Human life in the twenty-first century is directly related to artificial intelligence. Knowledge of the main milestones in the creation of computers is an indicator of an educated person. The development of computers is usually divided into 5 stages - it is customary to talk about five generations.

1946-1954 - first generation computers

It is worth saying that the first generation of computers (electronic computers) was a tube. Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) developed ENIAC - the name of the world's first computer. The day when it was officially put into operation is 02/15/1946. When assembling the device, 18 thousand electron tubes were involved. A computer by today's standards was a colossal area of ​​135 square meters, and a weight of 30 tons. The demand for electricity was also high - 150 kW.

It is a well-known fact that this electronic machine was created directly to help in solving the most difficult tasks of creating atomic bomb. The USSR was rapidly catching up with its backlog and in December 1951, under the guidance and with the direct participation of Academician S. A. Lebedev, the world's fastest computer was introduced to the world. She wore the abbreviation MESM (Small Electronic Calculating Machine). This device could perform from 8 to 10 thousand operations per second.

1954 - 1964 - computers of the second generation

The next step in development was the development of computers running on transistors. Transistors are devices made from semiconductor materials that allow you to control the current flowing in the circuit. The first known stable working transistor was created in America in 1948 by a team of physicists - researchers Shockley and Bardeen.

In terms of speed, electronic computers differed significantly from their predecessors - the speed reached hundreds of thousands of operations per second. The dimensions have also decreased, and the consumption of electrical energy has become less. The scope of use has also increased significantly. This was due to the rapid development software. Our best computer, BESM-6, had a record speed of 1,000,000 operations per second. Developed in 1965 under the leadership of chief designer S. A. Lebedev.

1964 - 1971 - third generation computers

The main difference of this period is the beginning of the use of microcircuits with a low degree of integration. With the help of sophisticated technologies, scientists were able to place complex electronic circuits on a small semiconductor wafer, with an area of ​​\u200b\u200bless than 1 centimeter square. The invention of microcircuits was patented in 1958. Inventor: Jack Kilby. The use of this revolutionary invention made it possible to improve all parameters - the dimensions decreased to about the size of a refrigerator, the speed increased, as well as reliability.

This stage in the development of computers is characterized by the use of a new storage device - a magnetic disk. The PDP-8 minicomputer was first introduced in 1965.

In the USSR, such versions appeared much later - in 1972 and were analogues of the models presented on the American market.

1971 - present - fourth generation computers

An innovation in fourth generation computers is the application and use of microprocessors. Microprocessors are ALUs (Arithmetic Logic Units) placed on a single chip and having a high degree of integration. This means that microcircuits begin to take up even less space. In other words, a microprocessor is a small brain that performs millions of operations per second according to the program embedded in it. Dimensions, weight and power consumption have been drastically reduced, and performance has reached record heights. And that's when Intel got into the game.

The first microprocessor was called the Intel-4004, the name of the first microprocessor assembled in 1971. It had a bit depth of 4 bits, but then it was a giant technological breakthrough. Two years later, Intel introduced the world to the Intel-8008, which has eight bits, in 1975 the Altair-8800 was born - this is the first personal computer based on the Intel-8008.

This was the beginning of a whole era of personal computers. The machine began to be used everywhere for completely different purposes. A year later, Apple entered the game. The project was a great success, and Steve Jobs became one of the most famous and richest people on Earth.

The indisputable standard of the computer is the IBM PC. It was released in 1981 with 1 megabyte RAM.

It is noteworthy that at the moment, IBM-compatible electronic computers occupy about ninety percent of the computers produced! Also, it is impossible not to mention the Pentium. The development of the first processor with an integrated coprocessor was completed successfully in 1989. Now this trademark is an indisputable authority in the development and application of microprocessors in the computer market.

If we talk about the prospects, then this is, of course, the development and implementation of the latest technologies: very large integrated circuits, magneto-optical elements, even elements of artificial intelligence.

Self-learning electronic systems are the foreseeable future, called the fifth generation in the development of computers.

A person seeks to erase the barrier in communicating with a computer. Japan worked on this for a very long time and, unfortunately, unsuccessfully, but this is a topic for a completely different article. At the moment, all projects are only in development, but with the current pace of development, this is not far away. The present is the time when history is being made!

The computer era has come into our lives relatively recently. Literally 100 years ago, people did not know what a computer was, although its most distant predecessor, an abacus, appeared in ancient Babylon 3000 BC.

The first person to invent the first digital computing machine was Blaise Pascal in 1642. This discovery started it all...

In a geometric progression, humanity was striving for the computer era, creating more and more computers that performed more and more complex functions. And in 1938, the first test mechanical programmable machine Z1 was created, on the basis of which in 1941 the same person creates the first Z3 computer, which has all the properties of a modern computer. The person who created this first mechanical computer was the German engineer Konrad Zuse.

Who invented the first electronic computer?

In 1942, American physicist John Atanasoff and his graduate student Clifford Berry designed and began to assemble the first electronic computer. The work was not completed, but had a great influence on the creator of the first electronic computer ENIAC. The person who invented the ENIAC computer, the first digital electronic computer, was John Mauchly, an American physicist and engineer. John Mauchly summarized the basic principles of building a computer based on the experience of developing machines and in 1946 the real electronic computer ENIAC appeared to the world. The head of the development was John von Neumann, and the principles and structure of computers he outlined later became known as von Neumann.

So the questions about what year the computer was created, where the first computer was created and who created the first computer can be answered in different ways. If we are talking about a mechanical computer, then Konrad Zuse can be considered the creator of the first computer, and Germany can be considered the country in which the first computer was invented. If we consider the first computer to be ENIAC, then, accordingly, John Mauchly created the first computer in the United States.

The first computers were still far from those that we now use - personal computers. The first computers were huge, often occupied large areas, the size of a three-room apartment and weighed up to 28 tons! Personal computers (PCs) appeared much later.

The creation of the first personal computers became possible only in the 1970s. Some people began to build computers at home for the sake of research interest, since useful application there were practically no computers at home. And in 1975, the first personal computer Altair 8800 appeared, which became the first commercially successful PC. The creator of the first personal computer was the American engineer Henry Edward Roberts, who was also the founder and president of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, which launched the first PC. Altair 8800 was the "chief" of the population's computerization boom.

And those scientists, engineers and physicists, all those who invented the computer, who created the first personal computer and who made at least some contribution to information technology, transferred all of us to a new, modern and incredibly promising life stage. Thanks to these talented people.

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Once I was sitting at the computer, working calmly for myself, and then, suddenly, the thought came to me, how did it all start and what was the very first computer in the world? Of course, I decided to find the answer to this question, it really hooked me. And the answer was found! Naturally, he became the topic of the next blog post about all the most interesting things in the world that does not leave you indifferent. As always, with the definition of superiority, everything turned out to be not easy, but you can already get used to it ...

The very first computer in the world was created and built in the USA by Harvard University mathematician Howard Aiksn back in 1941. Together with four specialists from the company IBM, which ordered it to him, they created a computer based on the ideas of Charles Babbage. After all the tests, it was launched on August 7, 1944. It received the name "Mark 1" from its creators, and he was put to work at Harvard.

Then this computer cost five hundred thousand dollars, a fabulous amount for those times. It was assembled in a special case, which was made of glass and steel, not susceptible to corrosion. The body itself was at least seventeen meters long, more than 2.5 m high. Its mass was about 5 tons and it occupied a space of several tens of cubic meters.
"Mark 1" consisted of many switches and other mechanisms, the total number of which was 765 thousand.
His wires were a total length of about eight hundred kilometers!

The capabilities of the very first computer in the world now seem ridiculous to us, but at that time there was not a single computing device on the planet more powerful.

The machine could:

• operate with seventy-two numbers, which in turn consisted of twenty-three decimal places
• the computer could subtract, add, and each of the operations took him three seconds.
• in addition, he also multiplied and divided, spending six and fifteen seconds on these operations.

To enter information into this apparatus, which was essentially just a faster adding machine, a special perforated paper tape was used. It was the first computer that did not need human intervention for its computing processes.

Back in 1942, the development of John Mauchli served as an impetus for the creation of the first computer, but at that moment few people paid attention to it. After the military engineers of the American army looked at it in 1943, attempts were made to create an apparatus that then received the name "ENIAC". The military was in charge of the finances and she allocated about five hundred thousand dollars for this project, as they wanted to design new types of weapons.
ENIAC consumed so much energy that during its operation, the nearby city experienced a shortage of electricity all the time and people sat without electricity, sometimes for several hours.

Specifications

Look at some very interesting characteristics of the very first computer in the world, according to the second version. Impressive isn't it?

• He weighed 27 tons.
• It contained 18,000 lamps and other details.
• The memory was 4 KB.
• Occupied an area of ​​135 sq. m. and the whole was entangled with many wires.

We programmed it manually and the operators just changed hundreds of switches and had to turn it off and on every time because it didn't have hard drive. There was no keyboard and no monitor either. There were a number of dozens of cabinets with lamps, the machine often broke down, as it often overheated. Then it was used for the design of hydrogen atomic weapons. This machine worked for more than ten years, and in 1950, when the transistor was created, computers became smaller in size.

Where and when was the very first PC sold?

Little has changed in the concept of computers in two decades. Due to the fact that the microprocessor was introduced, the very creation of the computer went at a faster pace. Back in 1974, IBM wanted to bring the first computer to market, but there were almost no sales. The IBM5100 used cassettes where information was stored, and at that time it was very expensive - ten thousand dollars. Therefore, few people could afford to buy such a device then.
He could himself execute programs that were written in BASIC and APL, created in the bowels of IBM. The monitor could display sixteen lines of sixty-four characters, its memory was sixty-four KB. The cassettes themselves were very much like regular audio cassettes. There were almost no sales because of the high price and because of the ill-conceived interface. But still, there were people who bought it and who started a new era in the history of world markets - computer trading

What did you think they would be like in ten years?

Not so long ago, IBM showed the press the "Roadrunner" supercomputer with 1 quadrillion operations. It was collected for the US Department of Energy. It includes 6480 dual-core processors, and 12,960 Cell 8i processors. It consists of 278 cabinets, 88 kilometers of cable. It weighs 226 tons. It is located on an area of ​​1100 m² and costs $133,000,000.

As you can see, supercomputer cabinets are still in vogue, it's all about the design...

Watch about the very first computer in the world in video format:

This is how computer history turned out. Whether it was interesting or not - write in the comments!

We all use personal computers and take them for granted in our daily lives. It's easy enough to forget that computers have only been around us for the last few decades, and the first ones were much more massive than those that sit on our desks today.

Did you know that the first portable computer weighed 25 kg and cost about $20,000, that the first laser printer was so big that it filled most of the room, or that the buyers of the first personal computers had to assemble them themselves? This article will let you take a look at some of the early prototypes of computer hardware and see what they looked like.

First computer mouse

The first computer mouse was invented in 1963 by Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute. He is also one of the inventors of hypertext. The first mouse used two wheels at 90 degrees to each other to track movement along 2 axes. However, this design had many drawbacks, and soon 2 wheels were replaced with a ball. The ball-driven mouse was invented in 1972, and the optical mouse was invented around 1980, although this design only became popular much later. Douglas Engelbart did not receive any royalties for his invention and his patent expired before computer mice became commonplace in the personal computer era.

First mouse. On the right you can see the wheels that are used for movement and positioning.

First trackball

In fact, the trackball was designed 11 years before the invention of the first computer mouse. It was invented in 1952 by Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff as part of the DATAR automated combat information system, initiated by the Canadian Navy. The design used a 5-pin bowling ball, which is slightly smaller than a standard 10-pin bowling ball.

First trackball: bowling ball and all.

First portable computer

This computer was supposed to be a "mobile" computer. The IBM 5100 Portable Computer was created in 1975. It weighed 25 kg, was the size of a small suitcase and needed an external power source. The block contained everything needed: a processor, several hundred kilobytes of non-volatile memory, 16-64 KB of RAM, a 5-inch CRT display, a keyboard, and a tape drive. This computer was an incredible feat for the time. It also came with BASIC and/or APL built in. Various models of the IBM 5100 cost between $8,975 and $19,975.

IBM 5100 Portable Computer.

First laptop

The first laptop was the Grid Compass 1100 (called GRiD), designed in 1979 by British industrial designer Bill Moggridge. The computer went on sale in 1982. It was produced with a screen resolution of 320 x 200, an 8086 processor, 340 KB of magneto-electronic memory (this type of memory is now obsolete), and a 1.2 Kb modem. The laptop weighed 5 kg and cost $ 8,000 - 10,000. GRiD was mainly used by NASA and the US military.

Grid Compass 1100 close-up.

First IBM personal computer

The first IBM personal computer was introduced in 1981, the IBM 5150. The platform became so widespread in the 1980s that the term "personal computer" meant the IBM personal computer.

The project to develop the IBM 5150 was called "The Chess Project" and was run by a team of 12 people led by Don Estridge and Larry Potter. To speed up development and cut costs, IBM decided to use off-the-shelf parts rather than designing new ones, as it usually did.

The first IBM PC had an Intel 8088 processor, 64 KB of RAM (expandable up to 256 KB), a floppy drive (from which you could boot MS-DOS), and finally a CGA or monochrome video adapter. The machine also contained Microsoft BASIC in ROM. The first IBM PC could optionally have a 10 MB hard drive installed, but only if the original power supply was replaced with a more powerful one.

The first personal computer IBM PC 5160.

First Apple computer

The first Apple personal computers were designed and built by hand by Steve Wozniak. The Apple I went on sale in 1976 for $666.66. A total of 200 copies were produced. The Apple I was basically just a motherboard with a processor, 8K of RAM, a display interface, and some additional functions. To get a fully working computer, the buyer must add a power supply, keyboard and display (and, of course, mount all this).

Apple I computer. On the left, already assembled by the user, and on the right, in what form it could be bought.

First RAM

The first rewritable random access memory was magnetic core memory (also called ferrite memory). It was invented in 1951 as a result of work done by An Wang at the Computing Laboratory at Harvard University and Jay Forrester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In those days, RAM used the magnetic properties of materials to give them the functionality that transistors had. The storage of information was carried out using the polarity of tiny magnetic ceramic rings through which the wires passed. Unlike modern memory, this random access memory could store information even after a power outage.

This technology was standard until it was replaced by silicon integrated circuits in the 1970s.

Memory on magnetic cores.

First hard drive

The IBM 350 Disk File was the first hard drive to be included in the IBM 305 RAMAC computer, which began shipping in 1956 (the computer was intended for accounting). The hard drive had fifty 24-inch drives that together could store 4.4 MB of data. The Model 350 had a rotation speed of 1200 rpm, a data rate of 8800 characters per second, and an access time of about 1 second.

The first hard drive is the IBM 350 Disk File.

First laser printer

The laser printer was invented by Harry Starkweather at XEROX in 1969. The first prototype was a modified copier where he removed the imaging system and introduced a rotating drum with 8 mirror faces. The first commercial implementation of a laser printer did not occur until IBM released the IBM 3800 laser printer model in 1976. The printer was so large that it could take up most of the room.

IBM 3800, the first commercial laser printer.

First web server

Since the Internet is an integral part of the modern world, it is impossible not to talk about the first web server. The first web server was the NeXT workstation that Tim Berners-Lee used when he invented the World Wide Web at CERN. The first web page became available online on August 6, 1991.

There was an inscription on the computer that read: “This machine is a server. DO NOT TURN OFF!!". By turning it off, it was possible to turn off the entire Internet.

The first web server and the famous inscription.

It's amazing how much has happened in the computer industry over the course of a few decades. Now just imagine what will happen in 30-40 years...

The very first people for whom the word computer was used were people who performed all settlement operations in their minds, and they lived back in 1613. But later, with the advent of the 19th century, mankind began to realize that if there were machines for computing, they could do their work faster and did not require rest.

It is believed that the very first computer in the world was created by a mathematician born in England, his name was Charles Babbage. His machine is recognized as the first device capable of automatically performing calculations and printing the results on paper. But due to financial problems, the scientist was never able to create the final version.

The first computers of the twentieth century

Despite the fact that the first development was created a very long time ago, a full-fledged computer was assembled only in 1938. The very first electromechanical binary machine was presented to the world, and it was invented by Konrad Zuse, a scientist from Germany.

He called this computer Z1, but in the same year another device was built to emulate human actions, which followed a certain algorithm of instructions, and all the results were displayed on a paper tape. This device was called the Turing machine, since it was invented by another scientist - Alan Turing.

The very first computer officially recognized

The officially registered very first computer is considered to be the Mark-1 programmable machine. Initially, its main goal was to serve for the benefit of the military. After a series of tests that were successful, in 1944 the computer was put into action.

It was created by IBM engineers and Harvard mathematician Howard Ackson. They took the developments of Charles Babbage as a basis and began assembling it on the territory of that same Harvard.

The world was presented as the very first computer, and the most expensive - its price was 500 thousand dollars. The device consisted of more than 760,000 parts, its length was 17 m, and glass was used for the body and stainless steel. Given the height of 2.5 meters, it was decided to allocate a separate room for it.

As for the rest of the characteristics of the very first computer (electronic computer), they are as follows:

1. Weight - more than 4.5 tons.
2. The total length of the cables inside the very first computer is 800 km.
3. The length of the synchronizing shaft is 15 meters.
4. The power of the electric motor that served to start the machine is 5 kW.

Some inventors saw the first computer as a large and powerful adding machine. This opinion was shared by those people who believed that the ENIAC device became the impetus for the development of all further computers. But the one who invented the Mark-1 is still considered its ancestor, thanks to the machine's ability to automatically perform the required tasks.

Note!

Carrying out its work with the help of punched tape, the first automatic device practically did not need human intervention in its work.

The main advantage of "Mark-1" was the ability to perform the following tasks:

1. Division - 15 sec.
2. Summation and subtraction - 0.33 sec.
3. Multiplication - 6 sec.
4. Ability to operate with 72 numbers.

But soon the characteristics of the computer did not meet the overestimated requirements of customers, so Howard Aiken proposed to create computers of a more powerful and modern design. After that, scientists released 3 more versions of one of the very first computers, the last model of which was created in 1952.

ENIAC

All early computers were invented for roughly the same purpose. Both in terms of characteristics and external data, they did not differ radically (you can compare Mark-1 and ENIAC using numerous photos from the Internet). But if we talk about the computer created in 1945, it was already distinguished by its multitasking and increased level of capabilities. But since the war was over this year, the car did not have time to be used for military purposes.

It was decided to use the machine for other purposes, such as simulating the activation of a hydrogen bomb. Although the device was assembled later than its predecessor, the computer was just as huge, but its price was slightly less, while the machine included more than 17,000 lamps in its design. The world-famous electronics engineers John Mosley and his partner John Eckert worked on the creation of this giant.

To protect the structure from damage, to increase reliability, it was decided to apply the same principle that was used at that time for musical electric organs. This helped to positively influence the reduction of accidents, after which, out of a huge number of lamps, only 2-3 pieces could deteriorate within 7 days.

At that time, scientists invented the best device for computing, its characteristics were as follows:

• the total cost of the structure is $487,000;
• weight - 27 tons;
• memorization capabilities - 20 alphanumeric combinations;
• multiplication speed - 357 different combinations per second;
• summation of numbers - 5,000 operations per second.

It took 200,000 man-hours to assemble the most advanced computer in the world.

Before the ENIAC machine, no computer had yet used a tab stop to enter and output data from a computer. The only significant drawback of this device was its huge size and weight - they exceeded the Mark-1 computer by several times in weight and 2 times in size.

EDVAC

Soon, Eckert and Mosley set about the next invention "EDVAC". Electronic engineers have figured out how to make the first machine that will carry out calculations, not only using punched cards, but also relying on the programs in its memory.

These opportunities became available after the creation and further use of mercury tubes. And with the help of the binary system, the issue of computers using a huge number of lamps and using complex calculation algorithms was solved.

Thus, the computer era has advanced one step further, the device was assembled from the following elements:

1. Timer.
2. Devices that allow you to store information and perform complex calculations.
3. A device for receiving signals and further transmission to computing modules.
4. A device for recognizing information on a magnetic tape.
5. An oscilloscope that controls the operation of a computer.
6. temporary registers. In the modern world they are called "clipboards".

The computers that were the predecessors no longer looked like the fastest when EDVAC appeared. To balance the sums, multiply and divide, it was enough for him a fraction of a second, although he still occupied a fairly large area - about 46 square meters. meters. But the number of lamps, compared with ENIAC, decreased by 14,000 pieces, and the power was increased to 50 kW.

Interesting fact!

A little more time passed, and the first game in the world appeared. They called herspace war, and its essence consisted in the struggle of two spaceships who fired rockets at each other.

quantum computer

Everyone already roughly understands when the first computer appeared, but what about a quantum device? A pleasant surprise was the recent development of Russians and scientists from America. For the first time in the world, they were able to assemble a quantum computer and successfully test it.

At the moment, a more complex quantum device has not yet been created. Such a large-scale achievement allowed Russian scientists to become leaders in the race to create a full-fledged quantum machine.

Such devices are special computing mechanisms that consist of qubits, in this case of 51 pieces, and standard modules for calculations - they store a range of values ​​between 0 and 1.

Such a quantum computer was preparing to create a few more scientists from different countries. It was believed that the closest to its creation is the representative of Google - John Martinis.

But still, Russian scientists, together with the Americans, were able to get ahead of everyone. They noticed that sets of atoms that are held inside laser cells and have a very low temperature can be used as quantum qubits. It was the use of this technology in a quantum device that could bring domestic scientists into leadership positions in the world market.

How the situation with the cost of such a machine will be is not yet known, but it is not yet necessary to expect a low price, given the capabilities and complexity of the device.

Output

The first computers that went on mass sale were devices from Apple - they bear little resemblance to a modern computer. But it is thanks to all the developments of that time that almost every resident of the country can now afford a computer.

Very soon, with the advent of quantum computers, humanity will be one step closer to stunning discoveries and the creation of an ideal computer.