The history of computer can be traced back to the development of a pseudo mechanical decive known as the abacus. The abacus was one of the earliest known computational device which its origin in the ancient babylonian. This was a device in which beads held with strings were manually manipulated with the aim of effecting some calculations.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many significant development were made, finding an easier means of calculating. In 1649 john napier, a scottish mathematician develop a slide rule which had the capacity of performing multiplication, division, square roots, square, logarithm, e.t.c. The slide rule which is easy to operate is made up of two graduated rules 1 of which side upon the other. Suitable alignment for the slide leads solutions to mathematical problems, which are read of on one of the several scales on each wheel. In 1623, francis bacon made the first known use of binary code for number representation. The binary codes may use of strings of 0's and 1's. In 1642 french man blaise pascal invented the first mechanical adding machine known as machine arithmetic. The device was constructed by a system of dial, each connected to a drum. As the drums rotated cray was generated by a rocket device which caused the next higher drums be stepped onwards only one revolution. Additions and subtractions we are easily done in the device. Multiplications were achieved through a repeated addition while divisions were done though a repeated subtraction.
In 1671, Gottfried von leibnitz improved on blaise pascal's invention by introducing series of gear changes on the drum producing an effect of a modern gear which made it possible for a direct multiplication and division. Between 1802 and 1804 joseph jacquard french textile manufacturer perfected the idea of the automated loom. He used holes punched into a series of connected cards to control the waving of fabrics. The loom used in the process sensed the pattern code into the cards and wolf the fabric accordingly. The cards were are simply sequence of cards with holes in them. These were the idea behind Hollerith's punched cards. In 1812 charles babbage an english professor of mathematics at cambridge university came up with a theory that made it possible to construct an automatic mechanical device. In 1822 babbage demonstrated a working model of this in form of a different engine to the royal society. The difference engine was founded by the british government who later withdraw their support because babbage was constantly improving his idea without completing the original work. Later in 1834 babbage constructed and analytical engine a general-purpose calculator. The design of the machine depended on the series of 10 toothed gear wheels off jacquard inventions. The machine was not completed owing today non discovery of electronic switching. Yet this device formed the bedrock of today's modern computer. Lady ada lovelace an armature mathematician and a friend of garbage produced supporting materials for the analytical engine in the form of programs and explanatory documentation. Herman hollerith, a census statistician at the us census bureau between 1880 to 1890 created punch cards and used code tabulatory equipment, the census was completed in 3 years against 11 years originally estimated. With this development hollerith set up his own company the computing tabulating recording company which later became the international business machine corporation ibm in 1924.
In 1930 and american called vannevar bush built the first analogue computer which was used in the second world war. In 1937 professor howard aiken of harvard university developed an automatic sequence controlled calculator a s.c.c. This was the first digital and was completed in 1944. It was the first electromagnetic machine that could figure out long list of mathematical problem at a fast rate.
Im 19462 engineers at the university of pennsylvania J. Eckert and 1. Mauchly built digital computer parts using vacuum tubes. It weighs about 30 tons and contained 18000 electronic valves with about 150 watts of power consumption. It was cold eniac electronic numerical igniter and calculator. During the same. John von neumann a mathematician presented technical papers on the store program concept. The stored program concept had the idea of keeping both instruction and data in the memory together. The computer hard the capability of processing data and instruction such as a program can modify another program during execution. It was on this principle that future computers were based. The electronic district storage automatic computer edsac was developed following the stored program in 1949 at the cambridge university in britain by by M.V WILKES.
Lee deforest invented the demonic valves in 1906. Technological developments give rise to transistors in 1948. Transistors were developed by a team of scientists headed by william shockley at bell laboratory in america. It was an efficient replacement of vacuum tubes. Again came the advent of integrated circuit ics. Which was made commercially available in 1963 . The advancement in semiconductor technology has led to having computers with greater capability, high reliability and reduced size. It has also led to the development of microprocessors with single chip central processing unit and having what length of 4bit, 8bit, 32 bit, and 64 bit system.
