History of Computing exam question

From: CLeyson_at_aol.com <(CLeyson_at_aol.com)>
Date: Sat Dec 1 18:13:50 2001

1) 1890
Hollerith Tabulation System. Mechanical machine to sort US census data.
Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company, TMC, was later to merge with
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co, later to become IBM (1914)
   
2) 1937-41
Z1 and Z3 built by Konrad Zuse and Helmut Schreyer
Z1 first binary machine.
Z3 first floating point machine (used 2600 relays). Speed was 5Hz !

3) 1937
Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) or Harvard Mk I
Part vacuum tube - part relay. Hard wired coding. Code written by
Grace Hopper. According to Ms Hopper - moths would fly in through
the open windows at night and get stuck in the relays. This would
render the machine unless and it would have to be "de-bugged".

4) 1940 ?
Enigma - Electromechanical state machine. Colossus wouldn't have
been built without it.

5) 1943
Colossus - Vacuum tube code craker. Not a general purpose machine,
built solely to solve Enigma ciphers. Hard wired coding and paper tape.
1500 valves.

6) 1944
ENIAC - First general purpose machine. Hard wired and paper tape program,
worked in decimal. Program storage added after development of Manchester
Mk I and EDSAC.

7) 1946
Manchester Mark I - First stored program computer. The Williams tube (CRT)
was used for program storage. Commercial version was the Ferranti Mk I
Followed by EDSAC in 1949.

8) 1951
UNIVAC - first successful commercial computer. One of the first machines
to use compiled software, another of Grace Hopper's ideas.

9) 1951
LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office) J. Lyons & Company Ltd
First British mainframe. Lyons bought by English Electric Company
later to become ICL and the end of the British computer industry.

10) 1956
MIT Lincoln Labs TX-0 - First solid state computer

11) 1964
CDC's 6600 - Seymour Cray's first super computer, 3 MIPS

12) 1965
DEC PDP8 - The first true minicomputer

13) 1968/9
The Apollo guidance computer - Helped get man to the moon.

14) 1971
Intel 4004 - First commercially available microprocessor

15) 1972
HP 35 - Perhaps the first scientific pocket calculator ?
(On the list 'cos I like HP stuff)

16) 1974
Xerox Alto - The mouse makes it's first appearence as well as
windows, menus and icons. Ground breaking stuff.

17) 1975
MITS Altair 8800. First popular personal computer . 8080 based, 256 bytes of
memory, no keyboard or display. Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote a BASIC
interpreter for it and the Altairs bus structure evolved into the S-100 bus.

18) 1976/7
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak produced the Apple I followed by Apple II.
First popular 6502 personal computer. Atari and Commodore followed.

19) 1976
CRAY 1 - First real supercomputer ? 166 MIPS

20) 1978
DEC VAX11/780 - 4Gbyte virtual memory !

21) 1981
The IBM PC - A veil of darkness falls

Honourable mention
Arcade games ought to get a mention, they created an entire industry.
Atari for Asteroids, Midway for space invaders.

Chris Leyson




















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