Computing and society - A Practical Guide to Teaching Computing and ICT in the Secondary School - page 128

only calculate but 'analyse' as well. Whilst these two individuals are important and
should not be ignored, it may be more profitable with your pupils to concentrate on
developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You could make use of
more recent developments such as the computer that:
• the British developed, called Colossus, for code-breaking during the 1940s.
• the Americans developed at the same time, called the Electrical Numerical
Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC), for various military purposes, including
ballistics.
What is significant about them both is their cost, size and computing capability.
ENIAC covered 1,800 square feet (167 square metres) of floor space, weighed 30
tons, and consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power. You could park a school bus
inside it ( see Resources). It undertook 5,000 operations per second and would cost
the equivalent of nearly £3 million today.
Task 8.1
Colossus and ENIAC
Colossus and ENIAC shared a technology called the 'vacuum tube', which early
electronic devices, including radios and TVs, also contained. Devise a lesson(s)
that highlights the significance of the change from the vacuum tube to the
transistor in relationship to Computing.
The Apple I in 1976, and Apple II a year later, heralded profound changes in the
use of computers. The advent of the Desktop meant that computing was no longer
the exclusive preserve of the State or business. This transformation is within
living memory. Make use of the fact that pupils are likely to have heard adults
(perhaps even in the classroom) of all ages claim that 'it wasn't like this when I was
young'. Parents/guardians and grandparents are likely to be aware of the very
early desktop computers, such as the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX80, in
the early 1980s ( see Resources: Timeline). Cassette tapes (you may have to explain
what these are) stored the data and TV screens were employed as a display unit.
Unfortunately, the ZX80 was probably more use as a doorstop than as a serious
computing tool, ( see Resources). Some will have worked on the BBC Micro at
school with its dedicated Visual Display Unit, using a Floppy Disc for storage.
The most important point to establish, as Edwards (2012) suggests, is that there
appears to be an inevitable process through which computers are becoming ever
cheaper, ever faster and ever smaller. Even the processing power of a basic desktop
calculator in the 1990s contained more processing power than the devices used to
manage the moon landing in 1969 ( see Resources).
COMPUTERS TODAY
The miniaturisation and increase in power of computers has continued apace since
the turn of the century. The processor has migrated into phones and other portable
devices, which have become an essential part of everyday life for many. The advent
of the World Wide Web (www) has added a new dimension to how and where
these devices can be used. Sir Timothy Berners Lee, an English computer scientist
working at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), has been credited as