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Computer Age:
Past, Present, and Future
Appendix
Objectives
• Describe the generations of computer design leading
up to the present
• Describe the story of personal computer development
• Explain the underlying concepts and terms of artificial
intelligence
• Explain the fundamentals of expert systems, robotics,
and virtual reality
• Give examples of the impact these fields have on
business and everyday life
Contents
• Rapid changes
• Four generations over 50 years
• Trends across generations
– Decrease size
– Increase speed
The First Generation
• 1951-1958 • Magnetic core
• Vacuum Tube memory
– Heat • Storage
– Burnout – Punched cards
– Machine language – Tape (1957)
UNIVAC
Universal Automatic Computer
First computer built for business.
The Second Generation
• 1959-1964 • Storage
– Removable disk
• Transistor pack (1954)
– Smaller – Magnetic tape
– No warm-up time • Programming
– Less energy
–
languages
Less heat – Assembly language
– Faster – FORTRAN (1954)
– More reliable – COBOL(1959)
Apple (1975)
• Home use
• Keyboard
• Screen
• VisiCalc spreadsheet software
Personal Computer History
IBM (1981)
• Became industry standard
• Improved keyboard
• 80-character screen
• Add memory
• Expansion slots
• Encouraged hardware and software
development by others
• Nonproprietary parts
• Clones
Personal Computer History
Microsoft/Intel
• Wintel
– Microsoft supplies operating system for PC
• MS-DOS
• Windows
– Intel supplies microprocessor
• Continually challenged – others making
inroads
Personal Computer History
The Internet Revolution
• Started as ARPANet – a network of
computers that could survive a nuclear
attack
• Attractive to the average user
– Links
– Graphical browser
The Fifth Generation
• Mid 1990’s
• Intelligent computers
– Artificial intelligence
– Expert systems
– Natural language
The Fifth Generation
AI – Artificial Intelligence
• How computers can be used for tasks
that required human characteristics
• How to make computers do things that
people currently do better
• Evolving science
The Fifth Generation
AI – How Computers Learn
• Improve performance based on past errors
• Knowledge base – set of facts and rules
• Inference engine – applies rules to the facts
to create new facts
• Example
Fact: Amy is Ken’s wife
Rule: If X is Y’s wife, then Y is X’s husband
Created Fact: Ken is Amy’s husband
The Fifth Generation
Data Mining
• Extracting previously unknown
information from existing data
– Relationships
– Trends
• Look for hidden information that cannot
be found because of the size of the
database
The Fifth Generation
Natural Language