Evolution
Of Computing
Introduction
Believe it or not, the world's first computing system was invented some time between 1000 BC and 500 BC. Called the abacus, this tool, known to have first existed in Mesopotamia and China, was an ingenious invention designed to perform speedy calculations through the movement of beads on a series of rods.
Toward the end of the 19th century, the common belief of scientists around the world was that Man had pretty much discovered just about everything. As William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), president of the Royal Society of the UK, put it in the 1890s: "Everything that needed to be invented is now invented." Well, they could not be more wrong. In just over one century, man landed on the moon, individual atoms could be viewed with microscopes, information could be transmitted wirelessly over the air, and you can now buy pizza, books and just about anything without ever leaving your home.
Today, we are blessed with computers of every shape and kind. Watches that can double as music players. Desktop PCs to help us type our documents and plan our schedules. Small and light mobile computers that let us work wherever and whevever. Even smart phones that pull doubt-duty as mini computers.
Hard as it is to believe, the digital computer only began to take shape in the 1940s, and the PCs which have become second nature to us today started their evolution only in the 1970s after the creation of the integrated circuit which was to herald the minitiarization of previously gigantic computers.
Before that computers were huge devices that spanned over 1.5 times the size of a regular HDB flat. It's hard to say if Man himself could have foreseen his own development in such a short span of over half a century. As late as 1977, Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp, said: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. There is no reason for anyone to have a computer in their home." In the end, Man outdid himself.
This Digital Time Capsule takes us through the evolution of computing.
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