History of Computing Hardware

The history of computing hardware is the record of the ongoing effort to make computer hardware faster, cheaper, and capable of storing more data.

Computing hardware evolved from machines that needed separate manual action to perform each arithmetic operation, to punched card machines, and then to stored-program computers. The history of stored-program computers relates first to computer architecture, that is, the organization of the units to perform input and output, to store data and to operate as an integrated mechanism . Secondly, this is a history of the electronic components and mechanical devices that comprise these units. Finally, we describe the continuing integration of 21st-century supercomputers, networks, personal devices, and integrated computers/communicators into many aspects of today's society. Increases in speed and memory capacity, and decreases in cost and size in relation to compute power, are major features of the history. As all computers rely on digital storage, and tend to be limited by the size and speed of memory, the history of computer data storage is tied to the development of computers.

Overview

Before the development of the general-purpose computer, most calculations were done by humans. Mechanical tools to help humans with digital calculations were then called "calculating machines", by proprietary names, or even as they are now, calculators. It was those humans who used the machines who were then called computers; there are pictures of enormous rooms filled with desks at which computers (often young women) used their machines to jointly perform calculations, as for instance, aerodynamic ones required for in aircraft design.

Calculators have continued to develop, but computers add the critical element of conditional response and larger memory, allowing automation of both numerical calculation and in general, automation of many symbol-manipulation tasks. Computer technology has undergone profound changes every decade since the 1940s.

Computing hardware has become a platform for uses other than mere computation, such as process automation, electronic communications, equipment control, entertainment, education, etc. Each field in turn has imposed its own requirements on the hardware, which has evolved in response to those requirements, such as the role of the touch screen to create a more intuitive and natural user interface.

Aside from written numerals, the first aids to computation were purely mechanical devices which required the operator to set up the initial values of an elementary arithmetic operation, then manipulate the device to obtain the result. A sophisticated (and comparatively recent) example is the slide rule in which numbers are represented as lengths on a logarithmic scale and computation is performed by setting a cursor and aligning sliding scales, thus adding those lengths. Numbers could be represented in a continuous "analog" form, for instance a voltage or some other physical property was set to be proportional to the number. Analog computers, like those designed and built byVannevar Bush before World War II were of this type. Numbers could be represented in the form of digits, automatically manipulated by a mechanical mechanism. Although this last approach required more complex mechanisms in many cases, it made for greater precision of results.

Both analog and digital mechanical techniques continued to be developed, producing many practical computing machines. Electrical methods rapidly improved the speed and precision of calculating machines, at first by providing motive power for mechanical calculating devices, and later directly as the medium for representation of numbers. Numbers could be represented by voltages or currents and manipulated by linear electronic amplifiers. Or, numbers could be represented as discrete binary or decimal digits, and electrically controlled switches and combinational circuits could perform mathematical operations.

The invention of electronic amplifiers made calculating machines much faster than their mechanical or electromechanical predecessors.Vacuum tube (thermionic valve) amplifiers gave way to solid state transistors, and then rapidly to integrated circuits which continue to improve, placing millions of electrical switches (typically transistors) on a single elaborately manufactured piece of semi-conductor the size of a fingernail. By defeating the tyranny of numbers, integrated circuits made high-speed and low-cost digital computers a widespread commodity.

World's First Computer Information and Images

The world's first electronic digital computer

If someone were to ask you to name the world's oldest computer, you'd probably mention The Babbage Engine, Konrad Zuse's Z3 or  The UK's Colossus.  If you were asked when humanity built the first computing device, your estimates wouldn't go higher than a few hundred years or so.
What if I told you that there exists a computer system that was operational almost two thousand years ago?

Discovery

Sometime around 1900, a wreck was discovered off the coast of the island of Antikythera by sponge divers. It was quite the archaeological find. Artifacts of all shapes and sizes were pulled from the wreckage in a salvage operation that took place over the course of about two years- coins, busts, marble sculptures, even a full sized, nearly intact bronze statue.(Wikipedia)

Among this wreckage, there was found something of an anomaly. It was an intricate mechanical construction that  would baffle historians and archaeologists for almost a full century before its actual purpose was determined. It was an unprecedented find- a device bearing this degree of complexity had never been seen before, and has not been discovered since.

Research

A 3d model of the machine's front gears and dials from the AMRP's website

This device, which would come to be known as the Antikythera Mechanism, was at first thought to be the world's first clock. That was just speculation though, which would soon be blown out of the water. In 2005, several teams of researchers used some rather advanced techniques to examine the mechanism- from
digital imaging to cutting-edge X-ray technology.
What they discovered would turn our perception of the ancient world directly on its head. Certainly, we knew that peoples such as the Egyptians and Greeks were capable of some marvellous feats of engineering and innovation. Certainly, we were aware that they utilized many techniques that we still use today. But this...this was something else. 

In 2006, members of The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project organized a conference in Athens to discuss their findings. They would release more data in 2008/2009, with a third conference planned for Spring 2011. 

The First Analog Computer

An attempt to reconstruct The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera Mechanism is an incredibly complex mechanical computer, the first mechanical computingAn attempt to reconstruct The Antikythera Mechanism device ever created- or so we think. Given how intricately and flawlessly designed this artifact is, a lot of people are of the mind that it might have actually had predecessors which we have yet to discover. This particular machine has been dated to somewhere between 150 and 200 BC.

But what did it do? And what was its purpose? 
It was evidently designed to track the movement of the planets, and functioned as a sort of mechanical calendar. It was complicated enough that it even had an instruction manual of sorts on the back. Its functions included predicting solar eclipses and keeping track of the four year cycle of the Olympic games. There might have been more, too- but we may never know. 
This archaic computer had somewhere from thirty to "as many as seventy two gears(A degree of complexity comparable to many ninteenth century clocks), with teeth formed through equilateral triangles. When a date was entered via a crank (now lost), the mechanism calculated the position of the Sun, Moon, or other astronomical information such as the location of other planets. Since the purpose was to position astronomical bodies with respect to the celestial sphere, with reference to the observer's position on the surface of the Earth"(Wikipedia)

Final Word

And there you have it. The first computer ever constructed. A far cry from the automatic, electronic devices of today, but hey-
everything's gotta have a starting point. Looks like this might just be one more thing we owe the Greeks for inventing.

It's rather exciting, isn't it? The idea that all of these ancient civilizations may have been well more advanced than any of us could ever expect. If something like the Antikythera mechanism was discovered on the ocean floor, just think about what else might be out there, simply waiting for us to find it.

World's First Computer

The "ENIAC" - Worlds First Computer