Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1. Development of the PC
Computer History: Before Personal Computers
Many discoveries and inventions have directly and indirectly contributed to the development of the
PC and other personal computers as we know them today. Examining a few important developmental
landmarks can help bring the entire picture into focus.
Timeline
The following is a timeline of significant events in computer history. It is not meant to be complete;
it's just a representation of some of the major landmarks in computer development:
1617 John Napier creates “Napier's Bones,” wooden or ivory rods used for calculating.
1642 Blaise Pascal introduces the Pascaline digital adding machine.
1822 Charles Babbage introduces the Difference Engine and later the Analytical Engine, a true
general-purpose computing machine.
1906 Lee De Forest patents the vacuum tube triode, used as an electronic switch in the first
electronic computers.
1936 Alan Turing publishes “On Computable Numbers,” a paper in which he conceives an imaginary
computer called the Turing Machine, considered one of the foundations of modern computing.
Turing later worked on breaking the German Enigma code.
1936 Konrad Zuse begins work on a series of computers that will culminate in 1941 when he finishes
work on the Z3. These are considered the first working electric binary computers, using
electromechanical switches and relays.
1937 John V. Atanasoff begins work on the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), which would later be
officially credited as the first electronic computer. Note that an
electronic
computer uses tubes,
transistors, or other solid-state switching devices, whereas an
electric
computer uses electric
motors, solenoids, or relays (electromechanical switches).
1943 Thomas (Tommy) Flowers develops the Colossus, a secret British code-breaking computer
designed to decode teleprinter messages encrypted by the German army.
1945 John von Neumann writes “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” in which he outlines the
architecture of the modern stored-program computer.
1946 ENIAC is introduced, an electronic computing machine built by John Mauchly and J. Presper
Eckert.
1947 On December 23, William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen successfully test the
point-contact transistor, setting off the semiconductor revolution.
1949 Maurice Wilkes assembles the EDSAC, the first practical stored-program computer, at
Cambridge University.
1950 Engineering Research Associates of Minneapolis builds the ERA 1101, one of the first
commercially produced computers.
1952 The UNIVAC I delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau is the first commercial computer to attract
widespread public attention.
