Computers begining
...gets was extremely difficult work for people. And, with the detonation of the Russian atomic bomb, Enemy targets had to be neutralized much quicker. In other words, people were too slow. A computer would do all of these jobs much quicker and more precise than humans. In 1949, the U.S. Military gave in. Construction of this new computer was started immediately. When it was finished and operational on September 7, 1952, it was named the ENIAC, meaning Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer. It used 17,468 vacuum tubes, covering three gigantic walls, for data storage. It was very much quicker than any human mathmetician. It could monitor 47 airplanes at once, while performing other various tasks. There was only one major flaw. Every time a new operation was started, all of the tubes had to be reset, which meant they all had to be unplugged and plugged again. New technology was already being developed which made the ENIAC look sluggish. For this reason, a newer computer was built. In 1945, the EDVAC was operational. EDVAC stands for Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer. The EDVAC made use of 4000 vacuum tubes and 10000 crystallized diodes. There was an improvement on speed over the ENIAC, but the main Szczur 5 evolution was that the EDVAC could store data for long periods of time. This computer was first used on April 20,1951, and was used until 1983. Project Whirlwind was the really drastic milestone. This was not true at first, however. At first it only consisted of advanced vacuum tubes. The basic vacuum tube had a life of 500 hours. Whirlwind's, however, used a silicon-free cathode. This decreased the cathode emission to barely nothing. This, in turn, increased the life of a vacuum tube to 5,000 hours. This meant less time and money spent on replacing vacuum tubes. It was still unreliable and would break down. Also, although it's vacuum tubes were very much more efficient, they had to be replaced often. Computers needed a new form of memory storage. Finally, the big breakthrough occurred. A theory of magnetic coils was introduced. A special ferrite metal was used for these coils, which now were metal rings. Ferrite was much less expensive than vacuum tubes. Also, these coils could store information as long as needed. For vacuum tubes to do this, they had to have a constant supply of electricity. The coils, however, did not. A man named Jay Forrester proved this theory very useful. He strung many of these coils shaped like donuts on a wire grid. Each coil had its own location on the grid, and could be accessed and used much quicker than vacuum tubes. When a vacuum tube was Szczur 6 turned on, it represented a one, and when off, a zero. The ferrite coils worked in much the same way. When charged north a one, and south a zero. This was named Random-Access Coincident-Current Memory. It more than doubled operating speed. This prototype was improved, and received a shorter name, RAM. This stands for just Random Access Memory. This type of memory is used and then reset for its next instructions. Other important advances came about around this time. One of these was time sharing. Many people wanted to use these new computers. but they were too expensive and large to fit in a house. In time sharing, a computer would process many problems at one time, using EXE files. An EXE file is an executive file. Another method of making computers quicker and more available to the public was batch processing. In batch processing, problems are prepared and held on magnetic drums, disk packs, or tapes. After they are solved, the results are displayed or printed. The problem is then deleted, or dumped to make room for the next problem. With all of these new advances, the computer was becoming easier to use. Also, with the new ferrite coils and other smaller parts, the computer was shrinking very much. Soon they would be affordable and small enough for every household to have one. Szczur 7 This all became possible with two simple inventions: The transistor and microprocessor. The transistor worked like a vacuum tube. However, it was much smaller and much more affordable. A transistor consists of only a plastic casing containing three fine wire strands. A vacuum tube is an electrical valve used to control the flow of electricity and amplification of electric signals. They are about the size of a light bulb, and cost about one dollar. The transistor does everything a vacuum tube does, except it only costs about five cents, and is about as big as a fingertip. It in fact also holds more information. The transistor increased RAM amounts in computers from 8,000 to 64,000 words. Eventually, they were also made incredibly small, allowing hundreds of transistors to be placed on one chip. They were faster, too. Transistors increased computer accessing speed from three to two milliseconds. By 1980, transistors were so small that hundreds of thousands could be placed on one chip, about the size of a fingernail. Transistors made computers small enough to fit on a desktop. However, there was no way of controling this. In older computers, a central processing unit was used. But these units were very large and extremely expensive. Thus, the birth of the microprocessor. Intel is the company that created the first microprocessor. It was named the 4004 microprocessor. This microprocessor (as with all Szczur 8 microprocessors today) ran on ROM. ROM stands for Read Only Memory. ROM stores constantly used, unchanging memory. The Microprocessor controls all the functions of the computer. There were many improvements over the 4004, and eventually, by the late 1980's, some personal computers run by microprocessors could run 4,000,000 instructions per second. However, not many poeple had computers. Sure, they were very powerful, small enough, and affordable enough. But what could they really do? In order for these new machines to come into the household, they needed something interesting to do. '... People don't realize that frivolity is the gateway to the future, in that most future products don't start as necessities, but toys.' (qtd. in Slater 300) These are the words of Nolan Bushnell. He is the founder of Atari, a big company that manufactured arcade games. Atari means Watch out or i'm going to get you on the next turn. (Slater 301) Atari eventually got into the home computer business when it created home video games. This was the key to getting computers into homes... fun. By 1985, two out of five houses who had a television also had a computer. Eventually, this allowed personal computers advance into what they are today. Todays comput...