Revolutionizing Society: The Evolution of Computers

Evolution of Computer


         We all use personal computers in our day-to-day life. Rather than using mobile phones, Tablets, VR devices, etc. But ever you had to think how is evolute these computers, what is the first computer, like these things. Let’s see how the evolution of computers and learn some important points while evolution

Before 1900

  • Abacus is called the “mother of the digital computer” and it was invented and used between 1000 BC and 500 BC.
  • Used in 0 and negative numbers between 300 BC and 500 AD.
  • In 1500, the computing community got a boost when Leonardo da Vinci invented a mechanical calculator.
  • Leonardo da Vinci’s mechanical calculator was followed by Wilhelm Schichard’s mechanical calculator in 1625 and by Blaise Pascal’s arithmetic machine 15 years later.
Blaise Pascal’s arithmetic machine


  • 1800 with the invention of the punched card by Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a French silk weaver.
  • Charles Babbage invented the analytical engine in 1830 and George and Edward Schutz built a difference engine.
  • In 1847 George Boole developed Boolean algebra.
  • Sir Charles Wheatstone’s invention of the paper tape to store information in 1857 created new excitement in the computing community of the time.
  • In 1869 William Stanley Jevons invented the logic machine.
  • The invention of the first keyboard by Sholes around 1874.
  • The rectangular logic diagrams by Allan Marquand in 1881.
  • In 1886, Charles Pierce first linked Boolean algebra to circuits based on switches.
  • In 1890, John Venn created the Venn diagrams used extensively in switching algebras in hardware and software development.
  • In 1890, Herman Hollerith invented the tabulating machine. Hollerith’s invention utilized Jacquard’s punched card to read the presence or absence of holes.

After 1900

  • The invention of the vacuum tube by John Ambrose Fleming in 1904.
vacuum tube by John Ambrose Fleming


  • Invention of the triode by Lee de Forest in 1906.
  • The year 1926 saw the invention of the first semiconductor transistor, which would come to dominate the computing industry from that point forward.
  • The complex number calculator by George Robert Stibitz in 1937.
  • The invention of the Turing machine by Alan Turing in 1937 was as revolutionary as it was exciting.
  • In 1939, the world saw the first digital computer developed by John Vincent Atanasoff, a lecturer at Iowa State College (now University) (first special-purpose electronic digital computer.)
First digital computer developed by John Vincent Atanasoff


  • In 1939, Howard Aiken, a graduate of Harvard University, was developing the first large-scale automatic digital computer. Aiken’s computer came to be known as the Harvard Mark I.
  • In 1943, Alan Turing, working as a cryptographer, constructed the COLOSSUS, considered by many as the world’s earliest working programmable electronic digital computer.
  • Around the time that COLOSSUS was being developed by Turing, the team of John William Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, Jr., was working at the University of Pennsylvania to develop another vacuum tube-based general-purpose electronic digital computer. Their model is named Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC).
  • From 1944 through 1952, the team developed a new computer called the electronic discrete variable automatic computer (EDVAC). This is believed to be the first truly general-purpose digital computer. EDVAC was a stored-program computer with internal read–write memory to store program instructions. When it was completed in 1956.
  • Meanwhile other countries,
  • EDVAC was being developed, an experiment was being conducted at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, also based on the stored-program concept. By 1948, the Manchester team had produced a machine with 32 words of memory and a five-instruction set.
  • In England, at Cambridge University, the electronic d delay storage automatic calculator, EDSAC, was produced in 1949.
  • Between 1971 and 1976, it led to a milestone in the history of computing, the development of the first microprocessor. (A microprocessor is an integrated circuit with many transistors on a single board.)
  • That way was found by Ted Hoff. Hoff designed the world’s first microprocessor, the 4004.
  • In 1972, Intel introduced the 8008, an 8-bit microprocessor based on the 4004.
  • In 1976, the Apple I and Apple II microcomputers were unveiled.
  • In 1981, IBM joined the PC wars.
  • IBM; Gary Kildall, the developer of CP/M, the PC operating system many believe to be the first PC operating system; and Bill Gates, the developer of the disk operating system (DOS).

After these invents, day by day developed the personal computer(PC) and software were developed. We will discuss what happened after 2000, in a later article.

References

  • J.M.Kizza, Ethical, and Social Issues in the Information Age, 5th ed. Springer-Verlag London 2013.