Computer Age:Past, Present, and Future

Generations of Computer

The First generationThe Second GenerationThe Third GenerationThe Fourth GenerationThe Fifth Generation

The Computer Age

Rapid changes Four generations over 50 years Trends across generations

– Decrease size– Increase speed

The First Generation 1951-1958 Vacuum Tube

– Heat– Burnout

Machine language

Magnetic core memory

Storage– Punched cards– Tape (1957)

Characteristics of 1st Generation Computers Computers big and clumsy Electricity consumption is high Electric failure occurred regularly  - computers not very reliable Large air conditioners was necessary because the computers generated heat Batch processing

The First Generation

1951, UNIVAC Eckert and Mauchly completed the first

commercial computer in the USA – the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)

First computer built for business Short Code - A set of instructions called

Short Code is developed for the UNIVAC. Programmers

The First Generation 1951, SAGE - Semi Automatic Ground Environment was

developed. IBM built the SAGE computers and became leaders in

real-time applications and used the technology of Whirlwind.

SAGE computers were used in an early U.S. air defense system. They were fully deployed in 1963, that consisted of 27 centers throughout North America, each with a duplexed AN/FSQ-7 computer system containing over 50,000 vacuum tubes, weighing 250 tons and occupying an acre of floor space.

SAGE was the first large computer network to provide man-machine interaction in real time.

The First Generation 1952, EDVAC- Electronic Discreet

Variable Computer– John Von Neumann,

designed with a central control unit which would calculate and output all mathematical and logical problems and a memory which could be written to and read. (RAM in modern terms) which would store programs and data.

The First Generation 1953, IBM 701

– The 701 was formally announced on May 21, 1952. It was the unit of the overall 701 Data Processing System in which actual calculations were performed. That activity involved 274 assemblies executing all the system's computing and control functions by means of electronic pulses emitted at speeds ranging up to one million a second.

1953, The Whirlwind– Whirlwind was a large scale,

general purpose digital computer begun at the Servomechanisms Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946.

The Second Generation 1959-1964 Transistor

– Smaller– No warm-up time– Less energy– Less heat– Faster– More reliable

Storage– Removable disk pack

(1954)– Magnetic tape

Programming languages– Assembly language– FORTRAN (1954)– COBOL(1959)

Used primarily by business, university, government

The Second Generation Computers became smaller   Generate less heat Electricity consumption lower More reliable and faster  Core memory developed Magnetic tapes and disks used First operating systems developed A new processing method was needed. Time-sharing (processing technique)

The Second Generation• 1963, Mini-computer: PDP-8

– Digital introduces the first successful minicomputer – the PDP-8.  It was about as large as a fridge and used transistors and magnetic core memory. 

• 1964 Real-time reservation system IBM developed a real-time computerised ticket reservation system for American Airways. – It was smaller than SAGE and was

called SABRE (Semi-Automatic Business-Related Environment).

The Second Generation

1964, IBM’s System 360– It consisted of 6

processors and 40 peripheral units. More than 100 computers per month were ordered.

1964, BASIC (programming language)

– A programming language was necessary that could be used in a time-sharing environment and that could serve as a training language.

The Third Generation

1965-1970 Integrated Circuit

– Electronic circuit on small silicon chip

– Reliability– Compactness– Low cost– Inexpensive – mass-

produced

1. Computers smaller, faster and more reliable

2. Power consumption lower

3. High-level languages appeared

The Third Generation

1965, Gordon Moore– The semi-conductor pioneer, Gordon Moore (founder

of Intel), predicted that the number of transistors that occurred on a microchip would double every year. It became known as Moore’s Law and is still valid today.

Burroughs used integrated circuits in parts of two computers - the B2500 and the B3500.

Control Data and NCR made two computers using only integrated circuits - the CDC 7600 and the Century series respectively.

The Third Generation

1968, Intel was founded (INTegrated Electronics).– They developed more sophisticated memory chips.

1968, Magnetic core memory was replaced by a microchip.

– The first 256 bit RAM microchips, and later the first 1Kb RAM (1024 byte) chips, caused the disappearance of Magnetic Core Memory that was used since the mid 1950's. 

1969, IBM System/370 replaced their System/360 with the System/370 that only used integrated circuits.

The Fourth Generation 1971-Present Microprocessor

– General-purpose processor on a chip

Explosive growth– Digital watches– Pocket calculators– Personal computers– Cars– Copy machines– Television sets

Integrated circuits, smaller and faster

Micro computer series such as IBM and APPLE developed

Portable computers developed

Great development in data communication

Different types of secondary memory with high storage capacity and fast access developed

The Fourth Generation 1971, Microprocessor Intel developed the

first microprocessor - a CPU on a microchip.

– It was called the 4004 and consisted of 2-250 transistors capable of processing 4 bits at a rate of 60,000 transac-tions/second.

1971, Pascal (programming language) Early programming languages

– Niklaus Wirth - a Swedish computer scientist - developed the Pascal language in 1971. This language was specifically designed to teach the concepts of structured programming. Pascal remains the most popular language for learning the basic principles of good programming.

1972, 8008 – Intel  released the 8008 - an 8 bit

processor powerful enough to be used as the CPU of a minicomputer

The Fourth Generation 1972, CP/M (Operating

system)– The first operating

system for microcomputers was developed by Gary Kildall and John Torode.

– Torode developed hardware to connect a diskette (floppy disk) to the CPU. 

1974– 8080 Microprocessor,

was released - it made the development of the microcomputer possible.

MARK-8 Johnathan Titus (a chemist with an interest in electronics) ordered an 8008 processor from Intel.

– He built a computer with six(6) circuit boards which had 256 bytes RAM.

Motorola’s 6800 processor developed a processor

– the 6800. which could perform all the functions of the 8080.

The Fourth Generation 1975 -  January

Altair 8800- Popular Mechanics published an article which announced the development of a true personal computer

Developed by MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems). It used the 8-bit Intel 8080 microprocessor and was made available in a complete kit, including all components and assembly instructions.

256 bytes of RAM was available. 16 slots were left open to include more RAM when necessary.

Apple- Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded the Apple Company .

– They built a micro-computer motherboard that used a 8-bit processor.

– The motherboard was a single circuit board and held 4 Kb RAM.

1976, MOS 6502 processor – MOS technologies announced the develop-

ment of the 6502 processor, an 8-bit processor with very few registers and 16-bit address bus.

– It was used in the design of the Apple II

The Fourth Generation 1977. Apple II Wozniak

and Jobs released the Apple II. It was cheap, had 16 Kb RAM and was ideal for playing video games.

– It was sold with a keyboard, a power supply and included 8 slots for peripherals. It could therefore be used with a wider variety of peripherals and programs.

1978 Intel’s 8086 processor that con-tained 16-bit registers and used segmented memory addressing.

– All x86 processors had to be compatible with the set of instructions, first used in this processor.

1979, Motorola’s 68000 processor which was used in the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers.

The Fourth Generation First spreadsheet :

– VisiCalcDan Bricklin and Bob Frankston of the Software Arts Company developed the first spreadsheet program for use on microcomputers, namely VisiCalc. It was distributed by Personal Software for use on all Apple computers.Word processor

WordStar– The word processing

program WordStar was developed by Seymour Rubenstein's firm MicroPro and became the best seller in the CP/M operating environment.

1981, IBM PCIBM announced it's first Personal Computer - the IBM PC - an Intel 8088 processor

1982, Intel’s 286 processor. Intel announced the 80286 microprocessor.

– This was used in the IBM PC AT (Advanced Technology).

4th Generation 1983, Apple’s Lisa

– Apple announced the Lisa, a computer that used a mouse to move a cursor on the screen in order to select commands. The Lisa was the first commercial computer to use a Graphical User Interface (GUI)

1983, IBM announced the PC XT (eXtended Technology). Memory was expanded to 640 Kb and it featured:

– 4,77 MHz processor speed – Double floppy disks – MS DOS version 3.3 – Later versions also had 10 or 20 Mb hard disk drives

available. 1990, Windows 3.0 (operating system)

– Microsoft released Windows 3.0.

The Fifth Generation

Mid 1990’s Intelligent

computers– Artificial

intelligence– Expert

systems– Natural

language

Applications for 5Applications for 5thth Gen computers Gen computers Intelligent robots that could ‘see’ their

environment (visual input  -  e.g. a video camera) and could be programmed to carry out certain tasks and should be able to decide for itself how the task should be accomplished, based on the observations it made of its environment.

Intelligent systems that could control the route of a missile and defence-systems that could fend off attacks. 

Word processors that could be controlled by means of speech recognition.

Programs that could translate documents from one language to another.

5th Generation Some technological developments that could make

the development of fifth-generation computers possible, include:

Parallel-processing - many processors are grouped to function as one large group processor.

Superconductors - a superconductor is a conductor through which electricity can travel without any resistance resulting in faster transfer of information between the components of a computer.

Expert Systems helps doctors to reach a diagnosis by following the logical steps of problem solving just as if the doctor would have done it himself. 

Speech recognition systems, capable of recognising dictation and entering the text into a word processor, are already available.

The Fifth GenerationAI – Artificial Intelligence

How computers can be used for tasks that required human characteristics

Problem Solving by Search An important aspect of intelligence is goal-based problem solving. The

solution of many problems (e.g. noughts and crosses, timetabling, chess) can be described by finding a sequence of actions that lead to a desirable goal. Each action changes the state and the aim is to find the sequence of actions and states that lead from the initial (start) state to a final (goal) state.

A well-defined problem can be described by: 1. Initial state2. Operator or successor function - for any state x returns s(x), the

set of states reachable from x with one action3. State space - all states reachable from initial by any sequence of

actions4. Path - sequence through state space5. Path cost - function that assigns a cost to a path. Cost of a path is

the sum of costs of individual actions along the path6. Goal test - test to determine if at goal state

The Fifth GenerationExpert Systems

Software used with an extensive set of organized data that presents the computer as an expert on a particular topic

The Fifth GenerationNatural Language

Humans communicate with computers in the language they use on a daily basis

The Fifth GenerationRobotics

Computer-controlled device that can physically manipulate its surroundings

THOR on display and demonstration circa 1981

Robot development firm Speecys Corp. of Tokyo developed a small humanoid robot, powered entirely by easy-to-replace, environmentally friendly fuel-cell batteries.

The Fifth GenerationVR – Virtual Reality

Engage a user in a computer-created environment– User physically interacts

with computer-created environment

The ENDThe END