Information Technology

VAX In the mid 1970 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) developed a minicomputer called VAX. It was made on Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). VAX 11/780 was, introduced in October 25 1977, was first of a range of popular computers built on that architecture. VAX has been known as very essential equipment, because of its very large number of programmer-friendly addressing modes and machine instructions and instructions for complex operations such as queue insertion or deletion and polynomial evaluation. Its processor had 32-bit of address bus also having CISC and virtual memory architecture. It had its native operating system called VAX it was renamed as Open VMS in 1991 or early 1992.

PDP-8 In 1965 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)  Introduced PDP-8, and sold more than 50,000 systems. It was a very low cost computer and its availability in large volume of units made new people accessible for their use. PDP-8 had only eight instructions and two registers (a 12 bit accumulator, AC, and a carry bit called the "link register", L). It used magnetic core memory with a cycle time of 1.5 µs , so that a typical two cycle  (fetch, execute) memory reference instruction ran at a speed of 0.333 MIPS.

IBM 7090 This computer was built by IBM in 1959. It was designed for large scale scientific and technological applications. The 7090 used a 36 bit word length, with an address space of 32K (32,768) words. It operated with a basic memory cycle of 2.8µs. This was built using transistor circuits. It had a processing speed of around 100K flops the 7090 was six times faster than the 709 (early version of IBM which used vacuum tubes and was  costly to rent) and can be rented for half the price. It was widely known to be transistorized version of the vacuum-tube-logic 709 computer. It was redesigned to be compatible by Sylvania who was the data processing subcontractor    BMEWS   missile warning radar network, which was under a mandate to use transistor computers.Couple of this unit were used for American Airlines SABRE real-time airline reservation system. It was intended mainly for scientific computing, but it was also suitable for business and administ...

Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC-I) In 1951 AD, Dr. John William Mauchly and John Presper Eckert had developed the first general purpose electronic digital computer for commercial users. It was based on the EDVAC design. It could handle both numbers and alphabet characters. It had mercury delay lines for strong programs. A magnetic tape was used for data input and output. It contained 5600 vacuum tubes, 18000 crystal diodes and 300 relays.

Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer (EDSAC) In 1949 AD, Prof. MauriceWilkes and his team developed the first practical stored -program electronic computer at the university of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England. It is called EDSAC. It contained 3000 vacuum tubes and used memory delay lines for memory. The programs were input in the EDSAC by using paper tape and outputs were displayed through the teleprinter (Electromechanical Typewriter). Pic:   Creative Commons   Attribution 2.0 Generic

Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) Dr. John William Mauchly, John presper Eckert and John von Neumann had developed the first stored program computer called Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC). It was based on binary number system. It had stored program, central processor and memory for both data and programs. The memory device used in it was magnetic tape. It contained almost 6000 vacuum tubes and 12000 diodes.

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) Dr, John William Mauchy and John Presper Eckert developed the first general purpose computer, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator at university of pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, USA in 1943 AD. It was 1000 times more faster than other computers.The ENIAC was based on the decimal number and contained 18000 vacuum tubes. It was faster than previous machines. It could perform many complicated arithmetic operations in less than a second.   Creative Commons   Attribution 2.0 Generic

Atanasoft Berry Computer (ABC) A professor of physics and mathematics, Johna Vincent Atanasoft and his graduate student Clifford Berry developed the first electronic digital computer called 'Atanasoff Berry Computer in 1942 AD. Built at Iowa State College (now University).

Harvard Mark-I In 1944, Howard Aiken Prof. of Harvard university and designed and built by IBM, the Havard Mark-1 was a room sized, relay based calculator, it was a electromechanical computer and named as IBM ASCC (Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator). It is also called MARK-I. It was the first automatic machine where decimal number system was used. It was a very giant machine. The machine had 51 foot long camshaft which was 8 feet high and 3 feet wide that synchronised machine's thousands of  parts. It weighed 35 tons and had 500 miles of wires. It had built in programs to handle logarithms and trigonometric functions.       

Z3 Computer The Z3 computer was an electromechanical computer designed by Konard Zuse. The Z3 was completed in Berlin in 1941 AD. It was the worlds first working programmable, fully automatic computing machine. Z3 was built with 2300 relays, Z3 used floating point binary arithmetic and had a 22 bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5-10 Hz. In the Z3 punched cards (films) were used for storing program code and data.   Creative Commons   Attribution 2.0 Generic

Analytical Engine In 1833 A mechanical Engineer and a polymath developed the concept of a programmable computer. He designed a general purpose programmable steam machine called 'Analytic Engine'. It could do mathematical calculations based on given instructions automatically and output could be obtained in the form of printing. According to design the engine would have input unit, storage unit and a central processing unit. This machine was not completed due to immature technology of that time. Modern computers are based on the concept of analytic engine. So, Charles Babbage is considered as the father of computer.

Jacquard's Loom In 1801 AD, a French textile weaver, Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented the first automatic loom that could design the different patterns on woven fabric. The loom contained a deck of different set of punched wooden cards which had many holes on them. In the Jacquard's loom, the presence or absence of each hole in the card physically allows a colored thread to pass or stop by this way the punched card controlled the loom that allowed woven patterns to be made in fabrics. These punched cards with holes led the idea of binary number system i.e. 0 and 1. Punched cards for pattern Jacquard's Loom Jacquard's Loom

Stepped Reckoner Stepped Reckoner was developed by German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz in 1694. It was the modified version of pascaline.It was the first mechanical calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operation that are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.The numbers were moved in steps from one column to other for calculations and for moving the numbers it used a movable carriage system this made long multiplication and division possible.

Pascaline (Pascal's Calculator) In 1642 Blaise Pascal invented a mechanical calculator called Pascaline. It is based on decimal number system. He built 20 Pascalines it consists of series of toothed metal wheels. Each wheel contains the dial having the digits from 0-9 on its circumference. It could perform addition subtraction of numbers upto eight digits.Since it contains mechanical working parts for calculation so it is known as a mechanical calculator. 

Slide Rule The slide rule was invented in 1620 AD by an English mathematician named William Oughtred. It was the first analogue device that worked on the simple principle of logarithm.Slide rule was used by engineers and professional mathematical workers of all generation until pocket calculator was invented. This tool contains two rulers and a cursor.The middle ruler can slide over the outer ruler, by sliding two scales side by side and by noting the number place of the cursor pointing to the value will be the correct answer. It was easy to find the product quotient and other functions simply viewing on the scales.

Napier's Bone John Napier a Scottish mathematician invented Napier's Bone in 1617 AD. The bone is an abacus like device and consists of 11 sets of rods. The ten rods were carved with multiplication of numbers from 0 to 9 these numbers were separated with diagonal lines. It is based on the principle of logarithmic tables. This device was made to perform multiplication and division of numbers by rotating the rods having the numbers in those times . 

Abacus Abacus was used as the arithmetic calculator or early computing device in ancient Babylonia back in 2400 BC.It is made up of a rectangular wooden frame having rods or sticks with freely movable round beads.It has two parts upper and lower in which lower part has 4 beads in each rod and upper part has 2 beads.To calculate, beads are brought near to the bar from upper part.

Computer        A computer is an electronic   device which inputs data processes it and gives result as an output to an output device.Different operations like typing texts, graphic designing , music recording, video and music editing , processing  of different kinds of data(like arithmetical, numerical and logical data).Storing photos, videos and other various types of data. It is also used in hospital for diagnosis of disease, in scientific lab for tests and experiment. It is programmable, user will input necessary data like for example there are two number sets (which is as an input from a user from the computer's input device) 5 and 11 there will be a system of instruction for adding the given numbers and also instruction to add is given from an input device by user, then it processes the data and gives the output in its output device as 16.When the first electromechanical computer named as 'MARK-I' was manufactured in 1944 this star...