Brief history of computing

Editor's Notes

• #4: By standing on the shoulders of others, we can create amazing things with little, if any, knowledge of the countless inventions and endless incremental improvements we build upon. This is what makes high-tech such a wonderful thing.
• #5: When Steve Jobs created the iPhone, he had a vast trove of software development to build upon, thanks to people like Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Gary Kildall, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Linus Torvalds.
• #6: An iPhone is, essentially, a very compact personal computer. The very idea of a personal computer was a radical notion when Ed Roberts created the Altair in 1975, and Steve Wozniak created the Apple II two years later.
• #7: Computing devices go back at least 4000 years
• #8: Blaise Pascal built this Pascaline calculator in 1652 Pascal was led to develop a calculator by the laborious arithmetical calculations required by his father's work as supervisor of taxes in Rouen. He designed the machine to add and subtract two numbers directly and to perform multiplication and division through repeated addition or subtraction.
• #9: The step reckoner (or stepped reckoner) was a digital mechanical calculator invented by the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1672 and completed in 1694 It was the first calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operations. Its intricate precision gearwork, however, was somewhat beyond the fabrication technology of the time; mechanical problems, in addition to a design flaw in the carry mechanism, prevented the machines from working reliably. The operating mechanism, invented by Leibniz, called the stepped cylinder or Leibniz wheel, was used in many calculating machines for 200 years, and into the 1970s with the Curta hand calculator.
• #10: Charles Babbage conceived of a mechanical computer that could perform a series of computations almost 200 years ago.
• #11: Difference Engine #2. A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Most mathematical functions commonly used by engineers, scientists and navigators, including logarithmic and trigonometric functions, can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful tables of numbers. The historical difficulty in producing error-free tables by teams of mathematicians and human "computers" spurred Charles Babbage's desire to build a mechanism to automate the process.
• #13: Underlying all of semiconductor technology is quantum physics. Devices we use hundreds of times a day depend on effects that Einstein predicted. Without his imaginative breakthroughs, we might not have semiconductors today. Underlying all of semiconductor technology is quantum physics. We depend on quantum effects all day long. Without the theoretical breakthroughs of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Schroedinger, and many others, we wouldn’t have integrated circuits.
• #14: Alan Turing Bletchley Park
• #15: Von Neumann Institute for Advanced Studies
• #16: The transistor, invented at Bell Labs in the late 1940s William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain The fundamental building block of everything electronic
• #17: Jack Kilby created the first integrated circuit in 1958, putting a handful of transistors on a single piece of germanium. The number of transistors per chip has doubled every two years, a trend identified by Gordon Moore and now called Moore’s Law. Jack Kilby created the first integrated circuit in 1958. The number of transistors per chip has doubled every two years, a trend called Moore’s Law for semiconductor pioneer Gordon Moore.
• #18: Gordon Moore Moore’s Law
• #19: Microprocessors are the “brains” that make PCs possible. The first microprocessor, the 4004, was created 40 years ago, from the combined efforts of Ted Hoff, Masatoshi Shima, Federico Faggin, and Stan Mazor. Without microprocessors there could be no PCs. The first microprocessor was created at Intel 40 years ago, by Hoff, Shima, Faggin, and Mazor. The microprocessor reduced the heart of a computer to a single chip.
• #20: All of this depends on semiconductor technology. At its heart is ultra-pure, crystalline silicon. Today’s chips are built on wafers almost 12-inches across, sliced from giant monocrystalline ingots. It is a stunnngly deep technology. All of this depends on semiconductor technology, which is stunningly deep. At its heart is ultra-pure silicon. Today’s leading-edge chips are built on 12-inch wafers etched with details one-one-thousandth of the width of a hair.
• #21: To manufacture integrated circuits requires enormously sophisticated manufacturing facilities. Semiconductor fabs cost billions of dollare to build and depend on hundreds of pieces of highly specialized equipment and dozens of ultra-pure chemicals. To manufacture integrated circuits requires unfathomably sophisticated facilities. Semiconductor fabs cost billions of dollars, depend on hundreds of pieces of specialized equipment, and require dozens of ultra-pure chemicals.
• #22: Computers require memory. Many early computers used core memory. In 1968, Robert Dennard invented the DRAM, and after 40 years of incremental improvements, we now have multi-billion-bit memory chips.
• #23: Disk drives are another example breakthroughs followed by decades of ceasless improvements. The first disk was built in 1955. It stored 4 megabytes on fifty 24-inch platters. Today’s 1.8-inch disks store 50,000 times as much. Disk drives are another amazing and essential technology. The first disk, built in 1955, stored 4 megabytes on fifty 24-inch platters. Today’s 1.8-inch disks store 50,000 times as much.
• #24: Computers require memory. In most early computers, it was core memory. In 1968, Robert Dennard invented the DRAM. After 40 years of improvements, we now have multi-billion-bit memory chips that cost less than a dollar
• #25: The ability to connect to virtually any computer in the world is made possible by the Internet, which evolved from ARPAnet, created by Bob Taylor in 1969. This map shows all the computers connected in 1971.
• #26: The Internet works so well because it is built on a set of communication protocols that have turned out to be stunningly robust. TCP/IP, created by Vint Cerf in 1974, builds on packet-switching, invented by Paul Baran in 1961.
• #27: Andreesen built upon the web’s core HTTP protocol, HTML markup language, and URLs, all invented by Tim Berners Lee in 1990. That’s the first web page, when the web was a simpler place – but the core structure was all there.
• #28: The browser has become our window on the world. Marc Andreesen created the Mosaic browser 20 years ago, bringing the internet, then used only by researchers, to life for ordinary people.
• #29: A big part of what makes the Internet such a vast resource is the existence of massive server farms and the software that runs them. Most of us depend daily on the creations of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and thousands of others. A big part of what makes the Internet such a vast resource is the existence of massive server farms and the software that runs them. Most of us depend daily on the servers operated by Google and many others.
• #30: We have all become accustomed to doing what appear to be simple things – such as viewing a website on our phone – that depend upon an incredibly deep, but largely unseen, technology base. There is astonishing technical depth behind the tools we use. Yet you can take almost all of it for granted. Each of us gets to add our personal layer of creativity on top of hundreds of years of breathtaking innovation. It’s a wonderful opportunity.