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Part 1: Week 1
Charles Babbage Konrad Zuse
J. Presper Eckert
& John Mauchly
Alan Turing
John Bardeen,
Walter Brattain,
William Shockley
Description Considered "Father of Computer" Binary Numbers / Relays
ENIAC
UNIVAC - universal automatic computer
Father of computer sciencem,created field of AI, genetic algorithms
Nobel Prize for work on transistors - greatest invention of the 20th century
Dates of importance 1791- 1822 - began work on Difference Machine
1941 May - Turing computer Z3 complete and operational 1946 - IBM's option on his patents
Eckert (1919-1995) Mauchly (1907-1980) 1943-Army commissioned Moore School of Engineering for firing tables
1912-1954 (^) 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics as a group
Most important contribution to Computer Science or what person is known for
Idea of "Universal Machine" whose purpose was not defined in advance - it could do a variety of things, not just one. Separation of the machine from the task
World's first functional program-controlled Turning-complete computer, first commercial computer, wrote first high level programming language Plankalkul
ENIAC-vacuum tub based computer faster than relays because no moving parts (too hot), BUG term, formed first US computer company but forced to sell due to communistic ties (false), became UNIVAC
Englishman who broke the German ciphers and developed electromechanical machine finding settings for Enigma machine during WWII
Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and relays. Transistors made of layers of silicon - a semiconductor acting as insulators and conductors of electricity so they can act as switches like vac and relays before them.
Occupation/employme nt, awards, notable achievements
British mathematician and inventor employed by British government to oversee navagation tables he knew were full of errors
Worked for Ford, after 1939 funded by Nazi government, had his own companies destroyed by Allied attack, developed first computer with memory based on magnetic storage, many awards, books, inventions
Employed at Moore School of Engineering at University of Pennsylvania. Mauchly - PHD, professor of physics at Ursinus College, then at Moore
Worked for Britain government
Bardeen-talent for mathematics,Harvard Junior Fellow, PHD math from Princeton Brattain-physicist at Bell Labs Shockley-attempt to commercialize transistor led to 'Silicon Valley' as hub or electronics innovation
Personality, beliefs, family life
Cantankerous, exacting, OCD, hated organ grinders and hoop rollers, had 8 children but only 3 survived to adulthood, had mental breakdown, died at age 79
Married with 5 children, thought using vacuum tubes was a crazy idea
Their company was acquired by Remington Rand which merged with Burroughs Corp to become Unisys in 1986.
Was a homosexual and convicted given chemical castration thru hormones and committed suicide in 1952. Was exhonorated in 2009
Bardeen-quiet, normal Brattain-quiet, normal Shockley-quiet, normal
Influences or was influenced by whom, what this notable person left for the future of Computer Science
Invented first mechanical, steam-powered computer for math calculations with architecture similar to modern computer
Binary numbers and relays to hold binary digits, first program controlled computers with magnetic storage
Invented first general-purpose electronic digital computer, founded fist commercial computer company, first commercial computer in US, invented mercury delay line memory
Work with Colossus known as "Ultra Secret" and declassified in 1974 so did not influence design of other computers. Credited with creating AI and use of genetic algorithms and techniques on nautral processes
Transistor revoluntionized electronics industry promoting the Information Age making every electronic device possible from telephones to computers to missles and was 1/50 as large as vac tubes it replaced in TVs and radios for compact electronics. Transistors could be wired together but too many wires was drawback.
Evolution of Hardware:
Gears (mechanical) Relays (electrical) Vacuum tubes (electronic) Transistors Integrated circuits (Ics) Microprocessors
Hardware: •Is made of physical components •Is made up of on or off switches
Software:
History of Computers
•Hardware is physical, but software is built from abstract concepts that do not conform to physical world •Is a sequence of instructions telling the hardware what operations to perform •Is written in a computer language and translated to the "on" and "off" electrical signals that ultimately control hardware •Building software requires steps: conception, requirements, design, implementation. The idea is turned into a physical machine because a word processing program runs a processor, a database programs makes a database. Therefore the universal machine uses software to make a soft machine for specific purposes. •DNA is a type of software specifying how to build a human •Computers speak binary - 1 and 0
Programs: •Can be extremely complex into the millions of lines •Hardware is on and off switches, computers speak binary, and humans speak "natural language" such as English, French, Spanish, German, etc. •To tell the computer what to do, we encode operations for the computer to perform in a sequence of ones and zeroes that correspond to hardware implementations •Computer languages are the mid-ground between binary and natural languages
Machine Code: •is the first generation of programming languages •called Binary or native language •Machine Code consist of the binary instructions that tell a particular computer (or cpu) what to do. Every CPU has it's own instruction set •very tedious to program in binary
Assembly Language: Assembly language source code -> Assembler -> Machine code •Assembly language is the second generation of languages •Use abbreviations and words to represent binary sequences of instructions in a computer's instruction set. Much easier than remembering sequences of 0's and 1's in machine code/binary but still giving full acess to inst. set. •Assemblers take an entire assembly language "source code" file and convert it to executable machine code. (works like a compiler on advanced languages). Each CPU requires its own assembler. •AL share drawbacks like machine code: are 1 to 1 abbreviations for machine code so one must know hardware being programmed and if that hardware changes, the source code must also be changed thru the assembly language for exactl directions
Jack Kilby
Robert Noyce
Gordon Moore Ray Kurzweil Bill Joy Bill Gates
Invented integrated circuit (microchip)
Co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel, Moore's Law
Theory of "The Singularity", OCR, musical synthesizers, computer evolution technology
Sun Microsystems co-founder, opponent of The Singularity saying it's not a good thing
Author and Chairman of Microsoft, entrepreneur of computer revolution
Oct. 4, 1957 Sputnik put in orbit by Russians and set off Col War 1961-Russians put Yuri Gagarin into space
1965-Moore's Law Worked with William Shockley and left with "Tratorious Eight"
Technological Singularity-hypothetical future emergence of greather-than human intelligence thru technological means, seen as an event horizon where the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. (coined by Vernor Vinge who says AI causes singularity)
Met Kurzweil in an aiport and learned of his stance on Singularity.
1980 IBM approached Microsoft to write the BASIC interpreter for the upcoming personal computer IBM PC. 1985 Microsoft Windows released in November
Integrated circuits Kilby - handheld calculator, thermal printer Noyce- Intel, father figure to Steve Jobs of Apple
Fueled interest in geometric progression relating to computer capabilities of size, speed, memory capacity, etc.
Futurism and synthisization used in technology that benefits the disabled such as the blind, entrepreneur of reading machines, and promotes simulated reality, predictive medicine. Says Singularity would be able to solve world problems.
Wrote an article about the Singularity for Wired magazine - "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" - Says Singularity would place too much power in hands of individuals, self- replicating robos could swarm, get out of control and dissamble the world at a molecular level-"gray goo"
Development of code and system plaform to run on personal computers, Microsoft Corporation
Kilby-worked at Texas Instruments, also invented handheld calculator and thermal printer Noyce-Founded Intel
Co-founder of Intel, Moore's Law
Author of many books including "The Law ofAccelerating Returns" in which the rate of change in evolutionary systems increases exponentially which would prove Moore's Law of expansion to technologial singularity.
Co-founder of Sun Microsystems
Was CEO of Microsoft, but now operates philanthropic endeavors Was world's youngest self-made billionaire in 1987 at age 32
Noyce - shunned corporate perks setting the way for relaxed, less-structured, and team- player work at electronics industries
Futurism and transhumanism with firm stances on life extension technologies, efforts to forecast future advances in technology, speaking of nanotechnology, nanobots use in medical advancements and possible cures for poverty, disease, and climate change
Agrees that technology is a two-edged sword for good or evil magnifying human potential - not worried about the technology but what humans could do with it.
Was son of a lawyer, married with three children, businessman, leader and service to youth
In 1957, the pair stepped up to the challenge of Pres. Kennedy to win the space race with Russia. The pair invented the integrated circuit used on Apollo guidance computers. The circuit was printed onto a silicone chip eliminating wiring like transistors-computer was the smallest and fastest in the world at that time. Integrated circuits or microchips fueled the personal computer revolution - Silicon valley boomed because of them.
Moore's Law - the number of transistors placed on the same surface area doubles about every 2 years. A trend going on for half a century- grain of rice on a chess board (last day more than exists in the world-law of geometric progression) Notable influence on Ray Kurzweil
OCR, text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, AI and thinking machines, futuristic predictions, Kurzweil believes Moore's Law forms a basis for "physics of technology" and that the law applies to exponential growth in all fields leading to The Singularity. Shared this knowledge and influence with Bill Joy.
Opponent of Kurzweil saying Singularity may not be a good thing, offers different view of what could happen if computers and nanotechnology turned against us either by humans or machines
Once called software "codified thought" - software controls function of the hardware of the von Neumann model of the computer. Software are the instructions and without it, computers are useless.
High-Level Languages •Third generation of computer languages that evolved to address the problems inherent in writing programs in assembly languages •These include C, COBOL, PL.I, FORTRAN, PASCAL, etc. and were designed to be standardized so that they coud be 'cross-platform" meaning that programs writeen in high-level languages would be 'portable' across various CPUs. Standardiztion of the languages allows a programmer to learn the language and then use it to program a variety of computers without having to know about their particular hardware or instruction set. •Are more like natural language; don't necessarity corespond to a single computer instruction, one statement in high-level language may create several machine code statements to carry it out. •Compiler program converts high-level languages into binary. Compilers are specific to particular comp architecture. Example: if you want to write C code for a Motorola CPU and an Intel CPU, code might be same, but a different complier for each platform. •Compilers are like assemblers - they gather programmed parts of code, put them together into a workable program and covert it to binary. Unlike assemblers, one high-level language statement may compile into many binary instructions. •Interpreters are different from compilers in that they convert a statement into code, run that code, then repeat the process until the program ends. Interpreters translate source code statements while they are running. Interpreters need the source code to execute the program since they do NOT convert it to binary beforehand.
The Future •Neural networks and genetic algorithms are two ways to program computers that do not involve specifying each step of the operation being performed - these are not yet available but may be in the future. •How to communicate with computer hardware is a deep and far-reaching problem leading us to the roots of language and consciousness itself. •As machines evolve, we are forced to confront the questions of what it means to be human, self-aware, and how we differ from the silicon creations.
4th Generation Languages •Have built in frameworks that facilitate the programming process because even tho high-level languages were easier than using binary, they were still cumbersome to use. •Object-oriented languages like Java, C#, Python, PHP, etc. are considered 4th generation languages in that they provide the framework to developers. They help by providing a more physical analogy thru which abstract programming concepts can be linked. Structures in the program can be linked to objects in the physical world. Example: if programming a car crash simulation in an object-oriented language, we might start by defining the car, the wall, the test dummy objects and each has properties (like weight, speed, materials, etc.) and things they know how to do (accelerate, crash, fly thru a window, etc.). •Some wouldn't classify object-oriented as 4th generation, but would lump them with 3rd generation and would reserve the 4th generation for environments that provide domain knowledge for the environment being programmed.
Language Generations 1 - Machine Code (binary) 2 - Assembly languages (translated using assemblers) 3 - High-level languages (translated using compilers/interpreters) 4 - 4th Generation Languages (same as 3rd, but can include object-oriented languages) 5 - Natural language? Neural networks / Genetic algorithms?
