08/28/2013
Computers: Past, Present and Future
Personal computers have been around for quite some time now, but it might come to surprise that the first personal computer wasn’t invented til 1981. Although, it depends on what you would consider a “computer,” some have been around since the early 1900’s. In 1613, the word computer became coined to a person that could perform calculations or computations. The term remained the same until about the late 1900’s.
The first computers were only used for making calculations and other analytical operations. Konrad Zuse is said to have built the first modern computer in his parents living room from 1936 to 1938. The Colossus was the first electric programmable computer and was developed by Tommy Flowers and first demonstrated in December 1943. The Colossus was created to help the British code breakers read encrypted German messages. The first digital computer was called the ABC, short for Atanasoff-Berry Computer, and was developed in 1942 at the Iowa State College. The ABC was an electrical computer that used vacuum tubes for digital computation including binary math and Boolean logic and had no CPU. The early British computer known as the EDSAC is considered to be the first stored program electronic computer. The computer performed its first calculation on May 6, 1949 and was the computer that ran the first graphical computer game, nicknamed "Baby". The first computer company was called Electronic Controls Company, and helped create the ENIAC computer. First delivered to the United States Government in 1950, the UNIVAC 1101 or ERA 1101 is considered to be the first computer that was capable of storing and running a program from memory.
Today, Computers have drastically changed. They have increased in speed, performance, functionality and all of this while changing their appearance. Despite all the additions to the computer it has gotten smaller and smaller over the years. Today, we have personal computers, laptops, tablets and even smartphones. All have the same characteristics of a computer. You can browse the web on any of these devices or play games or create a word document. In today’s society, computers go without any recognition or thought of where they came from. All the technology that is put into them to make them do the simplest of tasks has been years and years in the making. But technology isn’t slowing down any time soon or going away. Who knows what kind of