Computer Past and Present

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Introduction

Welcome to Calypso's Lecture Series for CS-100. The first (and only) lecture in the series is about the history of computing from the past to the present. This offers the student or casual browser an overview of the advances in science that made desktop computers possible starting with the invention of counting.

This lecture was originally given in the fall of 1994 at the University of Regina (Regina, Canada) for 400 CS-100 students. CS-100 is an introductory course designed primarily for students from other disciplines. It was not intended for the computing science major student. As such, this material was geared to appeal to those students.

The author would like to thank the copyright holders of the various pictures used in this work without formal acknowledgement. For copyright information, please contact the author Michelle A. Hoyle (thelectureATeingangNOSPAMorg)..

Future additions to the lecture include a section discussing the impact of business microcomputers and mainframes to the history of computing.

Teachers, this lecture is available to be used on a standalone machine in a classroom. Drop me some mail (thelectureATeingangNOSPAMorg) if you would like a copy for use in a classroom, museum, or kiosk. Replace the AT and NOSPAM with an @ and a . respectively

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We support some accessibility enhancements. If your browser supports access keys, you may be able to use CTRL+access_key (Macintosh) or ALT+access_key (Windows) for navigation. The access keys were listed above with the buttons. To use them, hold down the ALT key (or the CTRL key on a Macintosh) and then press the appropriate access key. These do not work on all browsers.

Finally, if you're using a graphical browser, you might want to consider changing the size of the browser window to as large as possible. The slides are quite large.

Choose the right arrow or the field marked "Start" to start your lecture experience.

 

Contents:

The Shamanistic Tradition Stonehenge: A Primitive Calendar Stonehenge Sites The Abacus: A Primitive Calculator The Forefathers of Computing Science Pascal's Pascaline Calculator Blaise Pascal The Difference Engine Charles Babbage Charles Babbage Sites The Conditional Herman Hollerith Binary Representation The Harvard Mark I

Alan Turing Alan Turing Sites The Turing Machine ENIAC John von Neumann The EDVAC Computer Technology Advances The Altair The Creation of Microsoft BASIC & Other Languages More Computer Languages The PC Explosion PC Sites PCs Today The Web Servers and Clients

 

This site selected as one of the ten best educational sites on the WWW for the month of December (1996) by Learning in Motion and picked as a Britannica Internet Award site in February of 2000. 

  

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Computers: From the Past to the Present
Introduction: Last modified July 30, 2006
©1994-2006 by Michelle A. Hoyle