A Quick History Of The Modern Computer

When I saw that Apple had come out with another version of their iPhone, I started wondering where all this madness started. I wanted to sit down and get a good idea of how the computer had evolved because more often than not I have no idea how it works.

Here’s what I found.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about Germans to find out that Konrad Zuse is thought of as the father of the modern computer. Way back in 1936, this construction engineer set out to design what he needed to do his job—an automatic calculator. The first binary computer called the Z1 was the result.

Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper answered the call too and entered the race to what is now wireless technology in 1944 with the Mark I during the height of WWII. This 55 foot-long prototype had 500 miles of wire but could still carry out addition, subtraction and multiplication although of course it wasn’t anywhere near as fast as its modern offspring. The Mark 1 weighed 5 tons but was used by the Navy for ballistic calculations until 1959.

The next big advancement was what we all call ‘the chip’. In the late fifties two separate engineers where working on the ‘next step’ by looking for a way to make an integrated circuit, a tecchy way of saying they wanted to make things smaller and faster. Jack Kilby was successful when he worked for Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce got to the same place at almost the same time for the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. After fighting legally for a few years the firms decided to cross license their technologies.

Word processing came along in 1979 with the WordStar program and the first personal computer was released by IBM just a few short years later in 1981. All this paved the way for where we are today.

So the question for many people is where is everything going? Most of us can remember moving from clunky computers that used floppy discs to where we are now with hand held devices, and even that old ball and chain feeling of dial up internet. The next step some of the experts are predicting might not be as fantastic as it would have seemed years ago.

According to some computer wizards, quantum computers are on the way. That means no more cell phones or laptops—just what Virginia physicist Stuart Wolf thinks will be a headband with a direct coupling to the right side of the brain.

Still, things don’t always move as quickly as we like. While the new process is underway, it will be a few years in the future still. While you’re waiting consider this though. Magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) chips which are a part of this new technology will be able to switch your laptop on like a light in only a matter of years.

The experts tell us from there it will be around 2030 when your personal communications center is able to send your email through a headband directly to your visual cortex. Even that, as Konrad Zuse might have thought way back in the 1930s, will only signal the start of something else.

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