E- LEARNING ASSIGNMENT PART 1. (the invention of computers)

There are many inventors of the computer. The similar ideas of scientist and engineers led to the invention of the computer. The countries that were involved are Germany, USA and Great Britain. The ideas were carried out during the 1930s – 1940s

In Germany, Konrad Zuse hit upon the idea of building a program-controlled calculating machine when he had to deal with extensive calculations in statics. In 1935, he started to design a program-controlled calculating machine in his parents’ home. It was based on the binary system and used punched tape for the program input. The Z1 was the first such machine to be built between 1936 and 1938 but it was not fully operational. In 1940, he decided to build a successor of Z l and completed the machine that was the first freely programmable program-controlled automatic calculator that was operational in the world.

Similarly, several developments were going on in the USA at the same time. In 1939, IBM started to build a program-controlled relay calculator on the basis of a concept that Howard H. Aiken had put forward in 1937.

However, it was not Aiken's and Stibitz's relay calculators that were decisive for the development of the universal computer but the ENIAC. Extensive ballistic computations were carried out there for the U.S. Army during World War II with the aid of a copy of the analog Differential Analyzer, which had been designed by Vannevar Bush.

Mauchly had adopted John Vincent Atanasoff's idea for an electronic computer. Atanasoff had developed the ABC special-purpose computer at the Iowa State College to solve systems of linear equations. Mauchly had viewed the ABC in June 1940. John Presper Eckert, a young electronic engineer at the Moore School, was responsible for the brilliant engineering of the new ENIAC. The work began on 31 May 1943 with funding from the U.S. Army. In February 1946, successful program runs were demonstrated.

John von Neumann, an influential mathematician, turned his attention to the ENIAC in the summer of 1944. While this computer was being built, von Neumann and the ENIAC team drew up a plan for a successor to the ENIAC. The biggest problem with the ENIAC was that its memory was too small. Eckert suggested a mercury delay-line memory which would increase memory capacity by a factor of 100 compared with the electronic memory used in the ENIAC.

 In meetings with von Neumann, the idea of a stored-program, universal machine evolved. Memory was to be used to store the program in addition to data. This would enable the machine to execute conditional branches and change the flow of the program. The concept of a computer in the modern sense of the word was born.

In spring 1944, von Neumann wrote his "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" (Electronic Discrete Variable Computer) which described the stored-program, universal computer. This EDVAC report was originally intended for internal use only but it became the "bible" for computer pioneers throughout the world in the 1940s and 1950s.

The first two computers featuring the von Neumann architecture were not built in America but in Great Britain. On 21 June 1948, Frederic C. Williams of the University of Manchester managed to run the prototype of the Manchester Mark I, and thus proved it was possible to build a stored-program, universal computer. The first really functional von Neumann computer was built by Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge University. This machine called EDSAC first ran a program on 6 May 1949 computing a table of square numbers.
 

Without computers, many works have to be done by hand and it would take a very long time to do calculations and research without the computers.  The most fascinating aspect  of a computer is how the programmes work  in a computer  and  how it work in doing calculations  efficiently. It will help to save time and lessen people's work burden. It is truly commendable that such ideas were thought of .