History of Computers
...ct, identify, and assist the interception of enemy aircraft attempting to strike the uses forces (51). The main computer for the Air Force would coordinate information from distant resources. The last Semi-Automatic Ground Environment computer was operated in North Bay, Ontario was shut down in 1983 (53). IBM contracted with several other companies for example, General Ceramics to deliver cores. It also partner with a pharmaceutical company that made pills to adapt their equipment to press cores for uniform properties. The partnership with the Air Force got IBM millions of dollars for the computer. The two dominant computer companies in the 1950s were IBM and UNIVAC. However by the middle 1960 have there were many other computer companies. Humans still wanted more so researchers developed a tube that made the core memory more reliable. Furthermore, for computer to remember more technical information such as numbers block size had to increase to 30 to 50 bits known as word length (54). In the 1960s computers did not have to deal with money or handle huge digits of numbers. Computers that had to do this type of work could use shorter word length. The Whirlwind was very efficient for this purpose as it had 16 bits (55). The 1970’s brought refinement or the number of tracks and number of bits per inch on magnetic disks grew dramatically and the number of transistors on a chip double every two years (Rojas 87). As the transistors increased that made room for creating Central Processing Unit (the part of the computer that interprets and executes instruction Dictionary 4th Edition) on a chip (A minute slice of a semi conducting material, such as silicon or germanium, doped and otherwise processed to have specified electrical characteristics, especially before it is developed into an electronic component or integrated circuit Dictionary 4th Edition). The first computer of this nature was the 4004 Microprocessor (87). Humans still were not satisfied with these computers because they were too heavy and could fit in a house. John Atanasoff was a physicist by training whose interest was molecular spectra and crystallography (91). A team of workers led by John Atanasoff remodeled the Atanasoff-Berry computer that was constructed in the 1930s (91). Several years later the team’s hard work finally paid off. They made the ABC or Atanasoff-Berry computer a lot smaller. The original ABC computer weighed 750 lbs and it rolls on four heavy duty canisters kind of like a piano (95). They changed the dimensions from 1.5m long and 0.91m high to 0.84m long and 0.07m wide (94). The ABC computer could now fit into the door of most homes. The memory used for the ABC compute was very different from other computers of its time period. It used high voltage arcs to burn holes in paper this technique is called dielectric material. For example the for the number 1 there would be one hole and for the number zero there would be no hole in the paper and these were called cards (65). Reading the cards was done by passing the card between electrodes at lower voltage than that used to burn the card (Trinkle 65). This was effective for the time being because it was the fastest of the time period. This computer could perform 30 arithmetic operations per second (69). The ABC computer was the first to compute linear algebra (70). The price of the computer was very expensive starting at $5000 dollars (73). The ABC computer was too expensive and was still too large. So during the late 1960s IBM established the minicomputer (45). The minicomputer introduced the personal computer. The minicomputer processed 36 bits (A fundamental unit of information having just two possible values, as either of the binary digits 0 or1 Dictionary 4th Edition) at a time and also had a program that extended memory, and it was inexpensive (47). The minicomputer’s had a shorter word length than other computers. Therefore the shorter word length decreased complexity and decreased cost (48). As many others great things had their bad side so did the minicomputer. For example, it could not run many programs at one time and it could only do simple arithmetic. This one awful characteristic of the minicomputer would lead to its downfall. This computer served its purpose and it was time for something new. In 1977 Radio Shack i...