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Where did it all begin? Click (Click here for Timeline)
Where did it all begin? Click (Click here for Timeline)
The History of Computers is a lot longer than most people would imagine.An Englishman named; Charles Babbage actually designed the first mechanical computer about 200 years ago, way back in Victorian times.
The difference engine could calculate or compute and could be programed by the user.
However, we could also look at adding machines like the abacus and see that man has needed a computer for a long time before we actually had the expertise to make them.
During WWII, another Englishman; Alan Turing invented the first electronic computer. Collosus. It was built with the help of a Telecommunication engineer called Tommy Flowers.Colossus was a giant computer based on 2000 valves which was used to crack Nazi messages encoded using the Enigma machine. The Nazi high command used an ever changing cipher to encode and decode their messages.
Once Colossus could crack the code, all the Nazi military messages could be read and it is estimated that the invention of the computer shortened the war by 8-12 months saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
Each of the Colossi would take up an entire room. Yet they had less computing power than the oldest mobile phone you ever owned.
After the war, Various large mainframe computers were developed by computer companies like IBM. Business began to rely increasingly on these machines to help run their activities. Banking and all sorts of commerce used these giant machines to store information.
However they were huge, very expensive, kept in large rooms and only available to a few people in the big companies.
Some universities had their own computers too.
The first home computer was released in 1975, the Altair 8800 came as DIY kit that you had to build yourself
from electronic components they sent you. the Altair 8800 had:
no monitor!
no keyboard!
no mouse!
no speakers!
In fact the only input device was a series of programmable switches and the only output was a series of lights. (Not quite Call of Duty!)
However, it was the first computer owned by people such as Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Founders of Microsoft).
The Altair 8800 was also the first computer to be owned by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (founders of Apple) and also many other pioneers of the IT industry.
In fact, they all used to belong to the Homebrew Computer Club in California, where they would meet each week and share progress on what they were doing with their computer.
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