History of Computers – Lecture Review

These flashcards cover major milestones, inventors, technologies, and generations discussed in the lecture on the history and evolution of computers.

What ancient device used carved notches to record numbers and quantities?

The tally stick.

Which calculating device invented around 3000 BC uses upper and lower decks of beads?

The abacus.

Who created ‘Napier’s Bones,’ ivory sticks marked 0-9 to simplify multiplication?

John Napier.

Which 17th-century instrument, based on logarithms, was used by NASA engineers for the Apollo missions?

The slide rule, invented by William Oughtred in 1630.

Who built the first mechanical calculator in 1623?

Wilhelm Schickard.

What was Blaise Pascal’s mechanical adding machine called?

The Pascaline (Arithmetic Machine).

Which 1801 invention used punched cards to control a loom and inspired later computer input methods?

The Jacquard Loom by Joseph Marie-Jacquard.

Name the two unfinished 19th-century machines designed by Charles Babbage.

The Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine.

Why is Charles Babbage often called the "Father of Modern Computers"?

He designed the Analytical Engine, which contained concepts of stored memory, a calculating mill, and programmable punched cards.

Who is considered the first computer programmer (1843) for her notes on the Analytical Engine?

Ada Augusta Lovelace Byron.

Which 1874 invention by Christopher Latham Sholes became a standard for text input?

The typewriter.

What electromechanical machine did Herman Hollerith create for the 1890 U.S. census?

The Hollerith Tabulator.

Which electronic components characterized first-generation computers (1940-1956)?

Vacuum tubes.

Who built the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), the first electronic computer (1939-1942)?

John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry.

What was the purpose of the 1943 Colossus computer?

It was the world’s first programmable electronic digital computer, used for codebreaking.

Which Harvard-IBM collaboration produced the electromechanical Mark I in 1944?

Howard Aiken led the project.

Which pioneering computer scientist found the first literal software "bug" in the Mark I?

Grace Hopper.

What does ENIAC stand for, and who developed it (1943–1946)?

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer; developed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr.

Which 1945 design by John von Neumann introduced the stored-program concept?

EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer).

What was the first fully electronic digital computer built in the U.S. in 1951?

UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer).

Which device replaced vacuum tubes in second-generation computers (1956-1963)?

The transistor.

Name the high-level programming languages introduced in the late 1950s.

FORTRAN (1957) and COBOL (1959).

What 1962 title is credited as the first interactive computer game?

SpaceWar!

What technology defines third-generation computers (1964-1971)?

The integrated circuit (IC).

Which influential mid-1960s computer families included the PDP-8 and IBM 360?

Third-generation minicomputers and mainframes using integrated circuits.

What was the first microprocessor released in 1971, and how many transistors did it contain?

The Intel 4004, containing 2,250 transistors.

Which early operating system (1976) and Apple computer (1983) marked personal computing advances in the 4th generation?

CP/M (operating system) and the Apple Lisa (personal computer).

What IBM chess-playing computer defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in 1996?

Deep Blue.

List the four key hardware evolutions over 50 years: vacuum tube → ___ → ___ → microchip.

Transistor → Integrated Circuit.

Which 1990s operating system provided the first broadly accepted GUI for IBM-compatible PCs?

Windows 95.

Name two trends that characterized early 21st-century computing.

Great increases in speed/storage & widespread wireless networking (e.g., PDAs, cell-phone/PDA combos).

What does VLSI stand for, and into what did it evolve in 5th-generation computers?

Very Large Scale Integration; it evolved into ULSI (Ultra Large Scale Integration).

Which fields exemplify Artificial Intelligence applications in 5th-generation systems?

Robotics, neural networks, game playing, expert systems, and natural-language processing.

Match each generation with its core technology: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th.

Vacuum tubes; Transistors; Integrated Circuits; VLSI Microprocessors; ULSI & AI/Parallel processing.

According to the lecture, what challenge is posed to students about the future of computers?

Use imagination to predict developments in two years, twenty years, and the next century.