Evolution of Computing Technology

The evolution of computing technology

The evolution of computing has exponentially taken place over the years exponentially, this traces from devices such as the ancient Chinese abacus, the Slide rule and today’s modern devices that involve digital processing to perform complex tasks like computing, gaming and

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graphics manipulation. Digital computers now dominate the computing world in all areas ranging from the hand calculator to the supercomputer and are persistent throughout society and the world of business.

The evolution of computing starts with the Mechanical Era (1623-1945), the idea of using machines to solve mathematical problems can be traced at least as far as the early 17th century. Mathematicians designed and implemented calculators that were capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. One of the first commercial uses of mechanical computers was by the US Census Bureau in 1890 census (Worland, 1985).

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 With the ever increasing need to solve complex computations the First Generation Electronic Computers (1937-1953) were born. They used electronic switches, in the form of vacuum tubes. The first general purposes programmable electronic computer was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC).  ENIAC was controlled by a set of external switches this led to Software technology during this period. The first programs were written out in machine code, later there was the use of symbolic notation, recognized as assembly language, and then translating of the symbolic notation into machining language with assemblers performed the translation task. Later the first commercially successful computer, the UNIVAC; in 1952 was developed (Atkinson, 2010).

In the move to overcome bulkiness and achieve increasing computational speeds the Second Generation computers were born (1954-1962) .Electronic switches of diodes and transistors were replaced for switches. The first machines to be built with this technology include TRADIC at Bell Laboratories, high level programming languages were introduced, including FORTRAN (1956), ALGOL (1958), and COBOL (1959).  One of the first commercial machines of this era was the IBM 704. This saw the first two supercomputers designed specifically for numeric processing in scientific applications (Frauenfelder, 2005).

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With the bell technology of printing electronic circuits and components on silicon semiconductor wafers the Third Generation was born in (1963-1972). This was marked by the use of integrated circuits, semiconductor memories replaced the magnetic cores leading to complex processors. The first ICs were based on small-scale integration (SSI) circuits, to the use of medium-scale integrated (MSI) circuits, later speed was more of a consideration to computing as industrialization and civilization emerged, this led to the Fourth Generation computers (1972-1984). This saw the use of large scale integration LSI and very large scale integration in software were realized ranging from high level languages to programming in logic (Frauenfelder, 2005) (Worland, 1985).

The Fifth Generation emerged being characterized mainly by the acceptance of parallel processing; Networking and the Internet have become a norm. Today with nanotechnology computer systems have enabled speech recognition technology and with software’s with intelligence shining a ray of hope to supercomputing where computing will be the way of life.

REFERENCES

Atkinson, P. (2010). Computer. London: Reaktion Books.

Books, T.-L. (1985). Computer basics. Chicago, Ill.: Time-Life Books.

Frauenfelder, M. (2005). The computer. London: Carlton Book.

Society, C. (2012). The small computer (r)evolution : proceedings. Los Angeles: Silver Spring, MD : IEEE Computer Society Press. 

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