History of Computer and Internet

By: Bria

Computer • A computer is a programmable

machine that receives input, stores and manipulates information, and provides output in a useful format.

• The first electronic computers were developed in the mid 20th century.

The Word Computer• The first use of the word computer was

recorded in 1613, referring to a person who carried out calculations, or computations, and the word continued to be used in that sense until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century onwards though, the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, describing a machine that carries out computations.

First computer• In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the textile

loom by introducing a series of punched paper cards as a template which allowed his loom to weave intricate patterns automatically. This was an important step in the development of computers because the use of punched cards to define woven patterns can be viewed as an early, albeit limited form of programmability.

• In 1873, Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable mechanical computer his analytical engine. Limited finances and Babbage’s inability to resist tinkering with the design meant that the device was never completed.

• In the late 1800’s, Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a machine readable medium. Prior uses of machine readable media, above, had been for control, not data.

Macintosh• The Macintosh or Mac is a series of several lines

of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984 it was the first commercially successful person computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface rather than a command line interface. The company continued to have success through the second half of the 1980’s, only to see it dissipate in the 1990’s as the personal computer market shifted towards IBM PC compatible machines running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows.

Debug• Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the

number of bugs or defects in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware, thus making it behave as expected.

• The terms “bug” and “debugging” are both popularly attributed to Admiral Grace Hoper in the 1940’s. While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were “debugging” the system. However the term “bug” in the meaning of technical error dates back at least to 1878 and Thomas Edison and “debugging” seems to have been used as a term in aeronautics before entering the world of computers.

Different types of Computers

Internet• The Internet is a global system of interconnected

computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies. The internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the interlinked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.

Origins• The origins of the Internet reach back to research in the

1960’s, both commissioned by the United States government to develop projects of its military agencies to build robust fault tolerate, and distributed computer networks as well as private research. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S backbone by the National Science Foundation, as well as private funding for commercial backbones spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the merger of many networks. The commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990’s, and resulted in the following opularization of countlessapplications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth’s population uses the services of the Internet.

History of the Internet• The USSR’s launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research

Projects Agency in February 1958 to regain a technological lead. ARPA created the Information Processing technology Office to further the research of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment program, which had networked country wide radar systems together for the first time. The IPTO’s purpose was to find ways to address the US Military’s concern about survivability of their communications networks, and as a first step interconnect their computers at the Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain, and SAC HQ. J. C. R.

• Licklider, a promoter of universal networking was selected to head the IPTO. He moved to MIT in 1950, after becoming interested in information technology. Licklider’s successor Ivan Sutherland in 1965 got Lawrence Robert to start a project to make a network, and Roberts based the technology on the work of Paul Baran.

• During the 1990’s it was estimated that the Internet grew by 100 percent per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997. The estimated population of Internet users is 1.97 billion as of 30 June 2010.

• Robert Taylor convinced Lawrence Roberts to build on his early packet switching successes and come and be the IPTO Chief Scientist. Once there, Roberts prepared a report called Resource Sharing Computer Networks which was approved by Taylor in June 1968 and laid the foundation for the launch of the working Arpanet the following year.

Professor Leonard Kleinrock with one of the first Arpanet Interface Message

Processors at UCLA

Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider

Sources• www.google.com• www.wikipedia.com