AT1033 ICT FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES

HISTORY OF ICT

Baszley Bee B. Basrah Bee

School of Social Sciences
Universiti Malaysia Sabah

Lecture 2 (Part 1)
 Multimedia - Computer History
A complete history of computing world include a
multitude(sejumlah besar) of diverse devices such as
the Chinese abacus – cpable of simple calculation (+,
- , x)
 SEVEN GENERATIONS

1. The Mechanical era (1623-1936)

2. First Generation Electronic Computers
(1937-1953)
3. Second Generation (1954-1962)
4. Third Generation (1963-1972)
5. Fourth Generation (1972-1984)
6. Fifth Generation (1984-1990)
7. Sixth Generation (1990-present)
 The Mechanical era (1623-1945)
- Idea of using machines to solve mathematical problems
can be traced as far as the early 17th century.
- Designers of analog calculators – capable of addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division, include Wilhelm
Schickhard, Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibnitz,and John
Napier.
- First effort to develop a programmable computer was in
1823 by Charles Babbage “the difference engine” – but
never completed.
- He also initiated “Analytical Engine” in 1842 but only
partially completed. Historians, however, credited
Babbage was truly a man a head of his time. His failure to
complete his two projects was the fact that the technology
of the day was not reliable enough.
Napier’s Bone Slide Rules (1600s)
Babbage’s the Different Engine (1823)
- 1853 George Scheutz & his son, Edward
Scheutz designed a machine that could process
15-digit numbers and calculate fourth-order
differences.
- Taken by Dudley Observatory, New York to
calculate the orbit of Mars.
- First commercial uses of mechanical computers
was by US Census Bureau – which used punch-
card equipment designed by Herman Hollerith
to tabulate data for the 1890 census of the US.
 First Generation Electronic Computer
(1937-1953)
• Four machines have been introduced at various
times as the first electronic computers.
- used electronic switches, in the form of vacuum
tubes - to process and store information or data.
1937 – Howard Aiken developed Mark 1 - to solve
trigonometry and simple calculation.
1941 – J.V.Anatasoff & Clifford Berry at Iowa
State built the first world digital computer
named ABC that would help students to solve
systems of partial differential equations.
ABC (1941)
1943 - COLOSSUS was developed by Alan Turing, for the
British military – to breaking codes used by the
German in WWII. But, it was kept secret until long
after the war ended.
1943 - First programmable electronic computer was
ENIAC – developed by J. Presper Eckert & John W.
Mauchly at University of Pennsylvania - funded by
Army Ordnance Department, who used it to compute
ballistic during WWII. After 1945 – used extensively for
calculation during the design of the hydrogen bomb.
Also being used for research on the design of wind
tunnels, random number generators, and weather
prediction – until it was decommissioned in 1955.
ENIAC (1943-45) – picture 1
ENIAC (1943-45) – picture 2
Eckert & Mauchly combined with logician, John Von
Neuman,to build EDVAC –the idea was that notion of a
“stored program”. This computer was able to run orders
of magnitude faster than ENIAC.
Therefore, EDSAC was developed – which used mercury
delay lines to store memory/data – this was an oppose to
vacuum tubes use by EDVAC).
Combination of logician – Neuman with electrical
engineering specialist (Eckert & Mauchly) has formed a
very powerful inter disciplinary team - introduced basic
multimedia concept.
1952 – Eckert & Mauchly developed first commercial
computer, UNIVAC 1, which was used to count votes
during the presidential election. (UNIVAC 1 predicted
Eisenhower would defeat Stevenson with 438 electoral
votes, but ended up with 442 votes)
EDVAC (1955)
EDSAC (1951)
UNIVAC 1 (1952)
UNIVAC 1 (1952)
 Second Generation (1954-1962)
1954 – ORACLE, TRADIC & TX-0 was built as an opposed
to mercury delay lines, in which data was store
(memory).
They used electronic switches based on discrete diode and
transistor technology – to replace mercury delay lines.
Other types were IBM 704, IBM 709, IBM 7090, IBM 7094
– which introduced I/O processors (for better through
put between I/O devices and main memory).
Idea to develop “Programming Languages (PL)” that is use
to write scientific application. Many high level PL were
introduced: FORTRAN (1956), ALGOL (1958), and
COBOL (1959).
ORACLE (1954)
IBM 704 (1956)
 Second Generation (1954-1962)

First “supercomputer” was developed – for

numeric processing in scientific application.
1956 – G-15 was developed by Bendix
Company, US.
1956 – PEGASUS was developed in UK by
Ferranti Ltd Company.
1960 – LARC
1961 – STRETCH or IBM 7030
PEGASUS (1956)
LARC (1960)
IBM 7030 (1961)
 Third Generation (1963-1972)
First “minicomputer” – DEC PDP-8 was built in 1964 –
used as commercial machines.
- idea of developing “intergrated circuits” (TCs) called as
“Chip” – that replaced “transistors”.
- First ICs was base on smale-scale integration (SSI)
circuit, which had around 10 devices per circuit or chip.
- Also, the use of medium-scale integrated (MSI) chip,
which had up to 100 devices per chip.
1964 – CDC 6600 was released by Seymour Cray as first
machines to use functional parallelism.
1969 – Cray developed CDC 7600 as the first vector
processor that capable to executing at 10 million floating
point operations per second (Mflops).
DEC PDP-8 (1964)
CDC 6600 (1964)
 Third Generation (1963-1972)
1969 – IBM 360/91 also released as upgraded to IBM 360-
195, which was comparable to the Cray’s CDC 7600.
CDC Star 100 and TI ASC, announced in 1972, were the first
pipeline vector processor computers, but did not have a
great commercial success.
On Programming Language – 1963, the University of
Cambridge & London developed CPL as an attempt to
capture only the important features of the complicated
and sophisticated old ALGOL (1958). However, like
ALGOL, CPL was large with many features that were
hard to learn.
1967 – to further simplification of CPL, by Martin Richard
of Cambridge developed a subset of CPL called BCPL - a
simple typeless language.
IBM 360/91 (1969)
 Third Generation (1963-1972)

1970 – Ken Thompson of Bell Labs developed a subset of

CPL called simple B with first introduction to the
UNIX operating system.
1972 – Dennis Ritchie generalized Thompson’s B to
developed the C language. He used C to write a version
of UNIX for the DEC PDP-11.
This C-based UNIX was soon ported to many different
computers or now a de facto standard on virtually
every computer system.
 Fourth Generation (1972-1984)

• The use of large scale integration (LSI -1000 devices per

chip) to very large scale integration (VLSI-100,000 dpc)
High speed processors – CRAY 1 (1974), CYBER 205
(1980) and CRAY X-MP (1982).
- Computers with large main memory – CRAY 2 (1983).
- Microcomputers and workstations were introduced.
- Developments of softwares with high level language
such as FP & Prolog that use a declarative
programming style as opposed to the imperative style of
PASCAL, FORTRAN, etc.
CRAY 1 (1976)
CRAY 2 (1983)
 Fifth Generation (1984-1990)
• Until this time parallelism was limited to pipeline and
vector processing or at most to a few processors sharing
jobs.
- introduced machines with hundreds of processors that
could all be working on different parts of a single program.
- By 1990 was possible to build chips with a million
components and semiconductor memories became
standard on all computers.
- Widespread use of computer networks and the increasing
use of single-user workstation.
- 1985 the Sequent Balance 8000 connected up to 20
processors to a single shared memory module, such as Intel
iPSC-1 with 128 processors.
- WAN & LAN – network were developed.
 Sixth Generation (1990-present)

• Parallel systems was compete with vector processors in

terms of total computing power and most expect parallel
systems to dominate the future.
- Networking technology is becoming more widespread than
it original strong base in universities and government
laboratories as it is rapidly finding application in K-12
education, community networks, private industries, etc.
e.g. ICT Multimedia Features:-
2. Mobile phones - voice activated calling, two way
communication via walkie talkie style messaging from Nextel
or Sprint PCS & pager mode.
3. Messages – SMS & email.
4. PCs wireless – WAP & GPRS (internet access).
5. Built in camera & video – taking pictures.
6. Speaker phone – voice messages, radio & music.
7. Wireless Web - Microbrowsing, or surfing the wireless web on
a small screen, either a cellular phone, or a handheld
computer.