It is in 1822 when Charles Babbage and English mathematician, started to
develop a project of what may then become a computer. Through the years other
scientists continued working in technological advances related to computers.
And the results are that during almost the last 100 years, the man had viewed
how initial huge and limited computers, only used by few, started to improve in
size, weight and functions and how today computers are massively used and offer
consumers many incredible and really modern utilities.
It is almost impossible to define a specific inventor of the computer or
which is the 1st well-functioning computer. It may be consider that
the addition of different ideas and the contribution of different inventors had
contributed to create many types of computers through the last decades. USA,
Britain and Germany can be the countries that had launched most important achievements.
COMPUTER DEVELOPMENTS
1st GENERAL-PURPOSE
MECHANICAL COMPUTER CONCEPT
1837: “The Analytical Engine”. An artifact that contained an Arithmetic Logic Unit,
basic flow control, and integrated memory, started to be developed, but because
of money the project could not be finished (Charles Babbage’s work).
1910:
A
portion of the “Analytical Engine” was completed in Britain and it could
perform basic calculations.
1st ELECTRO-MECHANICAL
BINARY PROGRAMMABLE COMPUTER
1936-1938: “The Z1”. 1st FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMABLE COMPUTER, created in
Germany.
1st ELECTRONIC
DIGITAL COMPUTERS
1937-1942: “The
ABC”, Atanasoff-Berry Computer. 1ST ELECTRONIC
AND AUTHOMATIC DIGITAL COMPUTER. It used vacuum tubes for
digital computation including binary math and Boolean logic and had no CPU. It
was developed in USA.
1943-1946: “The ENIAC”. 1st
FULLY FUNCTIONAL DIGITAL COMPUTER. It occupied
about 1,800 square feet, used about 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed nearly 50
tons. It was created in USA.
1st
ELECTRONIC DIGITAL ALL-PROGRAMMABLE COMPUTER
1943: “The COLOSSUS”. A
machine created to assist the British code breakers to read encrypted messages
written by the Germans.
1st STORED
PROGRAM ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS
1949: “The EDSAC”. 1st COMPUTER THAT RAN A
GRAPHICAL COMPUTER GAME, called “Baby”.
It was created in Britain.
1950-1951: “The UNIVAC 1101 or ERA 1101”. 1st COMPUTER CAPABLE OF STORING AND RUNNING A
PROGRAM FROM MEMORY. It landed and was commercialized in the USA.
COMMERCIAL DIGITAL COMPUTER
1950: “The Z4”. Developed
in Switzerland. It was electromechanical, not electronic. It had 32 bits of
memory with special program construction unit.
1st PERSONAL
COMPUTER “PC”
1953: “The
701 IBM IDPM”. 1st COMMERCIAL SCIENTIFIC COMPUTER. 20 units sold ever. IBM
appeared in the world of computers. Today it would be considered as a printing
programmable calculator.
1st COMPUTER
WITH RAM
1955: “The Whirlwind machine”. 1st DIGITAL COMPUTER WITH
MAGNETIC CORE RAM AND REAL-TIME GRAPHICS. Massachusetts Institute of
Technology introduced this incredibly innovative computer.
1st TRANSISTOR
COMPUTER
1956: “The
TX-O”. 1st TRANSISTORIZED EXPERIMENTAL COMPUTER, proven at MIT,
in USA.
1st BANK
INDUSTRY COMPUTER
1959:
“The ERMA
AND MICR”. electronic recording method of accounting and magnetic ink
character reading.
1st MINICOMPUTER
1963: “The
UM-1NKh”. Produced in Leningrad.
1ST PC
COMMERCIALY REALLY AVAILABLE
1971: “The
KENBAK-1”. 40 units sold ever.
1st COMMERCIAL
NON-KIT PERSONAL COMPUTER BASED ON A MICROPROCESSOR
1973: “The
MICRAL”. Used the Intel 8008 processor.
1st COMPUTER
TO USE THE DESKTOP METAPHOR AND MOUSE-DRIVEN GRAPHICAL USER INTERFASE
1974: “The
XEROX ALTO”.
INCLUDED A FUNCTIONAL COMPUTER, DISPLAY
AND MOUSE, it operated as many
computers today, USING WINDOWS, MENUS
AND ICONS as an interface to the operating system. Really innovative, but
it was never sold.
1st LAPTOPS or PORTABLE COMPUTERS
1975: “The IBM 5100”. Weighed
55 pounds, had a 5 inch CRT display, tape drive, 1.9MHz PALM processor, and
64KB of RAM.
1981: “The OOSBORNE I”. Was
the 1st really portable computer because it weighed 24.5 pounds, with
a 5-inch display, 64 KB of memory, two 5 1/4" floppy drives, ran the CP/M
2.2 operating system and it included a modem.
1986: “The IBM PC Laptop Convertible”. Weighed 12 pounds.
1st
APPLE COMPUTER SOLD
1976: “The
APPLE I”.
1st
NOTEBOOK WITH AN INTAGRATED CD-ROM
1994: “The
IBM THINKPAD 775CD
1st
MULTIMEDIA COMPUTER
1992: “M2500 XL/2 and M4020 SX”,
computers based on the MPC standard. Released by Tandy Radio Shack.
In the last decades the world had witness and used many and many types
and models of computers. Development of computer technologies runs fast and
would not stop, so for future generations, first computers may seem kind of
prehistoricals!
BY:
ALONSO PADILLA
Sebastian Figari
After the “boom” of the internet
millions of web pages were created, finding the page you were looking for was
very difficult and this was one of the main drawbacks of the internet. On 1996
as part of a research project for the Stanford University, Larry Page and
Sergey Brin wanted to develop the technology to integrate a universal digital
library, making the World Wide Web to be integrated. They first developed “Page
Rank” which was the algorithm that they will later use in Google. These two
friends were developing a search engine that scored the web pages according to
what the user typed and showed the best results, this was how they were
building Google. Later, on 1998 they formally named their company Google.Inc.
By the end of that year Google Beta (what means it was still being tested)
reached an index of 60 million papers.
 |
| Diagram showing the algorithm and proportion used by Google. |
Google was the favorite search engine
beating other engines considered “overloaded” like Yahoo or AOL. In 1999 the
company established its headquarters at Palo Alto, California. With its simple
design Google attracted millions of users making it the most visited web page.
On 2000 Google created GoogleAds to start earning more money in order to
develop more services. Google was already an internet giant and by the beginning
of the 2000´s they started to offer new services like google images, gmail,
google maps, etc. They also bought companies like YouTube and Picasa, by 2007
Google was the most valuable company in the world and had a value of 66,000
million dollars. Nowadays Google is one of the biggest software company and is
still developing new products such as Google Glass. It’s clear that Google revolution
the internet and helped to define our technology.
Sebastian Figari
Bill Gates & Microsoft
After dropping from Harvard University
Gates and his friend Paul Allen started a program for a microcomputer for their
just founded company “Traf-O-Data”. After releasing the program and having their
first agreement with another company, the company Microsoft was founded with
Bill Gates as the CEO. They were just another little company that started on a
garage, but they had an enormous vision; one PC in each home of the US. In 1980
with the help of another friend of Gates, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft entered to
the Operating system (OS) business. IBM puts on contact with Microsoft and a
year later they were selling Microsoft´s OS on their computers.
After this, Microsoft was begging
to rapidly win popularity. They needed to upgrade their OS so that more people
were able to use it. This is why on 1985 they release Windows 1.0. With the
year, as they earned popularity, they developed new and more effective OS´s.
However, Gates was scared of new competition, who could replace the popularity
of Microsoft. With the arrival of the internet Microsoft was threatened by
other companies who were gaining popularity especially on the internet
navigators. Microsoft played dirty with other companies for what they were
taken to trial and the company almost was divided but the sanction was
considered to be too hard. After their cheat on their monopoly Microsoft
remained glorious as they eliminated other companies with no punishment. With
not so strong competition and having the monopoly of computers Microsoft became
the biggest software maker while Gates became the richest man of the planet.
Gates, with his unpredictable behaviors
and business tactics was able to take his garage company into one of the
largest companies in the world. He was the responsible to the world of
technology we now have and all because of his wit and strong character. With
the help of some friends he was able to build Microsoft and beat his starting
objective: “one computer in each home”
YouTube
YouTube is one of the most “new”
successful companies around the World as it was just founded in February of
2005. It was initiated and founded by three really young persons at that time,
Steven Shih Chen (34 years-old now), Chad Hurley (35 years-old now) and Jawed
Karim (33 years-old now). These tree entrepreneurs (a person who have the
desire and skills to start up a business) worked on PayPal before, a company
which concentrates on internet economic transactions and making business via
internet so that should be the actual reason for how they were able to
entertain people generating a whole worldwide video channel, and making money
via it without charging everyone.
More specifically, YouTube is a web page which has far
away more than a billion videos and has monstrous numbers like more than a
billion user visits each month or a total of more than four billion hours of
video being watched by month. In fact this company’s work is being a portal for
videos of whatever a user (it doesn't cost anything to become a user) want’s
to, the web itself contains videos from someone at a zoo watching animals
(which is the actual first video of the whole YouTube, “Me at the zoo”) to music
videos or sports highlights.
Now it’s pretty simple how they get money, having such
statistics of views and users even per month, it’s obvious that the whole World
would see any impact showed at this site. That’s why any company in the World
would love to make and have their publicity imposed in this website so the
World can see it and choose their product. With this it becomes a competence
around the World of who can get the post advertising in YouTube (of course the
one who pays better), having millionaire contracts, YouTube imposes skippable advertising
of many companies and brands in many of their videos. This is able as well
after Google bought this company in 2006, as we can realize that Google’s
advertising engines and relations are all imposed here as well so in the end
working as a team, both franchises are able to expose to the World different
products.
Another way in which is in formal business channel, for
example BBC. The BBC had a millionaire contract with YouTube in 2007 in which
both part conclude in formalizing three BBC channels which would have different
things such as entertainment and information (BBC’s work). The British company
had the desire to do so as YouTube guaranteed the fact that they would reach
over 70 million views per month and that would definitely mean a massive
publicity for the company and all their sequels exposed here and in their own
website.
Tito Vasquez
Facebook
Facebook
is another of the “new” most successful companies around the World as it was
founded in 2004 and has revenue (Income less added value- the price of its
cost) of 5.1 billion dollars. It was founded by five Harvard University students at first
as just a simple social network around the University with the purpose of
relating every student and also of helping in agrouping different group
projects. But then it expanded to other Boston Universities and started to
spread through other universities, then to a whole bunch of high school
students after then every single user which proves that he’s at least 13
years-old. The founder which had the most important role within the company and
still ownes the enterprise is Mark Zuckerberg (29 years-old), after his
Facebook incomes he is considered between the 100 wealthiest persons in the
whole World, owning $13.3 billion.
Facebook as a website is an actual social
network which has over a billion users. By being on Facebook, these users are
able to relate with other users by chatting, exposing photos, commenting those,
exploring others profiles (as everyone is able to use a profile in which they
expose their personal information an photos of himself or whatever they like),
join groups of their like, create groups of work in which they can show works
and propose ideas, become a fan and follow different celebrities posts, etc. Here
they can expand their friend relations and go further, laugh, enjoy, play games,
in other words it’s become in this modern times, a complement for personal
life, a place to make up plans, etc.
In a very similar way to YouTube,
Facebook’s money is made almost fully by advertising. It’s clear that if there’s
over a billion of users around Facebook, there’s an enormous global market to
show your products. So there as well are millionaire contracts of advertising
from massive companies around the World like Apple or Adidas, which invest
their money on having a spot on Facebook’s page so if one user is using his
Facebook, he would see somewhere in the page a Apple publicity. He may not be
interested but their a billion more chances of people being interested so it’s
a huge business, Facebook is a “market” for everyone to earn a name for their
product.
Another way in which Facebook earns
money is through games, the games pay lots of money to Facebook for their game
to appear. For example a now very popular game, Candy Crush, payed Facebook a
lot of money to impose their game. Within this game if someone likes it really
much, he would be interested in buying different products or features within
the game itself to upgrade their possibilities, and with that the company earns
a certain amount of money and also Facebook earns a certain percentage as part
of the contract.
Tito Vasquez
