Computer History - Term Paper Example

The classification is based on certain periods of time the computers was improved during. Every generation is characterized by the new invention. The first period is 1937 – 1946. It is characterized by the creation of the first computer. It was electronic digital devise created by Clifford Berry and John V. Atanasoff. The machine was named after its creators - Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). Certainly, this computer and other machines created in its image and likeness were not perfect, they could not perform complicated tasks and had no operating system.

There is an interesting fact that when one of the first computers was switched on, the nearby regions were out of power for some time. The second period lasted from 1947 till 1962. During this period the computers were improved as vacuum tubes was changed for transistors. These computers were already used in the business world and there were many programming languages created for them. Computers became powerful and capable of performing different tasks at once. Third generation is 1963-present.

It is characterized the by the creation of integrated circuit. This improvement made the computers more compact, gave them more power and hundreds of different functions including the availability to run several programs at once. Microsoft Disk Operating System was developed in 1980 and the operating system Windows that is used now was born in 1990s. In 1980 Japanese experts created a ten-year plan. They planned to develop the new generation of computers with new functions. “This was an interesting plan for two reasons.

Firstly, it is not at all really clear what the fourth generation is, or even whether the third generation had finished yet. Secondly, it was an attempt to define a generation of computers before they had come into existence. The main requirements of the 5G machines was that they incorporate the features of Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, and Natural Language” (Mannell). The plan was promising because it was aimed at producing computers with certain capacities. Japanese experts wanted new computers to be able to perform the tasks, which humans can perform.

They were planned to be able to learn and communicate with people. These functions are especially interesting and beneficial for linguists. Though these goals have not been reached yet, constant development of computers makes it possible to reach them in future. Speaking about computers it is impossible not to mention parallel computing. It is an idea aimed at improving computers’ capacity. At the beginning all the computers were serial with only one processor, however then it was decided to invent computers with several processors as they would be able to perform several tasks at once more efficiently and the programs would run faster.

“Having multiple processors does not necessarily mean that parallel computing will work automatically. The operating system must be able to distribute programs between the processors (eg. recent versions of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X can do this). An individual program will only be able to take advantage of multiple processors if the computer language it's written in is able to distribute tasks within a program between multiple processors. For example, OpenMP supports parallel programming in Fortran and C/C++” (Mannell).

The constant improvement of a computer made it perfect and