computers of 50 years ago to computers of today

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THE EARLY HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

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It is hard to grasp the changes computers have caused in the last fifty years . The first computers had been built during World War Two In 1941 in Germany , Konrad Zuse developed a general purpose programable calculator , pioneering the use of binary math and boolean logic in his devises (About : Inventors ) By the war ‘s end , he had machines to assist in computations used in airplane design , although these machines were developed so late that they had no impact on [banner_entry_middle]

German war efforts On their part , the British had developed a machine to break German codes . In the United States , scientists and engineers at at the University of Pennsylvania ‘s Moore School of Electrical Engineering developed ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzor and Computer ) to assist in computing firing manuals for artillery , but it became operational only in November 1945 (Glass

The early machines were built in secret , and each was custom designed and programmed (Cite ) Only in the middle years of the decade in computers become commercially available . Even then , software writing was often a per unit process . Each computer , crude if compared to modern machines , often filled a small room . Each job ‘ was input separately , often by an operator , who carefully guarded the machine from the abuse of non-specialists . Jobs were keyed onto punch cards which were fed into the machine ‘s card reader (Glass

The decade following the War saw several major advances . The transistor was invented in 1947 (About Inventors ) FORTRAN , the first high-level programming language allowed data input using computer punch cards . In the early 1950 ‘s , team from Bank of America , General Electric , and Stanford University perfected optical character recognition , allowing computers to read checks . However , the integrated circuit , the basic computer chip ‘ had not yet been developed (Glass ) With the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer ) in 1951 engineers were able to store an unheard of 12 ,000 digits in memory (12K . The desk-top computer was still

in the realm of science fantasy (History of Computers

In 1954 , IBM announced the manufacture of the IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine , and in August 1955 , Columbia University entered the computer age , when two of these machines were installed at the university ‘s IBM Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University . This unit became IBM ‘s first commercial business computer while its 701 was installed for scientific uses . The 650 used vacuum-tube logic , drum-memory , and a decimal rather than binary math codes . The two 650s supported more than 200 Columbia research projects , and were also used as the tools in something new at the school : the teaching of courses on computer science . The primary use for these machines was simply showing that they could do basic mathematical calculations with astounding speed and without fatigue , a feature that would usher in the computer age . The 650 also served another purpose , showing that computers could be profitable (The IBM 650

Until the mid-to-late 1950s , the word “computer… [banner_entry_footer]