Evolution of Computer

Course code: IMIT 53203

Course title: Computer Systems
Student number: Not yet received
Name: Dulnari Jayasinghe
Month and year of the submission: August 2022
Day by day the lives of the humans got complex and the need of performing larger
mathematical calculations quickly and accurately became prominent. So, people began to
invent more and more tools and equipment to overcome the problem of counting and
performing mathematical calculations. A machine called the computer was born as a result.
The path from abacus to the modern-day computers is known as the evolution of computers.

It is possible to divide the evolution periods in to four ages

1. Pre-mechanical age
2. Mechanical age
3. Electro mechanical age
4. Electronic age

Pre-Mechanical age
When the need of counting large numbers became prominent, the Abacus came into action. It
is said that the ancient Babylonian’s (2700 BC - 2300 BC) invented the Abacus but slightly
different abacuses/abaci were used in some other parts of the world. The Abacus can be used
to perform additions and subtractions also.
In ancient times nine numbers (1 to 9) were used. It is said that Pingala introduced the zero
(3rd or 2nd century BCE). Pingala again used the binary numbers as “laghu” and “guru”.
Nowadays it is the base of digital computers. After the introduction of the zero, people started
to think in many directions and it became a milestone of mathematics.

Mechanical Age (1450-1840)

A lot of new inventions were developed in this era, with the increase of interest for
computation.
In 1614 Scottish mathematician John Napier invented a manually operated calculating tool
called “Napier’s bones” which simplified complex calculations. It helped to calculate
multiplication and division.
In 1642 Pascaline was invented by Blaise Pascal; it could be used only for addition and
subtraction. Numbers were entered by moving the components in its dial.
Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz invented “Leibniz wheels” which had the feature of
multiplication. He built the step reckoner in 1694 based on the design of Leibniz wheel.
In 1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard created a machine called Jacquard loom which was used for
textile production and it used punch cards to control the patterns. It was the first occasion that
the concept of “input” took place.
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In 1822 Charles Babbage invented the difference engine which used a small set of
polynomial coefficients. It minimizes the calculation time as well as the errors. With
experience of these machines; he designed another machine called the Analytical Engine in
1833. The Design of the Analytical Engine was similar to the modern-day computer and it
was known as the first mechanical computer. It consists of input (using punch cards), process,
output and storage. Those concepts helped to the development of the modern-day computers.
Because of that Charles Babbage was named as the “Father of computing”. Lady Augusta
Ada Lovelace helped Charles Babbage by writing programs for the Analytical Engine using
punch cards. By considering that she was known as the world’s first programmer.

Figure1; Charles Babbage Figure2; Analytical Engine

Herman Hollerith is known as the father of modern automatic computation as he used the
punched card as the method of storing and processing information. He built the First punched
card tabulating machine in 1890 and the first key punch. He merged with other companies
and formed (CTR) a computing-tabulating-recording company later named as IBM in 1924.

Electro Mechanical age (1840-1940)

In this era some of the machines were built up by using the electrical energy as their main
force. Also, telecommunication became prominent in this era. Invention of Morse code by
Samuel Morse in 1844. Invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 and
utilization of radio signals to communicate long distance in 1895 by Guglielmo Marconi are
some of them.
An American mathematician Howard Hathaway Aiken invented a machine called Automatic
Sequence Control calculator in 1944 with the help of the peers at Harvard university and the
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IBM Company and it was named as MARK I later. It was more than 50feet long and weighed
more than 5 tons and punch cards were used for programming. The calculation speed and
printing speed of the output was very high.
Mathematician and logician Alan Turing is known as the “Father of computer science” with
his accomplishments in computer science. He invented the Turing machine in 1936 but it was
a machine capable enough to solve only one type of problems. To solve this issue Turing
proposed “Universal Machine”. Turing tested the ability of a designed machine to exhibit
behavior equivalent to a human. It is known as the Turing test. This test marked the
beginning of artificial intelligence. During World War II with Gordon Welchman, Alan
Turing invented a code-breaking machine called “Bombe” to crack the “ENIGMA code” of
German forces which Germans changed the ciphering system daily at the outbreak of war to
increase the security.

Electronic Age (1940-1956)

First generation of computers
In this period of time the machines used electronic switches. They are reliable and faster than
the technology (relays) used previously.
At the beginning of the electronic era vacuum tubes were used as the main hardware
technology. Vacuum tube technology was used in the first-generation computers.
It had many disadvantages.
 Higher heat generation.
 Consumes more electricity.
 Large in size
 Expensive.
 High response time.
In first generation computers punch cards were used for input, process, output and storage of
data. Machine language and the assembly language were used along with the stored program
concept.
With the technology of vacuum tubes ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer
was invented in 1946 by a team of scientists including John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr.
It also possessed the above-mentioned disadvantage of using the vacuum tubes.

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EDVAC was invented in 1947. It was the second electronic digital computer and it was
developed with von Neumann's storage programming concept and it is known as the first
storage programming computer. EDVAC was also invented with the same technology and the
same programming concept in 1949.
UNIVAC was invented in 1951 by Eckert and Mauchly. The main purpose was to invent a
machine which could be used as a commercial computer. They could deliver the first
computer to the U.S. Census Bureau.
IBM 701 was the first computer of IBM, introduced in 1952, it was designed for scientific
work and research which led to the development of the FORTRAN programming language
and it was one of the first machines used plastic based magnetic tapes for storage rather than
metal.

Second Generation of computers (1956-1963)

After the invention of the transistor by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain in 1947 technology
of building computers moved from vacuum tubes to transistors as it could be used to
overcome many disadvantages of vacuum tubes. Second generation of the computer started
with the transistors.
Tapes, floppy disk used for storage of data; High Level programming languages were used
compared to the first-generation computers.
 The machine is small.
 Less heat generation.
 Low power consumption.
 Comparatively the execution speed is high.
 Expensive.

Some of the second-generation computer systems invented

System Computer Type Year Introductory Inventor

Invented price

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 Honeywell 400 General purpose 1961 Honeywell international
Inc

IBM 7030 Super Computer 1961 $7.78Million IBM

CDC1604 Mini computer 1960 $ 1.03 Million Seymour cray and his team

UNIVAC Mainframe 1960 $ 159000 Requirement published by

LARC Computer Edward Teller
Table 1; second generation computers

Third Generation (1964-1975)

At that time size of the machine was a prominent problem so the scientists tried to invent a
smaller equipment by forming transistors on the surface of a silicon crystal wafer, ICs were
manufactured. As all the components, circuits, and base materials are all made together or
integrated is known as integrated circuit.
In Third generation ICs were used, First DRAM IC was introduced by intel in 1970. The
1103 was the first commercially available DRAM. The capacity was 1 kilobit. The main
advantages of DRAM are,
 Its simple design.
 Required only one transistor.
 Low Cost.
 Provided higher density level.
 More data could be stored.
 Memory could be refreshed and deleted while a program is running.
High-capacity disks were used for storing data. Keyboard and mouse were used to input data
into the system. Operating systems for machines were implemented, High Level computer
languages were used for coding. Most of the disadvantages were removed when compared to
the second generation.
 The size of the machine became smaller because of that they were known as
microcomputers.
 Less heat generation
 Execution speed was high
 Low power consumption

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  Cost was relatively high

Some of the Third-generation computer systems invented

System Computer Type Year Introductory price Inventor

Invented

IBM - 360 Mainframe 1964 $2 million IBM

computer

PDP - 8 General purpose 1965 $ 18 500 Digital

computer Equipment
Corporation

PDP - 11 Most popular 1970 $10 800 Digital

mini computer Equipment
Corporation

CDC 6600 First super 1964 $7 million Controlled Data

computer Corporation
Table 2; Third generation computers

In 1964 - Late 1970s IBM introduced IBM MT/ST the first electric word processor. As its
name implies it was a combination of IBM Selectric electric typewriter built into a desk and
one or two magnetic tape-recording units. It offered word wrapping and mail merge features.
As there was no screen the operator could only see the typed content at the typewritten page

Internet and Email

In 1969, the US Department of Defense implemented ARPANET, A network that is possible
to connect a number of computers with the intention of communicating with the organization
it is known as the first computer network. In October 1969, the first message was sent from
one computer to another on ARPANET.
In 1971, Ray Tomlinson first introduced electronic mail for ARPANET in 1972 they selected
the @ symbol for email addresses. Around 1973 email wide spread quickly to university
campuses around the world.
Fourth Generation of computers (1975-1989)

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Large scale integrated circuits and very large-scale integrated circuit were used in the fourth
generation LSICs are developed by embedding thousands of transistors on a single silicon
semiconductor microchip.
Fourth generation computers consist of five separate units: input, arithmetic and logic unit,
memory, output and control unit.

At this time personal computers (PC) were wide spread all over the world. With the invention
of the microprocessor computers became very small in size. Palmtops were also introduced.
Most of the computers were portable and upgradable. Higher capacity hard disks were used
for secondary storages. Floppy disks and optical disks like CD were also used for secondary
storage. User interface became user friendly as the operating systems used graphical user
interface.
Some of the Forth-generation computer systems invented

Invention Type Year Introductory price Inventor

DEC 10 Mainframe computer 1966 $500000 Digital Equipment

Corporation

CRAY – I Supercomputer 1976 $7.9Million Cray Research

APPLE II Desktop Computer 1977 $1298 Apple Inc

IBM PC Desktop computer 1981 $1565 IBM

Commodore Home computer 1982 $595 Commodore international

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Table 3; Fourth generation computers
CPU specifications of Apple II and Commodore 64 computers
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 Apple II 6502 @ 1.023MHz (Apple II, II Plus, II e
65c02 @ 1.023-4MHz
65c816 @ 1.023-4MHz

Figure3; Apple II

Commodore 64 MOS Technology

6510/8500
@1.023 MHz
@0.985 MHz Figure4; Commodore 64
Table 4; CPU specifications of Apple II and Commodore 64 computers

Operating systems and Application software

In 1981, Microsoft released MS DOS 1.0 which was a 16-bit operating system with IBM
computers. In 1985 Windows 1.0 OS was released as a retail version with a 16-bit graphical
operating environment. They also released an operating system called OS/2 with IBM. For
apple II, introduced Integer / Apple DOS, Apple Pro DOS, Apple GS/OS, GNO / ME.
Application software called Microsoft works, With the features of database word processing
and spreadsheet were released in 1986.
In Fourth generation computers High-level Languages were used for programming purposes.
Learning high level languages is easier than assembly and machine languages. Some of the
Popular High-Level languages are as follows,
 BASIC
 PASCAL
 COBOL
 FORTRAN
 C
Fifth Generation Computers (1989 to present)
Ultra-Large-scale integration and parallel processing methods are used in Fifth Generation.
Very high-capacity hard disks and optical disks are used. They are small in size, portable,
easy to operate, highly reliable, efficient and affordable. High level languages like C, C++,
Java, .net are used.
World wide Web

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In 1991 world wide web and the first web page launched to the public by Tim Berners lee by
launching the mosaic browser in 1993. Web opened to the non-academics also. The number
of websites grew from 130 in 1993 to over thousand at 1996. At that time Netscape navigator
was the popular web browser. Google company was officially launched in 1998 and it has
grown to become the most widely used web-based search engine now.
Graphical user interface is mostly used in operating systems of this generation.
Artificial Intelligence became accessible in this generation
Some important AI Technologies,
 Neural networks
A series of algorithms that mimic the operation of an animal brain and nervous
system. Some of the applications of Neural networks are Voice recognition, character
recognition and hand writing recognition.
 Genetic algorithms
A Genetic algorithm is an adaptive heuristic search algorithm inspired by Darwin’s
theory of evolution in nature. Fitness function and crossover techniques are the two
main features of the Genetic algorithm
 Expert systems
Expert system is a computer software that attempts to act like a human expert on a
particular subject area. It has three parts. They are, User Interface, Inference Engine
and Knowledge Base

Figure4; Expert System

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Some of the Fifth-generation computer systems invented

Invention Type Year Introductory price Inventor

IBM Laptop Computer 1994 $7600 IBM

ThinkPad775CD

iMac Desktop Computer 1998 $1299 Apple Inc

Apple Ipad Tablet Computer 2010 $499 Apple Inc

Apple power Desktop Computer 2003 $1999 Apple Inc

Mac G5

Acer ConceptD Laptop Computer 2021 €2000 Acer Inc

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Table 5; Fifth-generation computers

New trends
Nature inspired computing
In Nature inspired computing, try to solve complex problems in various environmental
situations by observing how naturally occurring phenomena behave.

Biology inspired computing

Biology inspired computing is a field of study, which seeks to solve computer science
problems using models of biology.
Quantum computing
Quantum computing is an alternative approach proposed to overcome the limitations of the
modern-day microprocessor. quantum computers would be very fast than the common
computers based on the von Neumann architecture

Ubiquitous computing - ubicomp

Ubiquitous computing is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and
computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. ubiquitous
computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format

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