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Computers however have affected the outcome of many important things throughout history and they now affect the lives of everyone on earth.
Computers are made of many different parts that all work together in unison, the input and output functions of the computer are basically the communication between your computer and your self.
The inputs are what you sent into the computer the data is then received by the computer and processed, once the data is processed it is an output that back to the user through the use of some device such as a monitor, the central processing unit or better known as CPU is the integrated circuitry that is inside a computer and performs instructions of the computer program by completing arithmetic logic control and input and output on. Random Access Memory or RAM is a type of data storage for your computer, RAM allows data to be read and written. Ram is a type of volatile memory meaning the information that is stored is lost if power is removed, those are only some of the main units of computers today even though there are many more parts that make them run the way they do.
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Zeroth Generation
When people hear the word computer today they think that the device that they can go on to finish their work or to wind down to communicate with their friends or to even play games.
Back in 17th century before modern technology was around the term computer meant something different than it does today, a computer was someone who would perform calculations and computations, with these computers performing so many calculations by hand they were of course bound to make mistakes. This is around the time, one of the first mechanical machines came today, Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician and inventor who was around during the 17th century.
Pascal is most known for being the first inventor of the mechanical machine. Blaise Pascal invented the past goalie or may be better known as Pascal's calculator.
Pascal's Calculator was simply that, a Calculator. He went through about 50 prototypes before presenting his first machine in 1645.
Pascal's Calculator was able to calculate up to 8 figures by using addition and subtraction, perhaps its most famous feature was that you was able to carry numbers over, the carryover system allowed in addition of 1 to 9 on one dial switch out the 9 with a 0 and carry the one over to the next dial. Pascal created about twenty of these machines before his death at the young age of 39.
Although Pascal's calculator an other device has its surfaced, there were still considerable errors being made in calculations, the growing need for accurate computations to be completed without errors was in demand and introduced one of the most brilliant people into the story of computers Charles Babbage who is now known as the father of the computer.
On December 26 1791 inventor mathematician and mechanical engineer Charles Babbage was born, Babbage was his own algebra instructor as a child and ended up entering Trinity College in Cambridge by 1811 where he found himself far ahead of his mathematics tutors, by 1821 Babbage had an idea for a machine called the "Difference Engine", his Difference Engine would be able to calculate tables and directly print the results with no errors.
After a few years only a few parts at the Difference Engine had been completed and it quickly started to gain attention, by 1832 there were enough parts to assemble a part of the engine which was able to solve equations perfectly and give six digit results.
Unfortunately the Difference Engine met its demise due to skyrocketing costs, however this did not stop Babbage, Babbage had another idea for a new device called the "Analytical Engine" and it would be far superior to use all designs of the Difference Engine.
Babbage is overall design for the Analytical Engine, had many designs that are seen in modern computers today, the mill made calculations, the store held numbers to be used in the calculations and instructions and numbers could be filled into the machine using punch cards, the reason we know so much about Babbage Analytical Engine is due to Ada Lovelace.
Ada had seen a demonstration of Babbage Difference Engine and ended up publishing a description of the Analytical Engine, people often refer to Ada as the world's first programmer because knows she had taken on the Analytical Engine contain what is perceived as the first algorithm that was proposed to be carried out by a machine.
Only a small portion of Babbage Analytical Engine was completed before his death in 1871 and would ended up being forgotten about completely if it had not been for Ada's notes on the matter.
By the time the 1930's had rolled around, World War one had already passed and the second World War was right around the Corner, this is around the time that German inventor and civil engineer Conrad Zoos came into relevancy. Zoos is credited with treating the first programmable computer the "Z1".
Zoos began designing his Z1 computer in 1935 in his parents apartment, he would go on to finish building the final design for the Z1 by the 1938.
The Z1 was the first programmable computer created and it use binary floating-point numbers and bully in algebra, the Z1 contain the most parts of the modern computer such as a control unit input and output devices and other parts, it was also to be program-freely by use of punch tape and punched tape reader system. The Z1 headed 22 bit floating-point value rather and subtract that can also perform more complex task such as division and multiplication with some slight control logic, it also contain a 64 word floating point memory.
For the Z1 we will be able to read from and write to each word of memory by use of the control unit.
The Z1 never ended up functioning as well as intended due to a containing around 30,000 metal parts which led to inadequate mechanical accuracy.
By the time Zoos had completed his work on the Z1 machine he was called to serve in the military, the military would provide zoos with phones in order to continue his research which led Zoos to creating 3 more machines, the Z2, Z3 and Z4. Unfortunately Zoos's original devices the Z1, Z2 and Z3 were all destroyed by a British air raid in 1943.
Rep occurs of Z1 and Z3 and they now sit in museums for everyone to see.
First Generation
The similarities that computer had in the first generation consisted abusing bacon tubes for circuitry, these machines were more than often massive in size, generally taking up a whole room, along with their excessive cost and their abundant use of electricity they also generated a good amount of heat which led to many malfunctions, these computers also counted on machine language in order to complete tasks and operations, input was provided through the use of paper tape and punch cards and output was shown on printouts.
One of the first computers designed during the first generation of computers was done so by a man named Thomas Flowers, flowers was a British engineer who created his device during World War 2 in order to help the crypt German messages. Flowers machine was called the "Colossus", the Colossus was the world's first electronic programmable computer, he used vacuum tubes in order to read paper tape and then administer programmable logic functions.
By the end of the war there were around 10 Colossus machines being used to aid the allied forces, most of these machines would later be destroyed in order to pertain secrecy. Without the creation of the Colossus machines the allied forces would have missed out on the abundance of important military intelligence, that was obtained by the decryption of messages sent between Germany's high commanders and their army forces.
Still during the whole World War 2 era, the world's first digital computer came to be, this computer was to be financed by the United States Army, inbuilt in secrecy at the University of Pennsylvania's more school of the Electrical Engineering under the code-name "Project PX".
Project PX however is now more commonly known as the electric numeric integrator and computer or Aniac, the Aniac was designed and created by John Markley NJ press per acre. In its considered the first fully functional digital computer, when Aniac was first announced in 1946 it was referred to as a giant brain and it made scientists and industrials very enthusiastic. The Aniac was 8-Modules computer that was made up of specific panels to complete distinctive actions, some of these modules were capable of adding and subtracting along withholding 8-10 digit decimal number in their memory. Numbers were transferred through the union's across bosses and in order to manage its high speed the buses had to send and receive numbers computer save the answer and activate the next question and this was all completed without moving components, it was a mammoth of the machine which weighed approximately 50 tons, took up roughly 1800 square feet and news nearly 18,000 vacuum tubes, it also use 200 kilowatts of electricity and took about 500,000 dollars to create, even though the Aniac was not completely finished and told in the end of World War 2, it was created and used for the purpose of determining artillery firing tables for the United States Armies ballistic research laboratory.
Although history had already seen its first programmable computer in the Colossus, a new electrical computer was on the rise which would be able to store programs on its own.
This computer went by the name of the electronic delay storage automatic calculator or Ed-sack.
The Ed-sack is a British computer which was created by Morris Wilks at the University of Cambridge. The Ed-sacks memory consisted of 1,024 locations, however only 512 of them were originally in-forced, each contained 18 bids but due to timing restrains only 17 were used, for memory the Ed-sack use delay lines and in it use vacuum tubes for logic. Ed-sack began serving the research needs of the University as soon as it became viable, it was used to discover a 79 digit prime number which was the largest known at the time, it was also the computer which ran the first graphical computer game and that was nickname "Baby".
Like the Ed-sack the universal automatic computer 1 or Univac one was also considered to be one of the first computers which was able to store programs on its own, like the Aniac before it the Univac one was also design by J press per Eckerd and John Markley. The Univac one was also the second commercial computer which was produced in the United States, it featured 5,200 vacuum tubes in weight around 13 metric tons, it used 125 kilowatts of energy and performed 1,905 operations per second. The Univac memory was made up of 1,000 words of 12 characters, the numbers were written as 11 decimal digits and the 1,000 words of memory had 100 channels of ten word line registers, a total of 46 Univac ones were made with the starting price of 160,000 dollars they eventually rose in price and all they ended up being between 1,25 million and 1,5 million dollars, the fifth Univac machine that was built was even used by CBS to help predict the results of the 1952 Presidential election, the machine only had a sample size of one percent above the voting population and famously predicted Eisenhower winning by a land side, even though his opponent Stevenson was favored.
The computers changed the way we lived and they will continue to shape that even more so in the near future, software will become more powerful and computers will continue to become faster, smaller and cheaper, mines that have yet to be assembled will design this power to create new wonders unimaginable to us today.
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