Chapter Two

A brief history of computers

 Simplest definition – a device used to ascertain an amount or
number by calculation or reckoning
 Invented by Chinese over 800 years ago – abacuses
 Contemporary precursors –punch cards & Londoner Charles
Babbage (1822 – 1871) – not effective due to the lack of
superstructure
 Dr. Herman Hollerith – 1st to successfully introduce a device
exclusively designed for data processing
 Soon left civil service – and opened the Tabulating Machine
Company – IBM”s immediate predecessor
 Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) – Iowa State University
 Mauchly and Eckert – Electronic Numerical Integrator &
Computer – U of Pennsylvania

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 ENIAC
 Developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s
Moore School of Electrical Engineering
 Responsible for calculating firing and bombing
tables for the U.S. military
 Developed in 1945
 Composed of 30 separate unites, coupled with
separate power supplies and air conditioning
units, and weighed 30 tons! It utilized 19,000
vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and required 200
kw of electrical power to operate.
 Precursor to both mainframes and PC’s.

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 Techno-Lingo

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 Colossus I
 1940’s – at a secret government lab in
Buckinghamshire, England by Professor Max
Newman
 Designed exclusively for cryptanalysis.
 Scanned and analyzed 5,000 charcters per
second
 Used in WWII to break “Enigma” codes used
by the Nazi forces

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 Evolution of Computers

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 Computer Language

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 Computer Hardware

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 Hard Drives & Mass Storage Devices
 Hard disk drives – mass storage devices which are
designed to permanently store that information which
users intend to keep
 Categorized by their storage capacity
 Store both software and information input by the user
 Advanced exponentially (megabytes to gigabytes to
terabytes and eventually, petabytes)
 Types of storage devices – floppies to CD’s to DVD’s to
Zips to Thumb/Pen drives

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 Computer Software

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 Alternatives to DOS:
Popular Operating Systems

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 Application Software
 Prepackaged instructions which allow users to
perform a variety of functions, including: word
processing, statistical analysis, etc.
 Everything is possible now – games, graphics,
etc.
 PUPS – potentially unwanted programs
 Malware – malicious programming – code that
causes damage to computer systems

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 A Brief History of the Internet
 Relatively new phenomenon
 NOT created by Al Gore
 1969 - Began with ARPANet – Advanced Research Project Agency
Network by DOD
 Designed to overcome threats from a blackout of communication in the
event of a nuclear war
 Linked four universities (UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara & the
University of Utah
 Cumbersome – did not provide for interactive sessions
 1970’s - Opened to non-military users – universities joined the consortium
 Still no e-mail or world wide web
 1980’s – introduction of NSF Net – which encouraged communication
between groups
 Resulted in a variety of software: UNIX OS, Mosaic Interface, Eudora,
Gopher, Pine, CU-SeeMe

 1984 – introduction of domain names to replace IP addresses

 1989 – HTTP
 1993 – mass availability and accessibility
 2008 – over 1 billion users

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 A Sampling of Forensic Terminology
 Computer forensics – acquisition, authentication,
recovery, and analysis of digital evidence
 Data mining – comprehensive analysis of large data
sets designed to uncover patters and relationships.
Analysis tools include, but are not limited to: Statistical
models, mathematical algorithm, and artificial
intelligence
 Forensic acquisition – the process of creating a
duplicate copy of computer media.
 Forensic authentication – process of proving that an
acquired image is an exact copy of the suspect media.

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 Network Language

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 Realms of the Cyberworld

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