Learning basic computers (Part1)



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It's always a great to know the history of the things or concepts and to know how a particular concept evolved. This gives a better understanding of the concept and you feel even more interested in the matter. So starting from the very early days, it was some 1000 BC when the first calculating device was used, the Abacus. It had several bars with circular beads, which were moved up and down the bars to represent number. We will not go down to the macro details of how calculations were performed using the Abacus. Then we had the development of the Pascal's calculator, the Difference Engine and many mechanical devices that were capable of performing the basic operations. Then the actual man, the father of computers, Charles Babbage, came into the picture. He gave the concept of a computing machine which would have a memory unit and an arithmetic and logic unit. He is still respected and popularly known as the father of computers, as his conceptual design is still being used by computer manufacturers although now things are more complicated and the design has a lot of appendages.

The history of computers has been divided into five generations each one of which constitute about a decade. The first generation of computers was characterized by huge machines with wires running several 100 meters. These machines were built using vacuum tubes and used to generate a lot of heat. Hence they required a water-cooling system for maintaining the temperature. The machines being giants consumed lot of electricity and it is said the lights in the city went dim when such a computer was switched on. The computers in the second generation were built using "transistors". These consumed less power and generated less heat. The size of the computer also was reduced drastically. The third generation brought a revolutionary change in the way a computer was made. The world saw the invention of integrated chips, each of which had 100s of transistors. As time passed the technology improved and the SSI (Small Scale Integration), LSI (Large Scale Integration) and VLSI technologies (Very Large Scale Integration) came up. The only difference in the above mentioned technologies was based on the number of number of transistors that could be fused on a single chip. This is how we have reached a point today, were we have desktops, laptops and even palmtops. The later articles will continue my basic lessons on computer finally reaching to advanced levels.



Sameer Gurnani

Please provide your feedback:sameergurnani@yahoo.com


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