Computer Science Department

(CSD)

Centre for Foundation Studies and Extension Education

(FOSEE)

PCA 0015
Computer Applications

Foundation in Engineering

ONLINE NOTES

Chapter 1

The History and Basics of Computing

FOSEE , MULTIMEDIA UNIVERSITY (436821-T)

MELAKA CAMPUS, JALAN AYER KEROH LAMA, 75450 MELAKA,
MALAYSIA.
Tel 606 252 3594 Fax 606 231 8799
URL: http://fosee.mmu.edu.my/~csd/
PCA0015 Computer Applications Chapter 1

Objectives:

Upon completion of this topic, the students should be able to:

• Define the term computer.
• Identify the components of a computer.
• Compare the computer technology since the first generation till present.
• Classify different types of computers and their uses.

1.0 Introduction to Computer Applications [explain in lecture]

1.1 What is computer?

• A computer is an electronic machine that can be programmed to accept

data (input), process it into useful information (output), and store it in a
secondary storage device for future use.
• The processing of input is directed by the software but performed by the
hardware
• Hardware is the physical equipment that you can see and touch e.g.
mouse, monitor, speakers

• Software is program or electronic instructions that tell the computer what

to do, when and how to do it.

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• CPU / Processor is the brain of the computer located in the computer's

system unit.
• Memory or RAM is the computer workspace
• Storage Devices or Secondary Storage are devices that store data and
programs permanently e.g. diskette, hard disk

On the left is an example of PC

specification sold online. You will learn
more about it in topic 2, 3 and 4. Most
advertisement will show the speed and
type of the CPU, the size of the memory,
hard disk and monitor and the Operating
System used.

• Some computer components reside in the system unit, which are internal,
and some are external devices that are attached to a computer, which includes
all input, output, and secondary storage devices. Those external devices are
called peripherals.
• For the larger computer system, the input, processing, output, and storage
functions may be in separate rooms or building.

1.2 The History and Evolution of Computer

Objective: Student must know the important names and milestones, do not try to
memorize any dates

• The invention of computers began before the discovery of electricity.

• Thousands of years ago, people started seeking easier ways to add and subtract.

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• It evolves from simple calculation using fingers then papers, mechanical devices
and now electrical.
• The first tools used as aids to calculation were almost certainly man's own fingers.
• As the need to represent larger numbers grew, early man employed readily
available materials like small stones or pebbles.
• Thus, it is also no coincidence that the word "calculate" is derived from the Latin
word for pebble.
• That was 20000 BC, but as man becomes clever many calculating tools was
created till today like:

Abacus – 1000 B.C

 Used by people in Babylon and
China to do calculation.
 Has been called by some
Western writers "the earliest calculating machine
in the world."

Logarithmic Book - 1614

 Invented by John Napier for
solving more complicated calculation.

Mechanical Calculator - 1642

 Invented by Blaise Pascal.
 Able to subtract, multiply and
carry the remainder automatically.
 This machine was the beginning
of the development of calculators
Blaise Pascal.
Copyright (c) 1997. Maxfield &
Montrose Interactive Inc.

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The Difference Engine - 1822

 The first device that might be
considered to be a computer in the modern sense
of the word.
 It was invented by the British
mathematician, Charles Babbage, who is known
as the Father of Computers.
 Powered by steam and could
automatically calculate mathematical tables.

Analytical Engine - 1830

 The Difference Engine was only
partially completed when Babbage conceived the
idea of another, more sophisticated machine
called an Analytical Engine.
 Babbage worked with Augusta
Ada Lovelace, a splendid mathematician and one
of the few people who fully understood Babbage's
vision.
 She created a program for the
Analytical Engine.
 Had the Analytical Engine ever
actually worked, Ada's program would have been
able to compute a mathematical sequence known
as Bernoulli numbers.
 Based on this work, Ada is now
credited as being the first computer programmer
 In 1979, a modern programming
language was named ADA in her honor.
 Babbage worked on his
Analytical Engine from around 1830 until he died,
but sadly it was never completed. It is often said
that Babbage was a hundred years ahead of his
time and that the technology of the day was
inadequate for the task.
Mark I - 1944
 Considered to be the first digital computer.
 Invented by Howard Aiken at
Harvard University

UNIVAC1 - 1951
 The first business computer to take a
United States census.
 Invented by John Mauchly and J.
Eckert.

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Silicon Valley - 1954

 Hewlett and Packard, who met while
both were Stanford University undergraduates, set
up shop in a one-car garage in Silicon Valley,
California.
 This marks the birth of Silicon
Valley as the major center of IT. HP's founders Bil Hewlett
and Dave Packard
Internet - 1969
 The Internet started during the Cold War
where the US military created a network to enable
data to be transferred between geographically
separated computers.
 The network is called ARPAnet
(Advanced Research Agency Projects) and it
connects UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford and
University of Utah

Microsoft - 1975
 Bill Gates, a dropped out of Harvard founded
Microsoft with his boyhood friend Paul Allen

World Wide Web - 1989

 Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web
(with it's component like html, http)
 He is the Director of the World Wide Web
Consortium.

Netscape Communications - 1994

 Jim Clark and Marc Andreesen found Netscape
Communications.
 Netscape’s first browser becomes available in
September and creates a rapidly growing number
of Web surfers

About PC and Mac (Personal Computer vs. Apple Macintosh)

One of the most interesting chapters in computer history is the competition between the
companies. The big names in the early days when computer started to be popular among
home users are: IBM, Microsoft and Apple. In 1976, two guys called Steve Wozniak
and Steve Jobs formed the Apple Computer Company on April Fools day. Although it
was not tremendously sophisticated, the Apple 1 attracted sufficient interest for them to
create the Apple II, which many believe to be the first personal computer that was both
affordable and usable. The Apple II, which became available in April 1977, was sold for

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US$1,300. In 1977 they had an income of US$700,000 and just one year later this had
soared tenfold to US$7 million! (This was a great deal of money in those days).

For your interest: In 1975, an IBM mainframe computer that could perform 10,000,000
instructions per second cost around US$10,000,000. In 1995 (only twenty years later), a
computer video game capable of performing 500,000,000 million instructions per second
was available for approximately US$500!

The Apple Macintosh, or Mac, came years later, in 1984. It was designed with ease of
use in mind, something that was missing in early systems. The Macintosh entered the
market at a cost of $2,495 gave many computer users their first glimpse of the mouse
handheld pointing device, and the graphical user interface (GUI). Instead of
complicated commands, this interface contained pictorial representations, or icons, and
other user-friendly elements.

PC - Before Apple entered the home-user market with the Macintosh, IBM, firmly
established as a developer of office equipment, made its first move into the personal
computer industry. In 1981, IBM introduced a small computer for use in the home or
office called the IBM Personal Computer, or PC. The name PC caught on and soon came
to mean any computer that was comparable to, or compatible with, the original IBM PC.
Today, we refer to IBM and compatible PCs as a particular class of computers.

The original IBM PC was succeeded by upgrades, such as the Personal Computer XT
(PC/XT), the Personal Computer AT (PC/AT), and the Personal System/2 (PS/2).

Even though Macintoshes are personal computers, they are not widely referred to as PCs.
Instead, they are simply called Macs. The term PC is used by most people to indicate
IBM or compatible personal computers.

1.3 The Five Generations of Computers

First Generation (1944 - 1958) – Vacuum tubes

The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry or sometimes-magnetic drum 1 for
memory. Vacuum tubes are electronic tubes about the size of light bulbs. The computers
were not reliable because the vacuum tubes generated a lot of heat and easily burnt. Most
input and output media were punched cards and paper tapes. First generation computers
relied on machine language to perform operations, and they could only solve one problem
at a time. The UNIVAC and ENIAC computers are examples of first-generation
computing devices.

Second Generation (1959 - 1964) - Transistors

The era of miniaturization begins. Transistors replaced the vacuum tubes. A transistor is
an electronic switch that alternately allows or disallow electronic signal to pass.

1
also referred to as drum, is a metal cylinder coated with magnetic iron-oxide material on
which data and programs can be stored.

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Transistors are much smaller than vacuum tubes, draw less power, and generate less heat,
which made the computer smaller and more efficient than the first generation computers.
Second-generation computers moved from machine language to assembly, languages and
still relied on punched cards for input and printouts for output.

Minicomputers were developed during this generation, and the first successful
minicomputer was Digital Equipment Corporation's 12-bit PDP-8, which cost from
US$16,000 upwards when launched in 1964.

Third Generation (1964 - 1970) - Integrated Circuit (IC)

Integrated circuit is an electronic circuit that packages transistors and other electronic
components on one small silicon chip, called semiconductor. It drastically increased the
speed and efficiency of computers. Instead of punched cards and printouts, keyboards
and monitors were used to interact with the operating system. Magnetic disks were used
widely as secondary storage.

Fourth Generation (1971-Present) – Microprocessors

It covers the Large-scale integrated (LSI) and Very Large-scale integrated (VLSI)
circuits. A microprocessor is a single and tiny silicon chip on which hundreds to millions
of integrated circuits (transistors) were built onto it. In other words we could say that
what in the first generation filled an entire room could now fit in the palm of the hand.
Fourth generation computers also saw the development of GUIs, the mouse and handheld
devices.

Fifth Generation (Present and Beyond) - Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence or AI is one of the branches of computer science that concerns with
making computers behave and think like humans. AI studies include robotics, neural
networks, natural language, expert systems and games playing.

1.4 The Three Directions of Computer Development

1. Smaller size: Everything has become smaller.

2. More power: Miniaturization allowed computer makers to cram more power into
their machines, providing faster processing speeds and more data storage
capacity.
3. Less expensive: The price of the hardware is getting cheaper
1.5 Types of computer users

• End user is the individual who uses the product after it has been fully
developed and marketed. The term end user usually implies an individual with a
relatively low level of computer expertise. Unless you are a programmer or engineer,
you are almost certainly an end user. Some books also use the term high-end users
that refer to sophisticated and discerning user and low-end user for normal user like
students and home users.
• Small Business Users - small business or sometimes known as SOHO
(small office/home office) is any company with less than 50 employees. Usually this

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type of user will use PC with networking capabilities known as Local Area Network
(LAN).
• Mobile Users - traveling people prefers laptops and PDA

1.7 Classification of Computers

The major categories of computers are: supercomputer, mainframes, workstation,

personal computer, mobile computing, and servers. The differences are size, speed,
processing capabilities, price and user.

Supercomputers

• High-capacity computers that occupy special air-conditioned rooms, and are often
used for research.
• The most expensive computers that can process billions of instructions per
second.
• Most modern supercomputers are now running using parallel processing systems
with thousands of "ordinary" CPUs.
• The speed of a supercomputer is generally measured in "FLOPS" (FLoating
Point Operations Per Second);
• Used for tasks that requires mammoth data manipulation such as worldwide
weather forecasting, oil exploration and weapons research.

Mainframes

• Less powerful than supercomputers

• Fast, large-capacity computers also occupying specially wired, air-conditioned
rooms.
• Used by large organizations-banks, airlines, insurance companies, mail-order
houses, universities - to handle millions of transactions.
• The CPU speed of mainframes has historically been termed as MIPS (Million
Instructions Per Second).
• Typical mainframes have from 128 MB to 4 GB of memory and hundreds of
gigabytes of disk storage

Workstations

• Expensive, powerful desktop machines used mainly by engineers and scientists

for sophisticated purposes such as engineering applications (CAD/CAM), desktop
publishing, software development, and other types of applications that require a
moderate amount of computing power and relatively high quality graphics
capabilities.

Personal Computers

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• The most common for home users, computers that can fit on a desktop or in one's
briefcase.
• Can perform all of its input, processing, output, and storage activities by itself.
• Some are called desktop , some are called tower unit (standing version)
• The term microcomputers are including desktop computers, video game consoles,
laptop computers, tablet PCs, and many types of handheld devices.

Mobile Computing

• A generic term describing the application of small, portable, and wireless

computing and communication devices.
• This includes devices like laptops with wireless LAN technology, mobile
phones, wearable computers and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) with
Bluetooth or IRDA interfaces, and USB flash drives.

Servers

• Server computers are designed to support a computer network that allows you to
share files, application software, hardware, such as printers and other network
resources. You can use mainframes, minicomputers and even microcomputer to
be a server
• Server computers usually have following characteristics:
o Designed to be connected to one or more networks
o The most powerful CPUs available
o Multiple CPUs to share the processing tasks
o Large memory and disk storage
o High-speed internal and external communications capabilities

1.7 Tutorial

Suggested group project: Do a 3-5 minutes presentation on 1 of the following topics:

1. How Microsoft started?

2. Should I buy a laptop or a desktop? Give the pros and cons
3. Microsoft Antitrust case
4. Silicon Valley
5. IBM contributions to computer industry.
6. The early success of Apple and its failure in the 90's
7. List several advantages and disadvantages of buying Mac machines

As a guide, your presentation should answer the 5 basic questions Where, What, When,
Why, How. The information should be general and interesting to your fellow classmates.

These are some of the largest companies in the world, according to the Fortune 500
magazine. Can you name their main products?

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Ranking Company Name Revenues (Millions) Main Product(s)/Service(s)

1 Wal-Mart Stores $219,812
2 Exxon Mobil $191,581
19 IBM $85,866
70 Hewlett-Packard $45,226
117 Compaq $38,234
131 Dell $31,168
162 Intel $26,539
175 Microsoft $25,296
213 Cisco $22,293
268 Sun Microsystems $18,250
284 Petronas $17,679
464 Oracle $10,859

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