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Development of Personal Computers

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The Development of Personal Computers The history of the computer goes back hundreds of years. From the abacus through the modern era the evolution of computers has involved many innovative individuals. It was out of this desire to innovate many fascinating tabulating machines developed. The modern computer, therefore, evolved from an amalgamation of the genius of many individuals over a long period of history. Many people shaped the world by making the efforts to develop technology. An early counting machine (and relative of the computer) can be traced back to 3000 BC. This device is known as the abacus. Although ancient, the abacus is not archaic. It is still used in math education and in some businesses for making …show more content…

She was among the only female mathematicians of her time ("Computer"). Her suggestion that punched cards be used as a type of simple programming for the Analytical Engine earned her the title " the first computer programmer" (Long and Long 35C). In addition, the United States Department of Defense honored Byron by naming its high-level security program "Ada", in 1977 ("Byron"). In 1890 a man named Herman Hollerith devised a machine to speed up census taking (Long and Long 35C). Hollerith was born in 1860 in Buffalo, New York, and was educated at Columbia University ("Hollerith, Herman"). With the aid of a professor he got a job helping with tabulation of the 1880 census, a process that took eight years (Long and Long 35C). After experiencing the 1880 census Herman devised a "Tabulating Machine" in order to speed the 1890 census. This machine used cards encoded with data in the form of punched holes. The machine read the punched holes after they were passed through electrical contacts ("Hollerith, Herman"). "Closed circuits, which indicated hole positions, could then be selected and counted" (qtd. in "Hollerith, Herman"). "Hollerith's Tabulating Machine" cut the time it took to do the census to under three years and saved the Census Bureau 5 million dollars (Long and Long 35C). In addition, the machine represents the first use of punched cards as a set of operation instructions, an idea originating with Jaquard and perpetuated by the

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