ISPs in CEBU!!!

Computers----changing lives & SWOT

Summary of the history of the Computers

Just a few years after Pascal, the German Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (co-inventor with Newton of calculus) managed to build a four-function (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) calculator that he called the stepped reckoner.

In 1801 the Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a power loom that could base its weave (and hence the design on the fabric) upon a pattern automatically read from punched wooden cards, held together in a long row by rope. Descendents of these punched cards have been in use ever since (remember the "hanging chad" from the Florida presidential ballots of the year. By 1822 the English mathematician Charles Babbage was proposing a steam driven calculating machine the size of a room, which he called the Difference Engine. This machine would be able to compute tables of numbers, such as logarithm tables.

Babbage was not deterred, and by then was on to his next brainstorm, which he called the Analytic Engine. This device, large as a house and powered by 6 steam engines, would be more general purpose in nature because it would be programmable, thanks to the punched card technology of Jacquard. But it was Babbage who made an important intellectual leap regarding the punched cards. In the Jacquard loom, the presence or absence of each hole in the card physically allows a colored thread to pass or stops that thread (you can see this clearly in the earlier photo). Babbage saw that the pattern of holes could be used to represent an abstract idea such as a problem statement or the raw data required for that problem's solution. Babbage saw that there was no requirement that the problem matter itself physically pass thru the holes.

Hollerith's invention, known as the Hollerith desk, consisted of a card reader which sensed the holes in the cards, a gear driven mechanism which could count (using Pascal's mechanism which we still see in car odometers), and a large wall of dial indicators (a car speedometer is a dial indicator) to display the results of the count. Hollerith built a company, the Tabulating Machine Company which, after a few buyouts, eventually became International Business Machines, known today as IBM. IBM grew rapidly and punched cards became ubiquitous. Your gas bill would arrive each month with a punch card you had to return with your payment.

IBM continued to develop mechanical calculators for sale to businesses to help with financial accounting and inventory accounting. One characteristic of both financial accounting and inventory accounting is that although you need to subtract, you don't need negative numbers and you really don't have to multiply since multiplication can be accomplished via repeated addition.

One of the earliest attempts to build an all-electronic (that is, no gears, cams, belts, shafts, etc.) digital computer occurred in 1937 by J. V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State University. By 1941 he and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, had succeeded in building a machine that could solve 29 simultaneous equations with 29 unknowns. This machine was the first to store data as a charge on a capacitor, which is how today's computers store information in their main memory (DRAM or dynamic RAM).

Another candidate for granddaddy of the modern computer was Colossus, built during World War II by Britain for the purpose of breaking the cryptographic codes used by Germany. Britain led the world in designing and building electronic machines dedicated to code breaking, and was routinely able to read coded Germany radio transmissions. But Colossus was definitely not a general purpose, reprogrammable machine.

ENIAC, which stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator. ENIAC was built at the University of Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1945 by two professors, John Mauchly and the 24 year old J. Presper Eckert, who got funding from the war department after promising they could build a machine that would replace all the "computers", meaning the women who were employed calculating the firing tables for the army's artillery guns.

Once ENIAC was finished and proved worthy of the cost of its development, its designers set about to eliminate the obnoxious fact that reprogramming the computer required a physical modification of all the patch cords and switches. It took days to change ENIAC's program. Eckert and Mauchly's next teamed up with the mathematician John von Neumann to design EDVAC, which pioneered the stored program. Because he was the first to publish a description of this new computer, von Neumann is often wrongly credited with the realization that the program (that is, the sequence of computation steps) could be represented electronically just as the data was. But this major breakthrough can be found in Eckert's notes long before he ever started working with von Neumann. Eckert was no slouch: while in high school Eckert had scored the second highest math SAT score in the entire country.

After ENIAC and EDVAC came other computers with humorous names such as ILLIAC, JOHNNIAC, and, of course, MANIAC. ILLIAC was built at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

By the end of the 1950's computers were no longer one-of-a-kind hand built devices owned only by universities and government research labs. Eckert and Mauchly left the University of Pennsylvania over a dispute about who owned the patents for their invention. They decided to set up their own company. Their first product was the famous UNIVAC computer, the first commercial (that is, mass produced) computer. In the 50's, UNIVAC (a contraction of "Universal Automatic Computer") was the household word for "computer" just as "Kleenex" is for "tissue". The first UNIVAC was sold, appropriately enough, to the Census bureau. UNIVAC was also the first computer to employ magnetic tape. Many people still confuse a picture of a reel-to-reel tape recorder with a picture of a mainframe computer.

In IBM's case it was their own decision to hire an unknown but aggressive firm called Microsoft to provide the software for their personal computer (PC). This lucrative contract allowed Microsoft to grow so dominant that by the year 2000 their market capitalization (the total value of their stock) was twice that of IBM and they were convicted in Federal Court of running an illegal monopoly.

A microprocessor (uP) is a computer that is fabricated on an integrated circuit (IC). Computers had been around for 20 years before the first microprocessor was developed at Intel in 1971. The micro in the name microprocessor refers to the physical size. Intel didn't invent the electronic computer. But they were the first to succeed in cramming an entire computer on a single chip (IC). Intel was started in 1968 and initially produced only semiconductor memory (Intel invented both the DRAM and the EPROM, two memory technologies that are still going strong today). In 1969 they were approached by Busicom, a Japanese manufacturer of high performance calculators (these were typewriter sized units, the first shirt-pocket sized scientific calculator was the Hewlett-Packard HP35 introduced in 1972).

A Harvard freshman by the name of Bill Gates decided to drop out of college so he could concentrate all his time writing programs for this computer. This early experienced put Bill Gates in the right place at the right time once IBM decided to standardize on the Intel microprocessors for their line of PCs in 1981. The Intel Pentium 4 used in today's PCs is still compatible with the Intel 8088 used in IBM's first PC.

SWOT

The development of the modern day computer was the result of advances in technologies and man's need to quantify. Papyrus helped early man to record language and numbers. The abacus was one of the first counting machines.Some of the earlier mechanical counting machines lacked the technology to make the design work. For instance, some had parts made of wood prior to metal manipulation and manufacturing. Studying the history of the computers, made me think that not all the time that you get what you want by just a simple snap at your fingers. It needs to follow the "step-by-step procedure" to carry out a particular thing. It made a lot of efforts and time to make such invention. It needs patient, dedication, love and will to have such invention.

Can you imagine life without computers?

Nowadays, almost all people in the world are influenced by using computers. Or let's just say many needs computers to have their work done. The history of the computer owes its existence to the fact that people, who are lazy by nature, have always sought to improve their ability to calculate, in order to reduce errors and save time.

It is very difficult today to tell where computers are going. Their development has followed Moore's Law: "Every three years, four times as many transistors can be put on a chip."
This would imply that there will be 1 billion transistors on a chip around the year 2010.

Computers offer great conveniences in managing, organizing, utilizing, and finding information. They also have many other purposes, some of which could be considered negative, including a gaming station. Computers also reduce the time people spend doing other things, such as emailing someone compared to walking over to the post office. This is a convenience, though it could be looked at as a disadvantage.

Some may say that they can't live without computers, but in contrary, using computers make negative effects. It don't actually only make advantages. oh yes,

1) makes work easier and faster
2) it can hold huge amount of information

3) reliable

4) information management

5) accuracy
6) improve information

But, it also has many disadvantages--- facing/seeing the monitor for many hours can lead you to blindness; You can also become overweight from lack of activity. Not to mention overuse can lead to computer addiction, causing many health problems. Playing aggressive games can also lead to aggression in real life.

The teenagers of today's society have changed dramatically due to the Computer. Nowadays, the majority of teenagers have a PC and it has played a key role in their lives. Teenagers need to be equipped with knowledge of computer technology, as most things in life require the use of computers. One disadvantage of owning a computer is the information that students can access from the Internet. The Internet has also made the youth of today quite lazy, especially in terms of their education. If a student needs to research information for school, they merely access a relevant site and download the information, rarely paying attention to what is written. Purchasing the network cabling and file servers can be expensive. If the file server breaks down the files on the file server become inaccessible. Viruses can spread to other computers throughout a computer network. There is a danger of hacking, particularly with wide area networks.

I have concluded that all things have a positive effect and negative effect on the lives of people. But, it’s up to the person what side he/she will be going to use and how to handle things in proper way. I think there is no invention that is invented just for bad things. come to think of it...