Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The history of computing hardware spans the developments from early devices used for simple calculations to today's complex computers, encompassing advancements in both analog and digital technology. The first aids to computation were purely mechanical devices which required the operator to set up the initial values of an elementary arithmetic ...
The history of computing hardware starting at 1960 is marked by the conversion from vacuum tube to solid-state devices such as transistors and then integrated circuit (IC) chips. Around 1953 to 1959, discrete transistors started being considered sufficiently reliable and economical that they made further vacuum tube computers uncompetitive .
The additionally advanced Analytical Engine combined concepts from his previous work and that of others to create a device that, if constructed as designed, would have possessed many properties of a modern electronic computer, such as an internal "scratch memory" equivalent to RAM, multiple forms of output including a bell, a graph-plotter, and ...
The state of affairs continued until the 1960s when IBM, already a leading hardware vendor, stopped work on existing systems and put all its effort into developing the System/360 series of machines, all of which used the same instruction and input/output architecture. IBM intended to develop a single operating system for the new hardware, the ...
Charles Babbage KH FRS (/ ˈ b æ b ɪ dʒ /; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. [1] A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.
This machine invented the principle of the modern computer and was the birthplace of the stored program concept that almost all modern day computers use. [52] These hypothetical machines were designed to formally determine, mathematically, what can be computed, taking into account limitations on computing ability.
The storage of computer programs is key to the operation of modern computers and is the connection between computer hardware and software. [7] Even prior to this, in the mid-19th century mathematician George Boole invented Boolean algebra—a system of logic where each proposition is either true or false.
Invented the concept of a hardware abstraction layer called the BIOS, with both conceptually laying the foundation to all DOS-based operating systems on personal computers. Worked on diskette track buffering schemes, read-ahead algorithms, virtual disk drives, and file system caching.