Ministry of information technology and communication development

The history of the development of computers

The first important computer was the gigantic ENIAC machine created by John W. Mauchly and J. Prosper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC (Electric Numerical Integrator and Calculator) used a word of 10 decimal digits instead of binary numbers like earlier automated calculators. ENIAC was also the first machine to use more than 2,000 vacuum tubes, using about 18,000 vacuum tubes. The machinery required to store all the vacuum tubes and keep cold occupied more than 167 square meters (1,800 square feet).

In 1977, the TRS-80 was also introduced. It was a home computer made by Tandy Radio Shack. In its second incarnation, the TRS-80 Model II featured 64,000 characters of memory and a disk for storing programs and data. At this time, only Apple and TRS had machines with disk drives. With the introduction of the disk drive, personal computer software appeared as diskettes as the most convenient publishing medium for software distribution.
IBM, which until then had produced mainframe computers and minicomputers for medium and large businesses, decided to take action and began work on the Acorn, later called the IBM PC. The computer was the first computer designed for the domestic market, and it had a modular design so that parts could be easily added to the architecture. Ironically, most of the components came from outside of IBM, as building it with IBM parts would have been too expensive for the home computer market. When it was introduced, the PC came with 16,000 characters of memory, an IBM electric typewriter keyboard, and a hookup for a $1,265 tape recorder.
By 1984, Apple and IBM had come out with new models. Apple released the first generation Macintosh, which was the first computer to feature a graphical user interface (GUI) and a mouse. The GUI made the machine more attractive to home computer users because it was easy to use.
This brings us forward about ten years. Now people have their own personal graphics workstations and powerful home computers.
An average computer that can be found in a person's home is several times more powerful than a machine like ENIAC. The computer revolution was the fastest growing technology in human history.