- The document provides a brief history of computers from ancient counting tools like the abacus to early mechanical computers in the 1800s and 1900s and the development of electronic computers. It discusses pioneers like Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Herman Hollerith, and Alan Turing and inventions like the Analytical Engine, the Census Counting Machine, and the Turing Machine that laid the foundations for modern computing. Key early electronic computers included the Harvard Mark I, the ENIAC, and the UNIVAC mainframes. The document traces the evolution of computing technology and highlights important milestones from the earliest counting tools to the establishment of mainframe computing.
Introduction to Computing Lecture 01 history of computersMuhammad Bilal
Slides Include history of computers ,historical background of computer ,generations of computer ,introduction to computers ,computer history ,abacus, earliest computing devices, introduction to computing, introduction to computers, historical background of computers
Content Credits: Arthur Glenn(SlideShare.net)
A (very) Brief History of the ComputerDavid Mackey
This presentation highlights the historical background of key people and milestones that has brought us the modern general purpose electronic computer.
Introduction to Computing Lecture 01 history of computersMuhammad Bilal
Slides Include history of computers ,historical background of computer ,generations of computer ,introduction to computers ,computer history ,abacus, earliest computing devices, introduction to computing, introduction to computers, historical background of computers
Content Credits: Arthur Glenn(SlideShare.net)
A (very) Brief History of the ComputerDavid Mackey
This presentation highlights the historical background of key people and milestones that has brought us the modern general purpose electronic computer.
Did you know that the term "Computer" once meant a profession? And what did people or computers actually do? They computed mathematical problems. Some problems were tedious and error prone. And it is not surprising that people started to develop machines to aid in the effort. The first mechanical computers were actually created to get rid of errors in human computation. Then came tabulating machines and cash registers. It was not until telephone companies were well established that computing machines became practical.
First computers were huge mainframes, but soon minicomputers like DEC’s PDP started to appear. The transistor was introduced in 1947, but its usefulness was not truly realized until in 1958 when the integrated circuit was invented. This led to the invention of the microprocessor. Intel, in 1971, marketed the 4004 – and the personal computer revolution started. One of the first Personal Computers was MITS’ Altair. This was a simple device and soon others saw the opportunities.
In this lecture we start our coverage of computing and look at some of the early machines and the impact they had.
Tells you about the History of computers. The various time periods in which the different types of computers were made by decreasing the size of the components used in the computers and increasing the various features in it.
Did you know that the term "Computer" once meant a profession? And what did people or computers actually do? They computed mathematical problems. Some problems were tedious and error prone. And it is not surprising that people started to develop machines to aid in the effort. The first mechanical computers were actually created to get rid of errors in human computation. Then came tabulating machines and cash registers. It was not until telephone companies were well established that computing machines became practical.
First computers were huge mainframes, but soon minicomputers like DEC’s PDP started to appear. The transistor was introduced in 1947, but its usefulness was not truly realized until in 1958 when the integrated circuit was invented. This led to the invention of the microprocessor. Intel, in 1971, marketed the 4004 – and the personal computer revolution started. One of the first Personal Computers was MITS’ Altair. This was a simple device and soon others saw the opportunities.
In this lecture we start our coverage of computing and look at some of the early machines and the impact they had.
Tells you about the History of computers. The various time periods in which the different types of computers were made by decreasing the size of the components used in the computers and increasing the various features in it.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
The Art Pastor's Guide to Sabbath | Steve ThomasonSteve Thomason
What is the purpose of the Sabbath Law in the Torah. It is interesting to compare how the context of the law shifts from Exodus to Deuteronomy. Who gets to rest, and why?
How to Make a Field invisible in Odoo 17Celine George
It is possible to hide or invisible some fields in odoo. Commonly using “invisible” attribute in the field definition to invisible the fields. This slide will show how to make a field invisible in odoo 17.
We all have good and bad thoughts from time to time and situation to situation. We are bombarded daily with spiraling thoughts(both negative and positive) creating all-consuming feel , making us difficult to manage with associated suffering. Good thoughts are like our Mob Signal (Positive thought) amidst noise(negative thought) in the atmosphere. Negative thoughts like noise outweigh positive thoughts. These thoughts often create unwanted confusion, trouble, stress and frustration in our mind as well as chaos in our physical world. Negative thoughts are also known as “distorted thinking”.
Palestine last event orientationfvgnh .pptxRaedMohamed3
An EFL lesson about the current events in Palestine. It is intended to be for intermediate students who wish to increase their listening skills through a short lesson in power point.
Instructions for Submissions thorugh G- Classroom.pptxJheel Barad
This presentation provides a briefing on how to upload submissions and documents in Google Classroom. It was prepared as part of an orientation for new Sainik School in-service teacher trainees. As a training officer, my goal is to ensure that you are comfortable and proficient with this essential tool for managing assignments and fostering student engagement.
Students, digital devices and success - Andreas Schleicher - 27 May 2024..pptxEduSkills OECD
Andreas Schleicher presents at the OECD webinar ‘Digital devices in schools: detrimental distraction or secret to success?’ on 27 May 2024. The presentation was based on findings from PISA 2022 results and the webinar helped launch the PISA in Focus ‘Managing screen time: How to protect and equip students against distraction’ https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/managing-screen-time_7c225af4-en and the OECD Education Policy Perspective ‘Students, digital devices and success’ can be found here - https://oe.cd/il/5yV
How to Split Bills in the Odoo 17 POS ModuleCeline George
Bills have a main role in point of sale procedure. It will help to track sales, handling payments and giving receipts to customers. Bill splitting also has an important role in POS. For example, If some friends come together for dinner and if they want to divide the bill then it is possible by POS bill splitting. This slide will show how to split bills in odoo 17 POS.
Ethnobotany and Ethnopharmacology:
Ethnobotany in herbal drug evaluation,
Impact of Ethnobotany in traditional medicine,
New development in herbals,
Bio-prospecting tools for drug discovery,
Role of Ethnopharmacology in drug evaluation,
Reverse Pharmacology.
Unit 8 - Information and Communication Technology (Paper I).pdfThiyagu K
This slides describes the basic concepts of ICT, basics of Email, Emerging Technology and Digital Initiatives in Education. This presentations aligns with the UGC Paper I syllabus.
2. To plan your future wisely is necessary to
know the past of the tools you will use
3. Sometimes planning is difficult since we face the arrogance of the
owners of the truth…
• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.“ - Thomas Watson, chairman of
IBM, 1943
• "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.“ - Popular Mechanics,
forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
• "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people,
and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year.“ - The editor
in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.“ - Ken Olson,
president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
• "640k ought to be enough for anybody.“ - Bill Gates, 1981
• "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.“ - Decca Recording Co.
rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
4. So, let's talk a little
about the history of
computers – maybe
it can help you…
6. Abacus – c. 4000 BCE
On the left, you see two abacuses (abaci is
also correct). On both abacuses, we see the
number 1998. The top area of each abacus
is used for fives, and the bottom area is
used for ones. Abacuses are used for doing
arithmetic. When doing arithmetic, you
move the beads. The position of the beads
represents the sum, or product, so far. It is
how you can remember the partial sum or
product.
Experts in the use of the abacus can be very
fast (and accurate), often faster than an
expert with a calculator, especially addition
and subtraction.
The abacus is still a mainstay of basic
computation in some societies.
7. Slide rules
The slide rule, also known colloquially as a slipstick,is a
mechanical analog computer. The slide rule is used
primarily for multiplication and division, and also for
functions such as roots, logarithms and trigonometry, but is
not normally used for addition or subtraction.
William Oughtred and others developed the slide rule in the
17th century based on the emerging work on logarithms by
John Napier.
Napier
8. Before the advent of the pocket
calculator, the slide rule was the
most commonly used calculation
tool in science and engineering.
The use of slide rules continued
to grow through the 1950s and
1960s even as digital computing
devices were being gradually
introduced; but around 1974 the
electronic scientific calculator
made it largely obsolete and most
suppliers left the business.
9. Wilhelm Schickard (1592 –1635) was
a German scientist who designed a
calculating machine in 1623.
Unfortunately a fire destroyed the
machine as it was being built in 1624
and Schickard decided to abandon his
project.
Unknown to the world for more than
three centuries it was rediscovered in
1957 and therefore had no impact on
the development of mechanical
calculators
10. Blaise Pascal, a famous French
philosopher and mathematician
invented the first digital calculator, the
Pascaline, to help his father with his
work collecting taxes.
He worked on it for three years between
1642 and 1645.
The device resembled a mechanical
calculator of the 1940's. It could add
and subtract by the simple rotation of
dials on the machine’s face.
11. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 –1716) was a
German philosopher and mathematician.
While working on adding automatic multiplication
and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first
to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and
invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the
arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical
calculator.
He also refined the binary number system, which is
at the foundation of virtually all digital computers.
12. Joseph Marie Charles, nicknamed Jacquard
(1752– 1834, played an important role in the
development of the earliest programmable loom
(the "Jacquard loom"), which in turn played an
important role in the development of other
programmable machines, such as computers.
• This portrait of Jacquard was woven in silk on a
Jacquard loom and required 24,000 punched cards
to create (1839).
• It was only produced to order.
• Charles Babbage owned one of these portraits ; it
inspired him in using perforated cards in his
analytical engine
13. Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (1785–1870) was a French
inventor and entrepreneur best known for designing, patenting
and manufacturing the first commercially successful mechanical
calculator, the Arithmometer.
The device was manufactured from 1851 to 1915 - there were
about 5,000 machines built during that time
Eventually about twenty European companies built clones of the
Arithmometer until the beginning of World War II.
14. Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871)
was an English mathematician
and is recognized today as the
Father of Computers because
his impressive designs for the
Difference Engine and
Analytical Engine foreshadowed
the invention of the modern
electronic digital computer.
15. The Difference Engine was
never fully built. Babbage
drew up the blueprints for it
while still an undergrad at
Cambridge University in
England.
But while it was in process of
being manufactured, he got a
better idea and left this work
unfinished in favor of the
Analytical Engine illustrated
on the next slide.
The
Difference
Engine
16. The Analytical Engine was
eventually built completely in the
latter half of the 19th
century, by
Georg and Edvard Schuetz as per
Babbage’s blueprints.
Film footage exists of the
machine in operation, and it is
truly a sight to behold, a
testament not only to Babbage’s
genius, but also to the
manufacturing prowess of the
The Analytical Engine incorporated an
arithmetical unit, control flow in the form of
conditional branching and loops, and integrated
memory, making it the first Turing-complete
design for a general-purpose computer.
17. Lady Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace
(1815 – 1856), was a mathematician who
helped Babbage in his work.
Above all, she documented his work, which
Babbage never could bother to do. As a
result we know about Babbage at all.
Lady Augusta Ada also wrote programs to
be run on Babbage’s machines, what made
her the first computer programmer.
19. Hermann Hollerith (1860 – 1920) worked as a statistician
for the U.S. Census Bureau in the 1880s and 1890s.
The 1880 census took seven years to be processed.
Hollerith deduced that the next census would take longer
than ten years.
So, as the saying goes, “necessity became the mother of
invention” and Hollerith designed and built the Census
Counting Machine illustrated in the next slide.
20. Punched cards (a la Jacquard looms) were
used to collect the census data (the origin of
the IBM punched cards) and the cards were
fed into a sorting machine before being read
by the census counting machine which
recorded and tabulated the results.
The 1890 census took just three months to
process even though quite a bit more data
was collected than ever before.
21. Hollerith’s company, the Tabulating
Machine Company, became the
Computer Tabulating Recording
Company in 1913 after merging with
another company that produced a
similar product.
1917: CTRC starts operations in Brazil;
the first big project was the 1920
census
In 1924, the company was renamed
International Business Machines (IBM)
22. Konrad Zuse and the Z3
• The Z3 was an electromechanical computer
designed by Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) , a
German scientist.
• The Z3 was one of the first machines that
could be considered a complete computing
machine. Program code and data were stored
on punched 35 mm film.
• The Z3 was completed in Berlin in 1941. The
German Aircraft Research Institute used it to
perform statistical analyses of wing flutter;
the machine was destroyed in 1943 during
an Allied bombardment.
• Zuse asked the German government for
money to develop a new machine, but
funding was denied, since such development
was deemed "not war-important"
23. While being a professor of Physics at Harvard, Howard Aiken (1900 – 1973) was
supported by IBM to build the ASCC computer (Automatic Sequence Controlled
Calculator), aka Harvard Mark I.
The computer had mechanical relays (switches) which flip-flopped back and forth to
represent mathematical data. It was huge, weighting some 35 tons with 500 miles of
wiring.
24. Rear Admiral Grace Murray
Hopper (1906 –1992) was an
American computer scientist and
United States Navy officer.
A pioneer in the field, she was one
of the first computer
programmers, and developed the
first compiler for a computer
programming language.
She conceptualized the idea of
machine-independent
programming languages, which
led to the development of COBOL.
25. One day, the program Dr. Hopper was running gave incorrect results
and, upon examination, a moth was found blocking one of the
relays. The bug was removed and the program performed to
perfection. Since then, a program error in a computer has been
called a bug
27. The vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube ("tube" or "valve") is a
device that can be used to replace electromechanical
relays, because it is faster
Valves made electronic computing possible for the
first time, but the cost and relatively short Mean Time
Between Failure (MBTF) of valves were limiting
factors in the 1930s.
Later work confirmed that tube unreliability was not as
serious an issue as generally believed; the 1946
ENIAC, with over 17,000 tubes, had a tube failure
(which took 15 minutes to locate and fix) on average
every two days.
28. Alan Mathison Turing (1912 – 1954),
was an English mathematician,
cryptographer and computer scientist.
He was highly influential in the
development of computer science,
providing a formalization of the concepts
of "algorithm" and "computation" with
the Turing machine, which played a
significant role in the creation of the
modern computer.
Turing is widely considered to be the
father of computer science and artificial
intelligence.
29. During WWII Turing made a major contribution to
the development of a sophisticated computing
machine called Colossus which was used to help
crack the codes of the German Enigma Machine.
The Enigma machine was an electro-mechanical
machine used for the encryption and decryption of
secret messages, widely used for the Germans in
the war.
Turing’s work helped Allied codebreakers to
decrypt a vast number of messages that had been
enciphered using the Enigma. The intelligence
gleaned from this source was a substantial aid to
the Allied war effort.
The BBC broadcasted in 1991 the serie 'The dream
machine‘. You can know something more about
Turing and his work visiting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NbhbssXWDAE&feature=related
Germans working with the Enigma
30. The Colossus
Eleven Colossus
were built during
World War II (one
Mark 1, ten Mark
2) – the first
started running in
Feb 1944.
Colossus Mark 1 contained 1,500 electronic valves;
Colossus Mark 2 with 2,400 valves was both 5 times
faster and simpler to operate than Mark 1, greatly
speeding the decoding process.
31. Alan Turing: a tragic character
• Turing was an athlete: he achieved world-class Marathon standards - his best time was
only 11 minutes slower than the winner in the 1948 Olympic Games. In a 1948 cross-
country race he finished ahead of Tom Richards who won the silver medal in the Olympics.
• Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts
were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones
(chemical castration) as an alternative to prison
• He died in 1954, several weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning - an
inquest determined it was suicide. When his body was discovered an apple lay half-eaten
beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it is speculated that
this was the mean by which a fatal dose was delivered.
• On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in
which Turing was treated after the war
32. The ENIAC: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
This 1946 photograph
shows ENIAC , the first
general purpose
electronic computer,
housed at the
University of
Pennsylvania.
Developed in secret
starting in 1943, ENIAC
was designed to
calculate artillery firing
tables for the US Army.
33. The ENIAC: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
When ENIAC was announced in 1946 it
was heralded in the press as a "Giant
Brain“ (in Brazil, “Cérebro Eletrônico”). It
boasted speeds one thousand times faster
than electro-mechanical machines.
The inventors of ENIAC promoted the
spread of the new technologies through a
series of lectures on the construction of
electronic digital computers at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1946, known
as the Moore School Lectures.
34. The ENIAC: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
Besides its speed, the most remarkable thing
about ENIAC was its size and complexity.
ENIAC contained 17,468 valves, around 5
million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 ton.,
was roughly 2.4 m × 0.9 m × 30 m and took
up 167 m2
.
Input was possible from an IBM card reader,
and an IBM card punch was used for output.
These cards could be used to produce printed
output offline using an IBM accounting
machine, such as the IBM 405.
The task of programming was complex. After the program was figured out on paper,
the process of getting the program "into" the ENIAC by manipulating its switches and
cables took days. This was followed by a period of verification and debugging.
Programming the ENIAC
35. John von Neumann was a
mathematician working on the
hydrogen bomb project and became
aware of the ENIAC
Von Neumann came up with the bright
idea of using part of the ENIAC
internal memory (called Primary
Memory) to “store” the program inside
the computer and have the computer
go get the instructions from its own
memory - the stored program concept
was born!
36. Scandal!
ENIAC was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper
Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania – they stole ideas from John
Vincent Atanasoff , from the Iowa State University and Clifford Berry.
Mauchly and Eckert successfully filed for the patent as inventors of the
electronic digital computer, ignoring Berry and Atanasoff’s work.
In 1972, this injustice was rectified when Honeywell (for Atanasoff)
successfully challenged Sperry Rand (the company that acquired
Eckert and Mauchly’s patent), and Atanasoff and Berry were credited
as being the inventors of the electronic digital computer.
- .
37. EDSAC
• The Electronic Delay Storage
Automatic Calculator (EDSAC)
was a UK made computer.
• The machine, having been
inspired by John von Neumann's
ideas was the first practical
stored-program electronic
computer.
• EDSAC ran its first program on
6 May 1949
• Later the project was supported by J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., a British restaurant-chain,
food manufacturing and hotel conglomerate founded in 1887, who were
rewarded with the first commercially applied computer, LEO I, based on the
EDSAC design.
38. The Transistor era
• The transistor is the fundamental
building block of modern electronic
devices, and is ubiquitous in modern
electronic systems. It replaced the valves
• Following its release in the early 1950s
the transistor revolutionized the field of
electronics, and paved the way for
smaller, faster and cheaper computers.
• John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and
William Shockley (seated) working in
the laboratory where they built the first
transistor. Electronics magazine called
the device a "Crystal Triode."
39. What was the first thing that we
built with this miraculous new
technology?
40. A hearing aid ! ….1953
Zenith Royal-T
hearing aid - 3”
tall, 2.5” wide
A prehistoric iPod?
42. The TRADIC (for TRansistorized Airborne
DIgital Computer) was the first
transistorized computer, completed in 1954
The project initially examined the feasibility
of constructing a transistorized airborne
digital computer.
The TRADIC was small and light enough to
be installed in a B-52 Stratofortress
43. In the early 1950s, there were three main
computers makers
• UNIVAC
• Burroughs
• IBM
44. • March 1951: the Census Bureau
accepted delivery of the first
UNIVAC computer - Remington
Rand became the first American
manufacturers of a commercial
computer system
• Their first non-government
contract was for General Electric's
Appliance Park facility in Louisville,
Kentucky, who used the UNIVAC
computer for a payroll application.
45. Univac was used to forecast the 1952 presidential election (USA)
Polls gave the 1952 Presidential
election to Adlai Stevenson. UNIVAC,
star of CBS’ election coverage,
predicted an Eisenhower landslide.
UNIVAC was right.
The computer’s TV debut captivated
an audience already enthralled by
technology and confronting new
tools—and new terminology—
almost daily.
46. Computers in popular culture
“UNIVAC” became synonymous
with “computer” to the
American public in the 1950s.
This comic book combines
computerized matchmaking,
which began in the late 1950s,
with a popular television dating
show format
47. THE 2ND GENERATION COMPUTERS (from 1955)
• Programming languages such as FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) and
COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) were developed at that
time
• Typical of that era were the IBM 1401 and Burroughs B200
• Smaller in size
• All transistorized
• Reliable
IBM 1401Burroughs B200
48. In 1957 the first computer
came to Brazil. It was a
Univac 120, purchased by
the State of Sao Paulo to
control the water supply
service in the capital.
We talked a lot about Univac, which was the first e bigger computer
manufacturer and no longer exists. You can guess why?
No planning, bad management!
49. In 1959 Anderson Clayton bought a IBM 305 RAMAC,
the first computer in the Brazilian private sector
IBM 305 RAMAC, announced 1956, was the first commercial computer that used a
moving head hard disk drive (5 MB, 1 ton) for secondary storage. RAMAC stood for
"Random Access Method of Accounting and Control".
RAMAC’s HD
50. In the 60's, the world was in the middle of
the space race. With that came the need
to build lightweight and powerful
computers that could be embedded in
rockets.
NASA has spent billions of dollars on its
space program in the hiring of
manufacturers of transistors to perform an
even more radical miniaturization.
Thus were created the first integrated
circuits, also called chips. Basically, a chip
is an electronic component comprising
hundreds or thousands of transistors.
This led to the third generation of
computers
51. Example of this time is the IBM 360,
sold between 1964 and 1978
56. From that point, mainframe
computers have evolved to the
point where they are today, even
using elements also used in
microcomputers
57. 57
Internal
Batteries
(optional)
Power
Supplies
3x
I/O
cages
Fiber Quick Connect
(FQC) Feature
(optional)
2 x Support
Elements
Processor Books,
Memory, MBA and
HCA cards
2 x Cooling
Units
InfiniBand I/O
Interconnects
FICON &
ESCON
FQC
Ethernet cables for
internal System
LAN connecting
Flexible Service
Processor (FSP)
cage controller
cards
z10 EC – Under the covers (Model E56 or E64)
59. Prof. Dr. Vivaldo José Breternitz
Acad. Marta D. Magalhães Santos
Prof. Esp. Elisabete Panssonatto Breternitz
Os autores agradecem seus comentários
através do vjbreternitz@mackenzie.br
The is a picture of the first computer bug. The lady is U.S. Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper, who worked with Howard Aiken from 1944 and used his machine for gunnery and ballistics calculation for the US Bureau of Ordnance’s Computation project. One day, the program she was running gave incorrect results and, upon examination, a moth was found blocking one of the relays. The bug was removed and the program performed to perfection. Since then, a program error in a computer has been called a bug, even though it would take a mighty tiny bug to interfere with the workings of a modern microscopic microprocessor.
Nancy Head has contributed the following additional information about Dr. Hopper:
Dr. Hopper greatly simplified programming through the COBOL language which was the first programming language to allow the use of regular English for variable names and logical operations. She also introduced the concept and standardization of "compilers“, now a standard feature of programming languages. The compiler translates the programmer’s code into machine language, thus sparing the programmer the onerous task of doing it it herself. This contributed to business use of computers and modern data processing because regular businesspersons and scientists (not just mathematicians and computer scientists) could learn to program computers.
More about her life and software engineering contributions can be found at http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/hopper.html and http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html.
Some fun/interesting quotes from her can be found at http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-wit.html.
The is a picture of the first computer bug. The lady is U.S. Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper, who worked with Howard Aiken from 1944 and used his machine for gunnery and ballistics calculation for the US Bureau of Ordnance’s Computation project. One day, the program she was running gave incorrect results and, upon examination, a moth was found blocking one of the relays. The bug was removed and the program performed to perfection. Since then, a program error in a computer has been called a bug, even though it would take a mighty tiny bug to interfere with the workings of a modern microscopic microprocessor.
Nancy Head has contributed the following additional information about Dr. Hopper:
Dr. Hopper greatly simplified programming through the COBOL language which was the first programming language to allow the use of regular English for variable names and logical operations. She also introduced the concept and standardization of "compilers“, now a standard feature of programming languages. The compiler translates the programmer’s code into machine language, thus sparing the programmer the onerous task of doing it it herself. This contributed to business use of computers and modern data processing because regular businesspersons and scientists (not just mathematicians and computer scientists) could learn to program computers.
More about her life and software engineering contributions can be found at http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/hopper.html and http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html.
Some fun/interesting quotes from her can be found at http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-wit.html.
The ENIAC: 30 tons, 18,000 vacuum tubes, with the computing power of little more than the modern calculator…..
The ENIAC: 30 tons, 18,000 vacuum tubes, with the computing power of little more than the modern calculator…..
The ENIAC: 30 tons, 18,000 vacuum tubes, with the computing power of little more than the modern calculator…..
Like all the earliest electronic digital computers, the ENIAC was programmed manually; that is to say, the programmers wrote the programs out on paper, then literally set the program for the computer to perform by rewiring it or hard-wiring it—plugging and unplugging the wires on the outside of the machine. Hence all those external wires in the picture above and on the previous slide.
Then along came John Von Neumann, who worked at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study and who collaborated with Eckert and Mauchly. He came up with the bright idea of using part of the computer’s internal memory (called Primary Memory) to “store” the program inside the computer and have the computer go get the instructions from its own memory, just as we do with our human brain. Neato! No more intricate, complex, cumbersome external wiring. Much faster; much more efficient.
Unfortunately, it didn’t solve the problem of the possibility of error. As long as humans are around, we’ll always have that!
It’s iroonic that Eckert and Mauchly were upset when Von Neumann was given credit for this “stored program concept,” because they thought they deserved it, too. Now why didn’t they think the same about Atanasoff? Go figure!
The ENIAC: 30 tons, 18,000 vacuum tubes, with the computing power of little more than the modern calculator…..