Who invented the modern Computer?
Most histories of the modern compute begin with the ‘Analytical Engine’ envisioned by approximately 90% of the client operating system market.
Charles Babbage following the mathematical ideas of George Boole, the mathematician who first stated the principles of logic inherent in today’s digital computer. Babbage’s assistant and collaborator, Ada Lovelace, is said to have introduce the ideas of program loops and subroutines and is sometimes considered the first programmer. Apart form mechanical calculators, the first really useable computers began with the vacuum tube, accelerated with the invention of the transistor, which then became embedded in large numbers in integrated circuits, ultimately making possible the relatively low-cost personal computer.
Modern computers inherently follow the ideas of the stored program laid out by John Von Neumann in 1945. Essentially, the program is read by the computer one instruction at a time, an operation is performed, and the computer then reads in the next instruction, and so on. Recently computers and programs have been devised that allow multiple programs (and computers) to work on the same problem at the same time in parallel. With the advent of the Internet, and higher bandwidth data transmission, programs and data that are part of the same overall project can be distributed over a network.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Who invented the modern Computer?
Monday, February 25, 2008
Who invented the transistor?
Who invented the transistor?
The transistor is an influential invention that changed the course of history for computers. The first generation of computers used transistors; the third generation of computers used integrated circuits and the fourth generation of computers used microprocessors. John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain, scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, were researching the behavior of crystals (Germanium) as semi-conductors in an attempt to replace vacuum tubes as mechanical relays in telecommunications. The vacuum tube, used to amplify music and voice, made long-distance calling practical, but the tubes consumed power, created heat and burned out rapidly, requiring high maintenance.
The team’s research was about to come to a fruitless end when last attempts to try a purer substance as a contact point lead to the invention of the ‘point-contact transistor amplifier. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain took out a patent for their transistor. In 1956, the team received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention for the transistor.