Tips N Tricks For PC

1924: IBM’s First Headquarters Building:-

In 1896 Harman Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company which, in 1911, merged with several other companies to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. In 1924 the company’s general manager, Thomas J. Watson, changed its name to International Business Machine Corporation and moved into this building(picture). Watson ran IBM until a few months before his death at age 82 in 1956. His son, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. lead IBM into the age of computers.

1904: Dr. John V. Atanasoff:- PH11
In 1939 Dr. John V. Atanasoff, a professor at Lowa State University, and graduate student Clifford E. Berry as - sembled a prototype of the ABC (for Atanasoff Berry computer) to cut the time physics students spent making complicated calculation. A working model was finished in 1942. Atanasoff's decisions-to use and electronic medium with vacuum tubes, the base-2 numbering system, and memory and logic circuits- set the direction for the modern computer. Ironically, Lowa State failed to patent the device and IBM, when contacted about the ABC, airily responded, “IBM will never be interested in an electronic computing machine.” A 1973 federal court officially credited Atanasoff with the invention of the automatic electronic digital computer.

During the years 1935 through 1938, Dr. Atanasoff had begun to think about a machine that could reduce the time it took for him and his physics students to make long, complicated mathematical calculations. The ABC was, in fact , born of frustration. Dr. Atanasoff later explained that one night in the winter of 1937, “nothing was happening” with respect to creating an electronic device that could help solve physics problems. His “despair grew”, so he got in his car and drove for several hours across the state of Lowa and then across the Mississippi River. Finally he stopped at an Illinois roadhouse for a drink. It was in this roadhouse that Dr. Atanasoff overcame his creative block and conceived ideas that would lay the foundation for the evolution of the modern computer.


The first electromechanical computer, the Mark I, was completed by Harvard University professor Howard Miken in 1944 under the sponsorship of IBM. A monstrous 51 feet long and 8 feet high, the Mark, I was essentially a serial collection of electromechanical calculators and was in many ways similar to Babbage’s analytical machine. (Aiken was unaware of Babbage’s work, though.) The Mark I was a significant improvement but IBM’s management still felt electromechanical computers would never replace punched card equipment.

Dr. John w. Mauchly (middle) collaborated with J. Presper Eckert, Jr. (foreground) of the University of Pennsylvania to develop a machine that would compute trajectory tables for the U.S. Army. (This was sorely needed; during World War II, only 20% of  all bombs came within 1000 feet of their targets.) The end product, the first fully operational electronic computer, was completed in 1946 and named the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). A thousand times faster than its electromechanical predecessors, it occupied 15000 square feet of floor space and weighed 30 tons. The ENIAC could do 5000 additions per minute and 500 multiplications per minute. Unlike computers of today that operate in binary, it operated in decimal and required 10 vacuum tubes to represent one decimal digit.
The ENIAC’s use of vacuum tubes signaled a major breakthrough. (Legend has it that the ENIAC’s 18000 vacuum tubes dimmed the lights of Philadelphia whenever it was activated.) Even before the ENIAC was finished, it was used in the secret research that went into building the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos.

The first generation of computers (1951-1959), characterized by the use of vacuum tubes, is generally thought to have begun with the introduction of the first commercially viable electronic digital computer. The Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC I for short), developed by Mauchly and Eckert for the Remington Rand Corporation, was installed in the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1951. Later that year, CBS News gave the UNIVAC I notional exposure when it correctly predicted Dwight Eisenhower’s victory over Adlai Stevenson in the presidential election with only 5% of the votes counted. Mr. Eckert is shown here instructing news anchor Walter Cronkite in the use of the UNIVAC I.


Not until the success of the UNIVAC I did IBM make a commitment to develop and market computer. IBM’s first entry into the commercial computer market was the IBM 701 in 1953. However, the IBM 650 (shown here), introduced in 1954, is probably the reason IBM enjoys such a healthy share of today’s computer market. Unlike some of its competitors, the IBM 650 was designed as a logical upgrade to existing punched card of 50-a figure greater them the number of installed computers in the entire nation at that time. IBM actually installed 1000. The rest is history.

Dubbed “Amazing Grace” by her many admirers, Gr. Grace Hopper was widely respected as the driving force behind COBOL, the most popular programming language, and a champion of standardized programming language that are hardware independent. In 1959 Dr. Hopper led an effort that laid the foundation for the development of COBOL. She also created a compiler that enabled COBOL to run on many types of computers. Her reason: “Why start from scratch with every program you write when a computer could be developed to do a lot of the basic work for you over and over again?”
To Dr. Hopper’s long list of honors, awards and accomplishments, add the fact that she found the first “bug” in a computer– a real one. She repaired the Mark II by removing a moth that was caught in Relay Number II. From that day on, programmer has debugged software by ferreting out its bugs, or errors, in programming syntax or logic Official U.S. Navy photo.


    The invention of the Transistor signaled the start of the second generation of computer (1959-1964). Transistorized computers were more powerful, more reliable, less expensive, and cooler to operate than their vacuum-tubed predecessors. Honeywell (its Honeywell is shown here) established it self and a major player in the second generation of computers. Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, CDC, and Honeywell- IBM’s biggest competitors during the 1960s and early 1970s- became known as the BUNCH (the first initial of each name). 

    During the 1950s and early 1960s, only the largest companies could afford the six and seven digit price tags of mainframe computers. In 1963, Digital Equipment Corporation introduced the PDP-8 (Shown here). It is generally considered the first successful minicomputer (a nod, some claim, to the playful spirit behind the 1960s miniskirt). At a mere $18,000, the transistor-based PDP-8 was an instant hit. It confirmed the tremendous demand for small computers for business and scientific applications. By 1971 more than 25 firms were manufacturing minicomputers, although Digital and Data General Corporation took and early lead in their sale and manufacture.

    The third generation was characterized by computers built around integrated circuits. Of these, some historians consider IBM’s System 360 line of computers, introduced in 1964, the single most important innovation in the history of computers. System 360 was conceiver as a family of computers with upward compatibility; when a company outgrew one model it could move up to the next model without worrying about converting its data. System 360 and other lines built around integrated circuits made all previous computers obsolete, but the advantages were so great that most users wrote the costs of conversion off as the price of progress.

    In the early 1960s, Dr. Thomas Kurtz and Dr. John Kemeny of Dartmouth College began developing a programming language that a beginner could learn and use quickly. Their work culminated in 1964 with BASIC. Over the years, BASIC gained widespread pop-language for both business and  scientific applications. From micros to mainframes, BASIC is supported

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