruler and using compasses to perform addition and subtraction with logarithms. In the 1620s, the English mathematician Edmund Wingate improved this ruler with two additional scales, and in 1622 William Oughtred published his version of the device in the treatise Circles of Proportions. Actually, William is considered the author of the first slide rule, which until 1633 was circular. The following improvements are due to Robert Bissaker (1654), Seth Patridge (1657) and Thomas Everard (1683). The familiar slider on the device appeared thanks to the French engineer and mathematician Victor Mayer Amed Mannheim only by the middle of the 19th century.
• One of the most important steps in the history of the PC was the appearance in 1801 of Joseph Marie Jaccard's punched card, used for automatic data processing. Such a card is the first version of the modern binary code, where instead of zeros and ones, the presence or absence of holes on the cardboard is used. Joseph used such a device to automatically control patterns on fabrics in looms.

• The work of bookkeepers was greatly simplified when, in 1822, the English mathematician Charles Babbage designed a model of a difference engine, the first idea of ​​which belongs to the German engineer Johann Müller and dates back to 1788. The mechanical apparatus was called the analytical engine of Charles Babbage and served to automate calculations by successive approximations of functions by polynomials and the calculation of finite differences.

difference engine

Thanks to the opportunity to represent logarithmic and trigonometric functions in polynomials this device is a fairly universal computing tool and thus can replace up to 20 accountants with manual adding machines. Some time later, Martin Wiberg from Sweden improved the device and used it to calculate and publish logarithmic tables.

The history of the invention of the computer

Electromechanical Computing Tools

• The first electromechanical device for the calculation was a tabulator built by the American Herman Hollerith, designed to speed up the processing of the results of the 1890 census in the United States. The machine summarized and sorted information written in numbers or letters on punched cards, and gave the result on paper tape or special forms. Similar devices have been used for a long time to process arrays of information before the spread of electronic computers.

• The breakthrough was invention of the German engineer Konrad Zuse Z3 created in 1941. This device was the first full-featured programmable and programmable machine in binary code and had the properties of a modern PC. Three years before the introduction of the Z3, Zuse introduced the Z1 to the world, which was limited in programmability and differed mainly from the final model in the absence of a square root function. In 1939, the engineer completed the second version of the computer, which became the world's first electromechanical computer put into operation. the very first computers in the world.

The success of creating devices was the implementation of their work in the form of a binary system, which by the 20th century was not something supernatural, but Konrad managed to combine the knowledge of other scientists and create the first programmable computer on their basis.

• August 7, 1944 at Harvard University, after passing a series of successful tests, the first American fully programmable and not required human participation computer "Mark 1" was launched - automatic calculator sequence-driven. The machine was designed and built in 1941 under an agreement with IBM on the basis of Babbage's work.

Actually "Mark 1" is an advanced manual adding machine, but thanks to its programming ability, many call it the first real working computer. The machine read information from a perforated tape, and cyclic processes were performed by shorting the beginning and end of the tape being read.

Electronic computers

• The concept of "electronic computer" should be distinguished from the broader "computer", since the computer implies the use as functional nodes electronic components, while calculations can also be done in a number of other ways. The first computers were ENIAC (1946, USA), Manchester Small Experimental Machine, also known as Baby (1948, UK) and EDSAC (1949, UK).
• April 7, 1964 IBM announced the creation of System 360 computers. This series subsequently became an example of an open standard, in other words, the compatibility of equipment manufactured by different manufacturers. All models, regardless of their size and shape, had typical details. Thus, the customer could acquire a relatively budget model and in the future, if necessary, upgrade it to a larger system. In fact, it was the IBM/360 that set the standard for the 8-bit byte and introduced the hexadecimal system calculus in programming, and also became the first 32-bit computer system.

Personal computers

• Personal computer (PC or PC - personal electronic computer), so familiar modern man- a desktop microcomputer, which is a household appliance with universal functionality.
• The first PC was Desktop computer H316" released by Honeywell in 1969. The device cost $10,600 and weighed as much as 45 kg. One of the main purposes of this device was the storage of various recipes, hence the second name "Kitchen Computer".
• The invention of the i4004 microprocessor by employees played a decisive role in the emergence of the PC. by Intel in 1971, which could reproduce, on a single chip, all the functions of a mainframe processor.