Where did our tech come from?
We all use computers, everyday we take for granted the amazing capabilities of our desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones but where did it all begin? Did you know, for example the first programmer was a woman? Or the first ever computer game was programmed in England?
Here is a very condensed history of the computer with some very interesting video footage thrown in.
The word computer was first recorded as being used in 1613 and was used to describe a person who performed computations. It didn’t really change until the end of the nineteenth century when the term switched to calculating machines.
Charles Babbage was the inventor of the first automatic computing machine.
In 1822 he designed a machine called the difference engine that was capable of computing the results from several sets of numbers and providing a hard copy. He never completed it due to lack of funds but the London science museum built it in 1991. Here is a short video on how it came about, pretty amazing stuff.
Ok, so over a hundred years later a german named Konrad Zuse built the first electro-mechanical binary computer that was programmed using punch cards. It had a massive 1 Hz speed and a 1,408 bit memory. See pic below. Want one?
A few quick inventions around the same time.
1937 Alan Turing created a device that printed symbols on paper tape that emulated a person following a set of logical instructions. Without Mr Turing we wouldn’t have the computer as we know it.
1943 and Mr Tommy flowers gave us Colossus, this machine helped the british break the Germans encrypted messages during world war two.
The ENIAC, the first fully working digital computer started construction in 1943 and was completed in 1946 in Pennsylvania.
It needed to be housed in a room 1,800 square feet, weighed 50 tons and used 18,000 vacuum tubes. How’s the iPad looking now?
1949 and the British games industry was born as EDSAC was given its trial run. It is considered to be the first “stored program” electronic computer. The first game ever ran was nicknamed “Baby”.
From that point on there was no stopping the computer age as Mr Zuse made the first commercial machine in 1942, that was it until 1953 when IBM introduced its first electric and mass produced computer the IBM 701, (in 1981 they released the ACORN which had 16kb of memory and utilized MS-DOS).
This could go on with first transistor 1956, first computer with ram 1955, first mass market pc by Hewlett Packard in 1968, first microprocessor by Intel in 1971.
The first real PC came about in 1973, the Micral made by R2E sold for $1,750, phew!
The first portable computer was the IBM 5100 in 1975 with a five inch CRT screen, tape drive, 1.9 MHz Palm processor and 64k of RAM. Oh, and it weighed 55 pounds.
The Apple I, and Steve Wozniak came about in 1976, Microsoft windows came about 1983 when used for IBM machines.
From there its all plain sailing really.
