CIS 101 Notes
CLASS #1.

CLASS #2

IMPORTANT ADDRESSES

CIS 101:   http://skyscraper.fortunecity.com/scsi/968/cis101.htm
skyscraper.fortunecity.com/
scsi/968/cis101.htm
AE labs:   http://www.brookscole.com/compsci/aeonline

Eli Minkoff:     eminkoff@abacus.bates.edu
UNET help number (Teleservice): 1-800-868-7000
UMA Bookstore: 1-800-621-0083

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A HISTORY OF COMPUTING

1. INTRODUCTION:
   Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine
   
   
2. ORIGINS (before 1890):
   Gradual displacement of humans by advances in science and machine technology.
   • Copernicus (1543)
   • Charles Lyell (1830) and other geologists
   • Charles Darwin (1859)
   • Industrial revolution (beginning 1790s)
   • Francois-Marie Jacquard (1801)
   • Babbage's Difference Engine (1822)
   • Babbage's Analytical Engine (designed 1850s, never finished)
   
   
3. INFORMATION EXPLOSION
   (required more computing power):
   • Herman Hollerith (1890 census)
   • Vannevar Bush (1930s)
   • John von Neumann -- stored program concept
   • John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry (1940s)
   • Konrad Zuse and Helmut Schreyer (1940s)
   • Alan Turing and Colossus (1943)
   • Howard Aiken and Mark I (1944)
   • John Mauchley and J.P. Eckert -- ENIAC (1948)
   
   
4. GENERATIONS OF COMPUTERS (successively smaller, cheaper, more widely available):
   • First (starting 1948): vacuum tubes
   • Second (starting 1957): transistors,
     first compilers
   • Third (starting 1963):
     integrated circuits (allowed mass production),
     time-sharing (allowed interactive use)
   • Fourth (starting 1971):
     LSI chips & microprocessors,
     desk-top ("personal") computers
   • ?Fifth (starting 1984): graphic interfaces
   • Starting 1994: age of the Internet

CIS 101 home

A: drive

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