CS140 Lecture 09a:Brief History of Computing

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John Magee17 February 2017

Some images courtesy Wikimedia Commons, IBM, DEC

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."-- Ken Olson, founder and CEO of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

Overview/Questions

– Where did computers come from?– When were computers first discovered?

– Why should you care about the history of computing?

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Early History of Computing

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Abacus (2400 BC)Ancient device to record numeric values

Above: a reconstructed Roman abacus

Early History of Computing

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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)Mechanical device to add, subtract, divide & multiply

Early History of Computing

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Joseph Jacquard (1801) Jacquard’s Loom, the punched card

Programmability

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What tricks does your computer do?– Web browsing, email, instant messenger– Play games– Watch movies, organize photos – Word processing, spreadsheets, database

Programmability is the ability to give a general-purpose computer instructions so that it can perform new tasks.

Difference EngineCharles Babages’ mechanical calculating machine, designed in 1820s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8tmfcOg8l8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0anIyVGeWOIAda Lovelace: First Algorithm

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Finite State Machines

– AKA Finite State Automata– Think about a Traffic light operation There are only a limited number of “states” –

configurations of lights. Each state transitions into a new state. E.g. Green Yellow Red

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Turing Machines

Alan Turing Considered to be the father of Computer Science Also known for the “Turing Test” for Artificial

Intelligence

Turing Machine - 1936 A turing machine is an abstract thought

experiment. Mathematical proof of computability of algorithm. Basis for Computer Science Theory.

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Early Digital Computers

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Harvard Mark I (1944)

Harvard Mark I

11IBM Archives

Early Digital Computers

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Harvard Mark I (1944)First fully automatic digital computer to be completed• 51 feet wide, 8 feet high, 2 feet deep• Built out of switches, relays, and rotating mechanical shafts/clutches• Storage for 72 numbers, each 23 decimal digits in length• Read instructions from paper tape, one at a time

Early Digital Computers

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ENIAC (1946)Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer•first general-purpose electronic computer•80 feet wide, 8.5 feet high, 3 feet deep•No moving parts•Ability to conditional branch – do the next operation based on the result of the previous operation.•17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints.•5,000 Hz, 324 multiplications/second

ENIAC

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First Computer Bug

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Log of first computer bug, discovered by Grace Hopper, 1945A Computer Science Pioneer, she later wrote the first Compiler.

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The earliest digital computers were programmed by wiring them up to perform some specific logic.

Pictured: Harvard Mark I

Computer Programming, 0.X

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Computer Programming, 0.X

Later, instructions were programmed by flipping switches.

Pictured: Digital Equipment PDP-8

Demo:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPioENtAHuY

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Stored Program ComputerJohn von Neumann (a mathematician who worked on the atomic bomb)

– Described a computer architecture in which instructions are read from the memory space (RAM), just like data.

– This design enables programmability, by making it relatively easy to provide new instructions to the computer’s hardware.

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Stored Program Computer(Von Neumann Architecture)

Figure 5.1 The von Neumann architecture

Architecture

Harvard Architecture:– Instructions separate from data.

Von Neumann Architecture:– Instructions = data.– All stored in the same memory.– A program can write a program! (Compilers)– All modern computers based on this.

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Stored Program Computer

Data and instructions to manipulate the data are logically the same (binary code) and can be stored in the same place (RAM).

The machine language of a particular computer is the set of binary coded instructions built into its hardware.

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Machine Language

Characteristics of machine language:– Every processor type has its own set

of specific machine instructions.– The relationship between the processor type

and the instructions it can carry out is completely integrated.

– Each machine-language instruction does only one very low-level task.

Mainframes

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Univac 1108 (1964)

IBM 704 (1954)First floating point hardwaremass produced

1960’s-1970’s

Interactive sessions Multi-user systems

– Time-sharing– Terminals

“mini”computers

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DEC PDP-7

Grace Hopper1944: One of the first programmers of Harvard Mark I.1949: Suggested programming with English words.1952: First compiler: “Nobody believed that," she said. "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic.”1959 – 1977: COBOL programming language.1986: Retired as oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the US navy.

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Grace Hopper

1989: Honorary Degree at Clark University.

2016: Presidential Medal of Freedom

2017: Yale announced plan to rename one of its undergraduate colleges Grace Murray Hopper College.

Annual Convention: The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

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Margaret HamiltonLead Apollo flight software designer.

Hamilton has published over 130 papers, proceedings, and reports about the 60 projects and six major programs in which she has been involved.

Legitimized the use of the term "software engineering“ as a disciplined approach to science and engineering of software.

CEO of two software companies she founded.

2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom

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Rise of the PC

PBS Series hosted by Bob Cringelyhttps://vimeo.com/124201377

9:24 - Cringely explains digital computing, program,10:00 - data, instructions in binary, flipping switches, etc. Grace Hopper, programming COBOL, mainframe computers, punch cards,Wozniak, Jobs on programming, 12:58 - microprocessor (vacuum tubes, transistors, chips ), Intel15:30 - Altair 880019:20 - Homebrew computer club20:30 - Mellon/Garland @ computer club, binary addition by flipping switches22:30 - programming language/basic interpreter, Paul Allen, Bill Gates // 27:00

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Video: Triumph of the Nerds

Rise of the PC

PBS Series hosted by Bob Cringely

27:00 - Microsoft in Albuquerque, basic for the Altair29:12 - Steve Jobs, Jim Warren, sixties counter culture31:30 - Apple Computer, Apple I, II // 35:00 35:00 - venture capital for apple, apple II, manufacture37:10 - computer fair40:00 - Intro VisiCalc on an Apple II44:38 - wall street use of PC46:15 - wrap up characters 48:50 - closing remarks

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Video: Triumph of the Nerds

Rise of the PC (1979 --)

What happened next?– IBM PC and Microsoft Disk Operating System (DOS)

– Apple, Amiga, Tandy, Atari, IBM…– IBM “Clones” / PC Compatibles– … the Internet… to be continued…

– What is a “killer app”?– What’s next?

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What happened to women in CS?

Right: Elsie Shutt founded one of the first software businesses in the U.S. in 1958. And the programmers were all women.

NPR: “When Women Stopped Coding”

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/22/487069271/episode-576-when-women-stopped-codinghttp://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

“And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys.” 31

Moore’s Law

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Early Personal Computers

Computer Ads:http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/002950.html

Atari 400 (1980)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sr28fygmOQ

Commodore VIC-20 (1981)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVX5cyMOGAk

Compaq portable computerhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTMdXZ_QwTo

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