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HISTORY OF COMPUTERS


The history of the computers goes back to the Analytical Engine created by Charles Babbage, English mathematician of century XIX. Although many historians associate it with the abacus that goes back to the Greek and Roman time.

The history of the computers could have begun with the abacus was the first instrument of calculation of the humanity and its antiquity is considered in about 5,000 years. The abacus is a simple instrument with a species of accounts inserted in rods that were within a rectangular frame, and when moving the accounts on the rods, these marked positions that gave rise to certain values.

In century XVII the history of the computers continuous with the French Blaise Pascal invention the Pascaline, that was improved by the German Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. In these machines the data manually introduced in a species of wheels or gears and the final results we could verify them like positions of these gears. Something similar to as we see the values in speedometers of an automobile.

But most of the historians they do not agree that was the abacus the first computer of history. Thus, the history of the computers says that the Analytical Engine of Charles Babbage, mathematician of the University of Cambridge, can be considered like the first computer of history.


In year 1,947 it appears according to the history of the computers, the ENIAC is developed in the University of Pennsylvania (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), being this the first entirely electronic computer. This computer occupied all the cellar of the University, consumed about 200 KW, approximately had about 18,000 vacuum tubes, needed a complete system conditioned air and was able to conduct five thousand mathematical operations per second.

The history of the computers continues later with the design of EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) designed among others by Professor Von Neumann, considered the father of the computers. The main contribution of Professor Von Neumann was to allow that in the memory data with instructions coexisted, which allowed that it was possible to be programmed in a language, not like the ENIAC that towards by threads that interconnected controls.

History of computers is so short, as soon as it has 50 years that its study stops, is divided in generations. Therefore the years, but the advances in the field of the computation are not so important those that help us to differentiate the different generations. These advances are moderate so much from the point of view of the improvements in the mechanisms that form it (Hardware), like in the language that helps us to communicate to us with the computers (Software).