Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Z3 computer

The Z3 computer is presented by German engineer Konrad Zuse in May 1941 to an audience of scientists in Berlin. The Z3 is credited as the world's first electronic programmable calculator and is used by the German aircraft industry to solve complex systems of simultaneous equations. The original Z3 computer was destroyed during bombing raids of World War II.
More Computer History

Monday, May 30, 2011

The History of Computers

Herman Hollerith invents the Tabulating Machine in the late 1880s. Inspired by railway ticket punchers, Hollerith develops a process where punched cards are read to produce an electric circuit of individual results for tabulation. The 1890 U.S. Census is processed in three months using Hollerith's Machine. Hollerith cards are used by computers up until the 1980s.
More Computer History

Sunday, May 29, 2011

The iPod

Apple Computer hires Tony Fadell in early 2001 and assigns him a team of designers, programmers and hardware engineers to develop a new music player called the iPod. Fadell's idea is to take an MP3 player, build a music sale service to complement it, and build a company around it. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is highly involved with the project since its inception and molds the device's shape, feel and design.
More Computer History

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Ada

The modern programming language Ada is named in 1979 to honor the first known computer programmer Augusta Ada Byron. Born in 1815, Augusta Ada Byron developed a computer program to run on Charles Babbage's Analytical Machine computer. The program was designed to compute the mathematical sequence known as Bernoulli numbers.
More Computer History

Friday, May 27, 2011

Charles Babbage

British mathematician Charles Babbage conceives the ideas for the Difference Machine and the Analytical Machine in the 1820s. The Difference Machine would automatically calculate mathematical tables. The Analytical Machine is intended to use loops to make decisions based on previous computations. These machines are the first to be considered as computers in the modern sense of the word.
More Computer History

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Turing Machine

British mathematician Alan Turing conceptualizes the idea of computer software in the 1930s. His revolutionary concept, dubbed the "Turing Machine," describes how a computer can perform a particular task by breaking the job down into a series of simple instructions. This concept earns Turing the title of "Father" of modern computer science.
More Computer History

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

MULTICS

Bell Labs and General Electric scientists work together in 1965 in an attempt to develop a convenient, interactive computer system that can support many users. Their effort, called the Multiplexed Information and Computing Service timesharing system (MULTICS), ends in relative failure. However, the legacy of this effort will lead directly to the development of the UNIX operating system at Bell Labs.
More Computer History