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Computer History: The Complete Documentation

• This category contains 2 Papers
• The last paper was added on 2007-03-26 (YYYY-MM-DD)

Brief History of Technology (A)

Published on 2005-09-12, by Sexy Bex, ©Jelsoft Enterprises Limited.

The thing that distinguishes intelligent life is its ability to solve problems. Since the first use of stone tools in Africa during the Palaeolithic Era, humans have been coming up with new and increasingly inventive ways in which to improve their standards of living. When we think of technology nowadays, we tend to think of computers, science and other such advancements. However, it is very interesting to see how these advancements were brought about in the first place. The past four-hundred years have yielded huge developments in the fields of science (or natural philosophy as it was then known), communications and transportation which together have helped create the world that we are now accustomed to.

Short History of the Second American Revolution (A)

Published on 1996, by Dilys Winegrad and Atsushi Akera, ©University of Pennsylvania.

Today, the northeast corner of the old Moore School building at the University of Pennsylvania houses a bank of advanced computing workstations maintained by the professional staff of the Computing and Educational Technology Service of Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. There, fifty years ago, in a larger room with drab- colored walls and open rafters, stood the first general purpose electronic computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, or ENIAC. It spanned 150 feet in width with twenty banks of flashing lights indicating the results of its computations. ENIAC could add 5,000 numbers or do fourteen 10-digit multiplications in a second#dead slow by present-day standards, but fast compared with the same task performed on a hand calculator. The fastest mechanical relay computers being operated experimentally at Harvard, Bell Laboratories, and elsewhere could do no more than 15 to 50 additions per second, a full two orders of magnitude slower. By showing that electronic computing circuitry could actually work, ENIAC paved the way for the modern computing industry that stands as its great legacy.