Today's personal computers are very different from the massive, clunky devices that emerged during World War II, and the difference is not only in their size. The "fathers" and "grandfathers" of modern desktops and laptops did not know how much of what modern machines can playfully handle. but the very first computer in the world was a breakthrough in science and technology... Sit back in front of your monitor and we'll explore how the PC era began.
Who created the very first computer in the world
In the 40s of the last century, there were several devices at once that can claim the title of the first computer.
Z3
An early computer created by German engineer Konrad Zuse, who worked in complete isolation from other scientists. It had a separate memory block and a separate console for data entry. And the carrier was an eight-track punched card made by Zuse from 35 mm film.
The machine had 2,600 telephone relays and was freely programmable in binary floating point code. The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations, but was destroyed in the bombing of Berlin at the end of 1943. Zuse supervised the reconstruction of his brainchild in the 1960s, and this programmable machine is now on display at the Munich Museum.
Mark 1
The Mark 1, conceived by Professor Howard Aiken and released by IBM in 1941, was America's first programmable computer. The vehicle cost half a million dollars and was used to develop equipment for the US Navy, such as torpedoes and underwater detection equipment. Also "Mark 1" was used in the development of implosion devices for the atomic bomb.
It is the Mark 1 that can be called the very first computer in the world. Its characteristics, in contrast to the German Z3, made it possible to perform calculations in an automatic mode, without requiring human intervention in the work process.
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
In 1939, Professor John Vincent Atanasov received funds to build a machine called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). It was designed and built by Atanasov and graduate student Clifford Berry in 1942. However, the ABC device was not widely known before the patent dispute over the invention of the computer. It was not resolved until 1973, when it was proven that ENIAC co-author John Mauchly saw the ABC computer shortly after it became functional.
The legal result of the litigation was significant: Atanasov was declared the initiator of several basic computer ideas, but the computer as a concept was declared non-patentable and, therefore, freely open to all developers. A full-scale working copy of ABC was completed in 1997, proving that the ABC machine functioned as Atanasov claimed.
ENIAC
ENIAC was developed by two scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, John Eckert and John Mauchly. He could solve "a wide range of numerical problems" by reprogramming.Although the car was shown to the public after the war, in 1946, it was important for calculations during subsequent conflicts, such as the Cold War and the Korean War. It was used for hydrogen bomb calculations, engineering calculations, and firing tables. She also made weather forecasts in the USSR so that the Americans knew where the radioactive fallout could fall in the event of a nuclear war.
Unlike Mark 1 with its electromechanical relays, ENIAC had vacuum tubes. It is believed that ENIAC has carried out more calculations in its ten years of operation than all of humanity before that time.
EDSAC
The first computer with software stored in memory was called EDSAC. It was collected in 1949 at the University of Cambridge. The project for its creation was led by Professor of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Computational Research Laboratory, Maurice Wilkes.
One of the major advances in programming was Wilkes' use of a short program library called subroutines. It was stored on punched cards and used to perform general repetitive calculations within the lager program.
What the first computer in the world looked like
The American Mark 1 was huge, measuring over 17 meters in length and over 2.5 meters in height. The machine, wrapped in glass and stainless steel, weighed 4.5 tons, and the total length of its connecting wires was just a little short of 800 km. A fifteen-meter shaft was responsible for the synchronization of the main computational modules, which drove a 4 kW electric motor.
Even heavier than the Mark 1 was the ENIAC. It weighed 27 tons and required 174 kW of electricity. When it was turned on, the city lights dimmed. The car had neither a keyboard nor a monitor, occupied an area of 135 square meters and was entwined with kilometers of wires. To get an idea of the ENIAC's appearance, imagine a long row of metal cabinets lined with light bulbs from top to bottom. Since the computer did not yet have high-quality cooling, it was very hot in the room where it was located, and ENIAC was malfunctioning.
The first Soviet computer
The USSR did not want to lag behind the West and conducted their own developments to create computers. The result of the efforts of Soviet scientists was "Small electronic calculating machine" (MESM). Its first launch took place in 1950. 6 thousand lamps were used in MESM, it occupied an area of 60 sq. m and required power up to 25 kW for operation.
The device could perform up to 3 thousand operations per second. MESM was used for complex scientific calculations, then it was used as a teaching aid, and in 1959 the machine was disassembled.
In 1952, MESM had an older sister - "Big electronic calculating machine" (BESM). The number of vacuum tubes in it increased to 5 thousand, and the number of operations per second increased from 8 to 10 thousand.
The world's first commercial computer
UNIVAC 1, introduced in the United States in 1951, can be called the first computer intended for commercial use.
He rose to fame after using poll data from 1% of the eligible population to correctly predict that General Dwight D. Eisenhower would win the 1952 election. When people realized the possibilities of computer data processing, many businesses began to purchase this machine for their own needs.
The very first personal computer in the world
For the first time, the term "personal computer" was applied to the creation of the Italian engineer Pierre Giorgio Perotto called Programma 101... It was released by Olivetti.
The device cost $ 3200 and sold about 44,000 copies. Ten of them were bought by NASA to be used for calculations of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969. The ABC (American Broadcasting Company) network used Programma 101 to forecast the 1968 presidential election. The US military used it to plan their operations during the Vietnam War. It was also purchased for schools, hospitals and government offices and marked the beginning of an era of rapid development and PC sales.
The first home computer to be mass-produced abroad
In 1975, in one of the issues of Popular Electronics magazine, an article appeared about a new computer set - Altair 8800. Within a few weeks after the device appeared, customers flooded its manufacturer, MITS, with orders. The machine was equipped with 256-byte memory (expandable up to 64 KB) and a universal interface bus that evolved into the "S-100" standard widely used in the home and personal computers of that era.
The Altair 8800 could be bought for $ 397. After the purchase, the owner-radio amateur had to independently solder and check the performance of the assembled nodes. The difficulties did not end there, I still had to master the writing of programs using zeros and ones. The Altair 8800 did not have a keyboard or monitor, hard drive and floppy drive. To enter the desired program, the user clicked the toggle switches on the front panel of the device. And the verification of the results was carried out by observing the lights flashing on the front panel.
AND in 1976 the first Apple computer was borndesigned and handcrafted by Steve Wozniak and advertised by his friend Steve Jobs as the first product of the Apple Computer Company. Apple 1 is considered to be the first PC to come out of the box.
In fact, the device had neither a monitor nor a keyboard (it was possible to connect them). But there was a fully equipped circuit board, on which there were 30 microcircuits. Altair 8800 and other devices that entered the market did not have this either; they had to be assembled from a set. Initially, the Apple 1 had a near-hellish price of $ 666.66, but a year later it was reduced to $ 475. Later, an additional card was released that allowed data to be recorded on a cassette recorder. It cost $ 75.
The first mass-produced home computer in the USSR
Since the 80s of the XX century in Bulgaria began to produce a computer called "Pravets". It was a clone of the second version of Apple. Another clone from the Pravets line was the "Soviet" IBM PC based on Intel 8088 and 8086 processors. A later Oric Atmos clone was the "home" Pravets 8D model in a small case and with a built-in keyboard. It was produced from 1985 to 1992. Pravets computers were installed in many schools in the Soviet Union.
Those wishing to assemble a home computer could use the instructions in the Radio magazine 1982-83. and reproduce a model called "Micro-80". It was based on the KR580VM80 microprocessor, similar to the Intel i8080.
In 1984, the Agat computer appeared in the Soviet Union, quite powerful in comparison with Western models. The RAM was 128KB, twice the amount of RAM in Apple models in the early 80s of the twentieth century. The computer was produced in several modifications, had an external keyboard with 74 keys and a black and white or color screen.
Production of "Agat" went on until 1993.
Computers of our time
Modern computer technology is changing very quickly these days. The most powerful computers modern times are billions of times superior to their ancestors. Every company wants to wow already jaded users, and many still succeed in doing so. Here are just a few of the main topics in recent years:
- The laptop that made a big impact on the industry: Apple Macbook (2006).
- The smartphone that had an important impact on the development of the industry: Apple iPhone (2007).
- The tablet that made a major impact on the industry: Apple iPad (2010).
- First smartwatch: Pulsar Time Computer (1972). They can be seen on the arm of James Bond in the 1973 action movie Live and Let Die.
And, of course, various game consoles: Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, etc.
We live in an interesting time (although it sounds like a Chinese curse). And who knows what lies ahead in the near future. Neural computers? Quantum computers? Wait and see.