From room-filling setups of vacuum tubes and cables to the powerful yet compact smartphones we carry today, electronic computers have utterly transformed technology and society over an incredible arc of innovation.
Let‘s explore the key milestones, groundbreaking inventions and technological leaps that made this computing revolution possible!
The Crucial Innovations of the First Electronic Computers
Mechanical calculating devices have existed since antiquity, but the era of modern electronic computing only emerged in the 20th century when conceptual foundations were established in the 1930s by mathematicians like Alan Turing and engineers like John Atanasoff sought to create fast, programmable devices using electronics for complex computational problems.
The first recognizable electronic computers arose during World War 2 out of various military-funded projects to tackle specialized engineering and codebreaking needs. These early developmental efforts showcased the vast potential of electronic computing, though enormous technological progress was still required to reach general-purpose programmable systems.
Pioneering Early Computers
| Computer | Year | Developers | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atanasoff-Berry Computer | 1942 | John Atanasoff, Clifford Berry | First electronic digital computer using 300 vacuum tubes to solve linear equations |
| Colossus Mark 1/2 | 1943-1945 | Thomas Flowers, Maxwell Newman | Built to decipher Nazi codes during WW2. Used 1500 vacuum tubes and implemented programmable logic |
| Harvard Mark 1 | 1944 | Howard Aiken | Early electro-mechanical computer using complex gearing and shafts. Very limited flexibility |
| ENIAC | 1946 | John Presper Eckert, John Mauchly | General purpose functionality. Could be reprogrammed by changing cables and switches |
| Manchester Mark 1 | 1948 | Frederic Williams, Tom Kilburn | Stored program computer prototype using CRT and magnetic drum memory |
| BINAC | 1949 | J.P. Eckert, John Mauchly | One of the first stored program computers in the US, used magnetic tape for storage |
Table 1: Pioneering electronic and electro-mechanical computers of the 1940s [1]
These earliest computers like the Atanasoff-Berry Computer and ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) remained extremely challenging to reconfigure but offered vastly increased calculation speeds over mechanical devices – demonstrating the feasibility and potential of electronic computing.
However, computers only truly became generalizable tools for widespread applications through the stored program concept…
Stored Program Concepts Lead to Practical, Flexible Systems
A major evolution in computer capabilities arose from the idea of the "stored program" – storing executable code instructions in computer memory rather than having fixed hardcoded logic. This permitted flexible applications without rewiring as programs could modify their own instructions dynamically.
The earliest prototype for demonstrating stored program principles was the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) developed by Frederic C. Williams and Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester in 1948. Though limited in functionality, the SSEM proved the feasibility of stored program computing which laid foundations for an explosion of computer projects by academia and commercial firms [2].
Another milestone stored program system was the Ferranti Mark 1, commercially released in 1951 based directly on the SSEM prototype. It became the world‘s first commercially available general-purpose computer that was delivered to customers. The Ferranti Mark 1 held programs in bleadburn‘s mercury delay line memory and allowed interchangeable programming using pencil and paper tape [3].
By 1953 companies like IBM were selling computers too – the IBM 701 boasted impressive performance for its era, able to execute up to 20000 instructions per second! Critical for business use, magnetic data storage drums and tape drives eliminated costly delay line memory while retaining programmability [4].
Software Advances Also Prove Critical
While hardware obviously enabled computation capabilities, progress in software and programming methods ran in parallel – permitting more efficient and flexible utilization of emerging computer systems.
John Backus and team‘s creation of FORTRAN at IBM in the mid-1950s provided one of the very first high-level programming languages allowing more human-readable code. It abstracted away underlying hardware details and boosted programmers‘ ability to write complex scientific and engineering applications [5].
Compiler programs that translated such high-level code into specific hardware-executable machine code also enabled vastly improved programming productivity relative to coding in raw hexadecimal or binary representations.
Operating systems (OS) software for managing system resources likewise gradually developed during the 1950s, driven by collaborations between research institutions and vendors:
"Computer users in the 1950‘s began asking for more convenience and reliability than batch processing could provide…This led…to the notion of sharing computer time. If users shared the computer, then it would need software for scheduling users and running their programs for them. This monitor concept developed into the first operating systems." [- Encyclopedia Britannica]
Examples like the Atlas Supervisor for the Manchester University Atlas machine increased system interactivity and ability to implement concurrent tasks – laying OS foundations adopted by commercial systems [6].
Integrated Circuits Enable Performance Explosions
Through the 1950s, computer capabilities and adoption saw remarkable grown from the earliest 1940s electronic computing efforts. However speed, storage and reliability remained constrained by vacuum tube and discrete transistor limitations along with the high costs of these components.
With the invention of the integrated circuit (IC) in 1958 by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, the groundwork was laid for exponential leaps in electronic systems. By integrating and interconnecting hundreds of transistors as well as passive components together on tiny silicon dies, vast increases in component density, efficiency and manufacturing scalability reached economically feasible levels [7].
Where earlier computer processors operated in the few thousand instructions per second range, the smaller, faster ICs enabled 10s of thousands of instructions per second by the mid-1960s across machines like the IBM System/360, then into the millions IPS by the early 1970s with systems like the CDC 6600 outpacing earlier designs by over 1000X! [8]
Processor Speed Growth
| Era | Typical Processor Speed | Feature Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~1960 | 10,000s instructions per second | Individual transistors | Systems like IBM 1620, 7090 based on discrete transistors |
| 1965-1970 | 100,000s IPS | 10 micron ICs | Minicomputers like PDP-8 powered by early ICs |
| 1975-1980 | 1 Million+ IPS | 3 micron ICs | Supercomputers e.g Cray-1 pushing multi-million IPS performance |
| 1985-1990 | 10 Million+ IPS | 1 micron ICs | Microprocessors reaching 10 MIPS scale |
Table 2: Growth of processor speeds enabled by integrated circuit advances
Besides delivering exponential speed increases, ICs also allowed similarly massive expansions of computer memory and storage capacities critical for solving growing data manipulation needs. External storage transitioned from magnetic tape to faster hard drives and dense removable disks. The amount of memory addressable in a single computer climbed from 10s of kilobytes in the 1960s to 100s of megabytes by the 1980s!
Networking technology likewise accelerated – permitting mainframes and minicomputers to share data and peripherals. Local Area Networks offered increasing efficiency gains as well as gateways to wider national and global connectivity.
The Present and Future Evolution of Computers
The incredible trajectory of computer advancement fueled by electronics and IC miniaturization continues unabated into present times. Today‘s smartphones pack as much processing power as military supercomputers from 30 years ago!
From personal assistants like Siri on the iPhone to recommender systems behind Amazon‘s retail engine and the machine learning models powering self-driving cars – modern computers enable automation and intelligence feats impossible just a decade or two ago.
Looking ahead, various innovations around quantum computing, DNA data storage, cloud analytics and AI ‘edge‘ processing seem poised to unleash the next era of technological transformations. However, all future breakthroughs will continue building upon the pioneering foundations established across decades of computer R&D – from Babbage and Lovelace‘s mechanical contraptions to feats of engineering like ENIAC and the architects of our modern stored program concepts.
The electronic computer space still has immense room for human creativity – are you up for the challenge?
