Lecture 3 - THE BIRTH

BIRTH OF THE COMPUTER- Week 3 March 19th Tutorial

Well, I found this lecture rather interesting BECAUSE, until now i had no idea in the world what Bill Gates actually did to be so $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. BUT NOW I KNOW. So here are my notes on what i now udnerstand about the birth of the computer!

Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace

Charles Babbage was born in 1791. As the inventor of the first digital computer, a mechanical rather than an electronic device, he sketched out the logical structure of the modern computer. He made parts of the Difference Engine, but was not completed in his life time. Later, he conceived of the Analytical Engine: a massive, brass, steam-powered, general-purpose, mechanical computer.

Babbage was aided with Analytical Engine by an aristocratic woman with a creative approach to mathematics, Ada Lovelace. Ada saw herself as a metaphysician in search of poetical science. She conceived of a machine which would be able to compose and play music, produce graphics and be of everyday use. She also conceived the first computer program.


Turing and the Birth of the Computer

The serious work required for the development of the computer was done by Alan Turing. He studied quantum mechanics, probability, logic, and wrote a crucial paper clarifying the computability of numbers and the possibility of a machine to compute them.

During WW2 he worked with teams of mathematicians and cryptographers to devise the first working computer,The Bombe which they used to break secret German 'Enigma' codes. After War, he investigated programming, neural nets, and the prospects for artificial intelligence. His philosophical paper on machine intelligence suggested the Turing Test: a human sits at computer terminal and interacts with both a computer or a human by written communication only; if the judge cannot tell which is which then the machine has passed the test and it would be reasonable to call the computer intelligent.


Moore's Law

Computers were first commercially produced by IBM in 1950s- they were large and expensive used for military, government and corporate work. In 1965, Gordom Moore propounded Moore's law: the capacity of microchip's doubles every two years. His 2nd law claims because capital costs are rising faster than revenues, financial feasibility will limit the rate of technological development.


Xerox PARC

At Xerox PARC in the early 70s, a think-tank developed concepts such as the mouse, the graphical user interface (GUI) and pull-down menus that made the personal computers of today possible and approachable by the general user.
The first PC was released in 1975. It was called the 0 but didn’t do much, just got tech-nerds excited. But the Altair didn't have a language - a set of terms by which the user could communicate with their computer. Bill Gates dropped out of uni and began writing a language called BASIC so it could be used for word processing, basic accounting and games. In order to market his program he started a little company in his garage - Microsoft.

Apple

Computer nerds got together at meetings to exchange ideas and display their latest and greatest home-made PCs. Here, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started their own company - Apple. They produced the Apple I - machine with single circuit board, no case and no keyboard. They sold 50. Their dream was to produce/sell the 1st self-contained PC for people who weren't techies. Wozniak set to reducing the size of every component he could while Jobs went out to find some money.
Two years after the Altair, the Apple II was launched in 1978. Next two years saw Apple grow like crazy- they had made enough money so neither would ever have to work again.

IBM and Microsoft

At this time, IBM ( large ultra-conservative firm and slow to move) noticed what was happening. By 1980 they were determined to get into the PC market. Chairman, Frank Carey, called Bill Lowe, who promised IBM a product within one year. His product basically involved buying shelf products from a range of other companies and putting them together as a package.

To run computers, there are two types of software required: the language and the Operating System. As Gates/ Microsoft did not produce an Operating System, they directed IBM to Gary Kildall- but Kildall wanted a signing of a non-disclosure agreement before conducting a meeting. IBM walked back to Microsoft.

Gates promised an Operating System. They bought an OS developed by Tim Patterson called Kudos. Microsoft paid Patterson's employer $50,000 for it. In four months IBM had it running as PC DOS 1.0 and in the marketplace at $50 each. GATES WAS RICH.

IBM gained more and more of the market share through its association with Microsoft. For a long time Apple believed they owned and could rely on their position in the marketplace due to their user-friendly technology (GUI). But then IBM and Microsoft came up with their own GUI - Windows. By the time Windows 3 was launched, Apple was on a slide. Steve Jobs quit Apple. Pushed in a niche market by the convergence of IBM and Microsoft, Apple was on a downward slide. But the 1998 return of Steve Jobs and the success of its iMac line turned the fortunes of the company around.