History of Computers

- Mark Mayuga

Konrad Zuse’s Z1 Circa 1936Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) was a construction engineer for the Henschel Aircraft Company in Berlin, Germany at the beginning of WWII. Konrad Zuse earned the semiofficial title of "inventor of the modern computer" for his series of automatic calculators, which he invented to help him with his lengthy engineering calculations.

Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) 1942

 The Atanasoff-Berry Computer represented several innovations in computing, including a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions.

Harvard MARK 1 Computer by Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper 1944

The computer, controlled by pre-punched paper tape, could carry out addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and reference to previous results

ENIAC Computer 1946It contains 17,468 vacuum tubes, along with 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints.The army needed a computer for calculating artillery-firing tables, the setting used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy.

The Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine 1948

The world's first stored-program electronic digital computer successfully executed its first program on 21st June 1948. That program was written by Tom Kilburn who, along with the late F.C. (Freddie) Williams designed and built the machine. It was called the "Small Scale Experimental Machine", but was soon nicknamed the "Baby". It is also sometimes known as the "Mark 1 prototype".

The Transistor 1947The experimental Transistor Computer was first operational in November 1953 and it is believed to be the first transistor computer to come into operation anywhere in the world.

UNIVAC Computer 1951The UNIVAC I was the first American computer designed at the outset for business and administrative use (i.e., for the fast execution of large numbers of relatively simple arithmetic and data transport operations, as opposed to the complex numerical calculations required by scientific computers)

IBM 701 EDPM 1953IBM stands for International Business Machines, the largest computer company in the world today. IBM is responsible for numerous inventions having to do with computers.

FORTRAN Computer Programming Language 1954

 Fortran is still used today for programming scientific and mathematical applications. Fortran began as a digital code interpreter for the IBM 701 and was originally named Speed coding. 

ERMA and MIRC computer 1955ERMA was first demonstrated to the public in 1955 (September), and first tested on real banking accounts in the fall of 1956. Production models (ERMA Mark II) of the ERMA computer were built by General Electric. Thirty-two units were delivered to the Bank of America in 1959 for full-time use as the bank's accounting computer and check handling system. ERMA computers were used into the 1970s.

Spacewar Computer 1962The PDP-1's operating system was the first to allow multiple users to share the computer simultaneously. This was perfect for playing Spacewar, which was a two-player game involving warring spaceships firing photon torpedoes. 

Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers 1974/75In the March, 1974, issue of QST magazine there appeared the first advertisement for a "personal computer." It was called the Scelbi(Scientific, Electronic and Biological) and designed by the Scelbi Computer Consulting Company of Milford, Connecticut. 

Apple I, II & TRS-80 & Commodore Pet Computers 1976/77

The Model I combined the mainboard and keyboard into one unit, in what was to be a common case design trend throughout the 8-bit microcomputer era, although it had a separate power supply unit

OSBOURNE 1981

The machine featured a 5-inch display, 64 kilobytes of memory, a modem, and two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives.

The Amiga 1000 1985

It developed a very loyal following and add-on components allowed it to be upgraded easily

Video Toaster 1990The Video Toaster was a video editing and production system for the Amiga line of computers and included custom hardware and special software.