FREE ESSAY ON HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

The History of Computers 
Only once in a lifetime will a new invention come about to touch every aspect of our
lives. Such devices changed the way we manage, work, and live. A machine that has done
all this and more now exists in nearly every business in the United States. This
incredible invention is the computer. The electronic computer has been around for over a
half-century, but its ancestors have been around for 2000 years. However, only in the
last 40 years has the computer changed American management to it's greatest extent. From
the first wooden abacus to the latest high-speed microprocessor, the computer has changed
nearly every aspect of management, and our lives for the better.
The very earliest existence of the modern day computer's ancestor is the abacus. These
date back to almost 2000 years ago (Dolotta, 1985). It is simply a wooden rack holding
parallel wires on which beads are strung. When these beads are moved along the wire
according to programming rules that the user must memorize. All ordinary arithmetic
operations can be performed on the abacus. This was one of the first management tools
used. 
The next innovation in computers took place in 1694 when Blaise Pascal invented the first
digital calculating machine. It could only add numbers and they had to be entered by
turning dials. It was designed to help Pascal's father, who was a tax collector, manage
the town's taxes (Beer, 1966).
In the early 1800s, a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage designed an automatic
calculation machine (Dolotta, 1985). It was steam powered and could store up to 1000
50-digit numbers. Built in to his machine were operations that included everything a
modern general-purpose computer would need. It was programmed by and stored data on cards
with holes punched in them, appropriately called punch cards. This machine was extremely
useful to managers that delt with large volumes of good. With Babbage's machine, managers
could more easily calculate the large numbers accumulated by inventories. The only
problem was that there was only one of these machines built, thus making it difficult for
all managers to use (Beer, 1966).
After Babbage, people began to lose interest in computers. However, between 1850 and 1900
there were great advances in mathematics and physics that began to rekindle the interest.
Many of these new advances involved complex calculations and formulas that were very time
consuming for human calculation. The first major use for a computer in the U.S. was
during the 1890 census. Two men, Herman Hollerith and James Powers, developed a new
punched-card system that could automatically read information on cards without human
(Dolotta, 1985). Since the population of the U.S. was increasing so fast, the computer
was an essential tool for managers in tabulating the totals (Hazewindus,1988).
These advantages were noted by commercial industries and soon led to the development of
improved punch-card business-machine systems by International Business Machines,
Remington-Rand, Burroughs, and other corporations (Chposky, 1988). By modern standards
the punched-card machines were slow, typically processing from 50 to 250 cards per
minute, with each card holding up to 80 digits. At the time, however, punched cards were
an enormous step forward; they provided a means of input, output, and memory storage on a
massive scale. For more than 50 years following their first use, punched-card machines
did the bulk of the world's business computing (Jacobs, 1975).
By the late 1930s punched-card machine techniques had become so well established and
reliable that Howard Hathaway Aiken, in collaboration with engineers at IBM, undertook
construction of a large automatic digital computer based on standard IBM
electromechanical parts (Chposky, 1988). Aiken's machine, called the Harvard Mark I,
handled 23-digit numbers and could perform all four arithmetic operations (Dolotta,
1985). Also, it had special built-in programs to handled logarithms and trigonometric
functions. The Mark I was controlled from prepunched paper tape. Output was by card punch
and electric typewriter. It was slow, requiring 3 to 5 seconds for a multiplication, but
it was fully automatic and could complete long computations without human intervention. 
The outbreak of World War II produced a desperate need for computing capability,
especially for the military (Dolotta, 1985). New weapons systems were produced which
needed trajectory tables and other essential data. In 1942, John P. Eckert, John W.
Mauchley, and their associates at the University of Pennsylvania decided to build a
high-speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as ENIAC, for
Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator (Chposky, 1988). It could multiply two
numbers at the rate of 300 products per second, by finding the value of each product from
a multiplication table stored in its memory. ENIAC was thus about 1,000 times faster than
the previous generation of computers. ENIAC used 18,000 standard vacuum tubes, occupied
1800 square feet of floor space, and used about 180,000 watts of electricity. It used
punched-card input and output. The ENIAC was very difficult to program because one had to
essentially re-wire it to perform whatever task he wanted the computer to do. It was
efficient in handling the particular programs for which it had been designed. ENIAC is
generally accepted as the first successful high-speed electronic digital computer and was
used in many applications from 1946 to 1955. However, the ENIAC was not accessible to
managers of businesses (Beer, 1966). 
Mathematician John Von Neumann was very interested in the ENIAC. In 1945 he undertook a
theoretical study of computation that demonstrated that a computer could have a very
simple and yet be able to execute any kind of computation effectively by means of proper
programmed control without the need for any changes in hardware. Von Neumann came up with
incredible ideas for methods of building and organizing practical, fast computers. These
ideas, which came to be referred to as the stored-program technique, became fundamental
for future generations of high-speed digital computers and were universally adopted
(Dolotta, 1985). 
The first wave of modern programmed electronic computers to take advantage of these
improvements appeared in 1947. This group included computers using random access memory,
RAM, which is a memory designed to give almost constant access to any particular piece of
information (Dolotta, 1985). These machines had punched-card or punched-tape input and
output devices and RAMs of 1000-word capacity. Physically, they were much more compact
than ENIAC: some were about the size of a grand piano and required 2500 small electron
tubes. This was quite an improvement over the earlier machines. 
The first-generation stored-program computers required considerable maintenance, usually
attained 70% to 80% reliable operation, and were used for 8 to 12 years
(Hazewindus,1988). Typically, they were programmed directly in machine language, although
by the mid-1950s progress had been made in several aspects of advanced programming. This
group of machines included EDVAC and UNIVAC, the first commercially available computers.
With this invention, managers had even more power to perform calculations for such things
as statistical demographic data (Beer, 1966). Before this time, it was very rare for a
manager of a larger business to have the means to process large numbers in so little
time. 
The UNIVAC was developed by John W. Mauchley and John Eckert, Jr. in the 1950s. Together
they had formed the Mauchley-Eckert Computer Corporation, America's first computer
company in the 1940s. During the development of the UNIVAC, they began to run short on
funds and sold their company to the larger Remington-Rand Corporation. Eventually they
built a working UNIVAC computer. It was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951 where
it was used to help tabulate the U.S. population (Hazewindus,1988). 
Early in the 1950s two important engineering discoveries changed the electronic computer
field. The first computers were made with vacuum tubes, but by the late 1950s computers
were being made out of transistors, which were smaller, less expensive, more reliable,
and more efficient (Dolotta, 1985). In 1959, Robert Noyce, a physicist at the Fairchild
Semiconductor Corporation, invented the integrated circuit, a tiny chip of silicon that
contained an entire electronic circuit. Gone was the bulky, unreliable, but fast machine;
now computers began to become more compact, more reliable and have more capacity. These
new technical discoveries rapidly found their way into new models of digital computers.
Memory storage capacities increased 800% in commercially available machines by the early
1960s and speeds increased by an equally large margin (Jacobs, 1975). These machines were
very expensive to purchase or to rent and were especially expensive to operate because of
the cost of hiring programmers to perform the complex operations the computers ran. Such
computers were typically found in large computer centers operated by industry,
government, and private laboratories staffed with many programmers and support personnel.

By 1956, 76 of IBM's large computer mainframes were in use, compared with only 46
UNIVAC's (Chposky, 1988). In the 1960s efforts to design and develop the fastest possible
computers with the greatest capacity reached a turning point with the completion of the
LARC machine for Livermore Radiation Laboratories by the Sperry-Rand Corporation, and the
Stretch computer by IBM. The LARC had a core memory of 98,000 words and multiplied in 10
microseconds. Stretch was provided with several ranks of memory having slower access for
the ranks of greater capacity, the fastest access time being less than 1 microseconds and
the total capacity in the vicinity of 100 million words. 
During this time the major computer manufacturers began to offer a range of computer
capabilities, as well as various computer-related equipment (Jacobs, 1975). These
included input means such as consoles and card feeders; output means such as page
printers, cathode-ray-tube displays, and graphing devices; and optional magnetic-tape and
magnetic-disk file storage. These found wide use in management for such applications as
accounting, payroll, inventory control, ordering supplies, and billing. 
Central processing units for such purposes did not need to be very fast arithmetically
and were primarily used to access large amounts of records on file. The greatest number
of computer systems were delivered for the larger applications, such as in hospitals for
keeping track of patient records, medications, and treatments given. They were also used
in automated library systems and in database systems such as the Chemical Abstracts
system, where computer records now on file cover nearly all known chemical compounds
(Dolotta, 1985).
The trend during the 1970s was, to some extent, away from extremely powerful, centralized
computational centers and toward a broader range of applications for less-costly computer
systems (Jacobs, 1975). Most continuous-process manufacturing, such as petroleum refining
and electrical-power distribution systems, began using computers of relatively modest
capability for controlling and regulating their activities. In the 1960s the programming
of applications problems was an obstacle to the self-sufficiency of moderate-sized
on-site computer installations, but great advances in applications programming languages
removed these obstacles. 
Applications languages became available for controlling a great range of manufacturing
processes, for computer operation of machine tools, and for many other tasks. In 1971
Marcian E. Hoff, Jr., an engineer at the Intel Corporation, invented the microprocessor
and another stage in the development of the computer began (Chposky, 1988). A new
revolution in computer hardware was now well under way, involving miniaturization of
computer-logic circuitry and of component manufacture by what are called large-scale
integration techniques. 
In the 1950s it was realized that scaling down the size of electronic digital computer
circuits and parts would increase speed and efficiency and improve performance (Jacobs,
1975). However, at that time the manufacturing methods were not good enough to accomplish
such a task. About 1960, photoprinting of conductive circuit boards to eliminate wiring
became highly developed. Then it became possible to build resistors and capacitors into
the circuitry by photographic means. In the 1970s entire assemblies, such as adders,
shifting registers, and counters, became available on tiny chips of silicon. In the 1980s
very large scale integration, VLSI, in which hundreds of thousands of transistors are
placed on a single chip, became increasingly common (Dolotta, 1985). 
Many companies, some new to the computer field, introduced in the 1970s programmable
minicomputers supplied with software packages (Jacobs, 1975). The size-reduction trend
continued with the introduction of personal computers, which are programmable machines
small enough and inexpensive enough to be purchased and used by individuals (Beer, 1966).
One of the first of such machines was introduced in January 1975. Popular Electronics
magazine provided plans that would allow any electronics wizard to build his own small,
programmable computer for about $380. The computer was called the Altair 8800. Its
programming involved pushing buttons and flipping switches on the front of the box. It
didn't include a monitor or keyboard, and its applications were very limited. 
Even though, many orders came in for it and several famous owners of computer and
software manufacturing companies got their start in computing through the Altair (Jacobs,
1975). For example, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of Apple Computer, built a
much cheaper, yet more productive version of the Altair and turned their hobby into a
business. After the introduction of the Altair 8800, the personal computer industry
became a fierce battleground of competition. IBM had been the computer industry standard
for well over a half-century. They held their position as the standard when they
introduced their first personal computer, the IBM Model 60 in 1975 (Chposky, 1988).
However, the newly formed Apple Computer company was releasing its own personal computer,
the Apple II. The Apple I was the first computer designed by Jobs and Wozniak in
Wozniak's garage, which was not produced on a wide scale. 
Software was needed to run the computers as well. Microsoft developed a Disk Operating
System, MS-DOS, for the IBM computer while Apple developed its own software (Chposky,
1988). Because Microsoft had now set the software standard for IBMs, every software
manufacturer had to make their software compatible with Microsoft's. This would lead to
huge profits for Microsoft. 
The main goal of the computer manufacturers was to make the computer as affordable as
possible while increasing speed, reliability, and capacity. Nearly every computer
manufacturer accomplished this and computers popped up everywhere. Computers were in
businesses keeping track of even more inventories for managers. Computers were in
colleges aiding students in research. Computers were in laboratories making complex
calculations at high speeds for scientists and physicists. The computer had made its mark
everywhere in management and built up a huge industry (Beer, 1966).
The future is promising for the computer industry and its technology. The speed of
processors is expected to double every year and a half in the coming years (Jacobs,
1975). As manufacturing techniques are further perfected the prices of computer systems
are expected to steadily fall. However, since the microprocessor technology will be
increasing, it's higher costs will offset the drop in price of older processors. In other
words, the price of a new computer will stay about the same from year to year, but
technology will steadily increase.
Since the end of World War II, the computer industry has grown from a standing start into
one of the biggest and most profitable industries in the United States (Hazewindus,1988).
It now comprises thousands of companies, making everything from multi-million dollar
high-speed supercomputers to printout paper and floppy disks. It employs millions of
people and generates tens of billions of dollars in sales each year. Surely, the computer
has impacted every aspect of people's lives (Jacobs, 1975). It has affected the way
people work and play. It has made everyone's life easier by doing difficult work for
people. The computer truly is one of the most incredible inventions in history to ever
influence management, and life.
Bibliography
References
Beer, S. (1966). Decision and Control, The meaning of Operational Research and 
Management Cybernetics
Chposky, J. (1988) Blue Magic, New York: Facts on File, San Jose, CA: Idthekkethan 
Publishing Company
Dolotta, T. (1985). Data Processing: 1940-1985, New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons
Hazewindus, N. (1988). The U.S. Microelectronics Industry, New York, NY: Pergaman 
Press
Jacobs, C. W. (1975, January). The Altair 8800, Popular Electronics, New York, NY: 
Popular Electronics Publishing