Computers

16 Pages 3969 Words

- Historical Background

The modern computer industry has enjoyed a relatively short but distinctly dynamic history. The history of the electronic computer had its beginnings with the invention of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) between the years 1943 to 1946 by Dr. John W. Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert Jr. The ENIAC was a monstrosity of wires, cables, blinking lights, capacitors, and diodes that took up enormous space to do less than today’s notebook computers. We certainly have come a long way in a very short fifty years.
We recognize that computing has evolved into a “computer based information system” (CBIS) that is made up of the five components of hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. The evolution and development of computing has roughly followed the same sequencing of these components. We also believe that the associated “literacy” of computers has followed this same order. In other words, ‘computer literacy’ encompassed knowing and understanding all five components. Literacy is defined as having the knowledge and understanding of a particular subject.
The early focus of computers was the development of hardware that could do something with some acceptable level of MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). Due to the high failure rate of the over 18,000 vacuum tubes from the heat they emitted, it seemed that computing was reduced to a race between completing a calculation and replacing the blown tubes. The computer won most of the contests since the MTBF was a mere seven minutes. Subsequently, computers replaced the tabulating equipment which predated them only when the invention of solid state technology (transistor, integrated circuit, and finally microchip) replaced the vacuum tube and mechanical switch which characterized the first generation ENIAC and MARK I.
The improving hardware was made useful primarily to business by focusing on software that gave us progressive...