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This article explains the history
of computers about how computers are developed gradually using new technologies
and advancements
Initially computers were built with
vacuum tubes by John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert at
University of Pennsylvania
.
It can be regarded as the first general purpose electronic digital computer with
a weight of almost 30 tons occupying 1500 square feet of space and consuming almost
140 KW of power.
It was able to do 5000 additions per second using decimal addition.
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Here the programs have to be entered
and changed by hand as there was no representation of programs in the way appropriate
for storing in the memory.
Then Von Neumann machine was developed with the method
for storing the programs in the form of memory so that the computer can be able
to
retrieve its instructions from the memory and also the program can be altered
though the memory.
This concept was called the stored program concept developed
at Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies.
This can be treated as the foundation
stone for the coming generations of computers.
Universal Automatic Computer I (UNIVAC
I) was the first successful commercial computer developed by Eckert and Mauchly
corporation which then became part of UNIVAC division of Sperry-Rand corporation
that went on build a series of successor machines.
UNIVAC II was built with more
capacity of memory and better performance than UNIVAC I.
One of the major revolutions occurred
in computer industry by replacing vacuum tubes with transistors as transistors are
very tiny, cheaper with low heat dissipation compared to vacuum tubes.
Also later
the high level programming languages were used along with increase in the complexity
of ALU and control units.
Later due to the developments in the
integrated circuits technology, using Large Scale Integration (LSI) more than 1000
components were incorporated on an Integrated Circuit.
Then using VLSI, more than
100000 components were incorporated on single chip making it denser.
Consequently
the number of chips needed for a processor was decreased.
Also as the distance between
the components are decreased due to the reduction in the size of the microprocessor
components, the speed of the processors is greatly enhanced.
With more advancements and new technologies new models of computers have been released consistently. But the companies try to make their new machines upward compatible with their
already released models so that all the programs which have been executing in the
earlier models will also execute in the newer ones.
Not to mention this is mainly
for their customers.
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