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Computer History
This category includes questions and answers about the history of the computer. Ask questions about the first computer and major developments in computing.
5,564 Questions
In which state did Christopher L Sholes help invent the first practical typewriter in 1867?
The First Practical typewriter was invented my many Genius inventors but the first commercial successful Typewriter was invented by Christopher in Millwakee , WI , USA . ( Not exactly sure about place , but most of my research gives Millwakee )
What is the difference from a 302 engine to a 347?
347 stroker is a 302, bored .030 over with a .400" long crank.
302= 4 x 3 inch
347= 4.03 x 3.4inch
Do they still make vacuum tubes?
Do they still make vacuum tubes? Yes! Vacuum tubes are still used in applications where high power is required. And that's because there are no solid state (semiconductor) devices that can deliver what a hefty vacuum tube can produce. We see vacuum tubes used in the broadcast transmitters that radio and TV stations send out their signals with. We also see vacuum tubes used in radar applications, and in things like X-ray generation. You want big power? Get a vacuum tube to deliver it. As we move up the power scale, we'll see solid state devices falling off the truck until we're left with just vacuum tubes. There's a bit more.
Now that newer technology has appeared and is becoming more common, the cathode ray tube (CRT) in "regular" television sets is disappearing. (The CRT is a vacuum tube.) There are still plenty of these "older" units being used and marketed in other parts of the world. But the chances are excellent that you encounter a device using a vacuum tube at least daily. The tube we're talking about is called a magnetron, and it is the vacuum tube (a diode with associated magnets that works as a cavity resonator) which generates the microwaves energy that is used in microwave ovens.
Vacuum tubes were developed and advanced long before solid state devices came into being. But, though semiconductor technology is at the heart of almost all electronic equipment around us today, the vacuum tube still does the jobs that solid state devices cannot manage. And this will continue to be the case for some time to come.
A symbolic constant is a constant with a name, numeric constants are unnamed and must be retyped in the code on each usage. Generally use of symbolic constants is preferred as it makes the code self documenting and allows the compiler to catch typing errors in constant usage.
all i know he is responsible for improving the adding machine, which i think was first made by Leibnitz called the Leibnitz calculator
Where was tragedy first developed?
Tragedy as a dramatic form first developed in ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE. It emerged from religious festivals honoring the god Dionysus, where performances of choral songs and stories evolved into structured plays. Prominent playwrights, such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, contributed significantly to its development, exploring themes of fate, morality, and human suffering. The genre laid the foundation for many literary traditions in Western culture.
Who invented apple electronics?
Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne,[1] to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. They were hand-built by Wozniak[22][23] and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club.[24] The Apple I was sold as amotherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips)-less than what is today considered a complete personal computer.[25] The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66 ($2,723 in 2012 dollars, adjusted for inflation.)[26][27][28][29][30][31]
The Apple I, Apple's first product, was sold as an assembled circuit board and lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case. The owner of this unit added a keyboard and a wooden case.
Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977[6] without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multi-millionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple.[32][33]
The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its major rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because it came with character cell based color graphics and an open architecture. While early models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface, the Disk II.[34]
The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first "killer app" of the business world-the VisiCalc spreadsheet program.[35] VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II, and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II-compatibility with the office.[35] According to Brian Bagnall, Apple exaggerated its sales figures and was a distant third place to Commodore and Tandy until VisiCalc came along.[36][37]
Two mutually exclusive outcomes. You flip a coin, and only heads and tails are possible.
(UNIVersal Automatic Computer) The first commercially successful computer, introduced in 1951 by Remington Rand. Over 40 systems were sold. Its memory was made of mercury-filled acoustic delay lines that held 1,000 12-digit numbers. It used magnetic tapes that stored 1MB of data at a density of 128 cpi. In 1952, it predicted Eisenhower's victory over Stevenson, and UNIVAC became synonymous with computer (for a while). UNIVAC I's were in use up until the early 1960s.
Source: Answers.com
What is Stored program computer?
'Stored program' was the breakthrough that enabled computers to perform complex tasks in fractions of a second. Being able to do arithmetic and evaluate formulas fast would be useless if a person had to keep telling the computer what to do next. The trick was encoding the list of instructions into numbers that could coexist in the computer's memory along with data, and having a 'processor' built into the machine to decode and execute the instructions. Now the computer could do both, calculate and control the sequence of calculations, at electronic speed.
Many credit John von Neumann with devising the stored program concept, but probably several others were also involved.
What is Ada Lovelace's real name?
Augusta Ada Byron.
Namme at birth: as in the answer: Augusta Ada Byron
Now commonly known as: Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace.in British history.Reference:Ada Lovelacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
What is the historical evolution of Information Systems?
The history of Management Information System goes back decades ago when the mainframe and mini computer was introduced by IBM. This has evolved through the years to the current technologies which include cloud computing.
What is the first electronic digital computer?
The origin of the electronic digital computer is often traced to this machine built by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University in 1941. The digital logic and memory of the machine were derived from the vacuum tubes at the lower right and the capacitor-studded drum at the middle. Data was fed into the system via punched cards. Atanasoff stopped further research on the computer upon joining the World War II effort in 1942.
There is still considerable debate about who can claim the invention of the digital computer. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert were granted a patent for the 18,000-tube http://wiki.answers.com/eniac.html, which was completed in 1946. This was considered the first electronic digital computer for many years, but in 1974 a U.S. federal judge voided the patent after it was learned that Mauchly had spent several days studying the Atanasoff-Berry computer in 1941.
Another prominent digital computer was the Colossus which became operational at Bletchley Park near London in 1943. These machines (ten in all, each with 2000 vacuum tubes) were used to crack German Enigma codes during World War II. The Colossus can rightly claim the honor of being the first computer to perform practical work. The Colossus machines remained shrouded in secrecy for many years after the war.
In Germany during the war, Konrad Zuse developed the first program-controlled computer which operated from 2,600 second-hand telephone relays. Zuse tried to interest the German government in his invention, but (fortunately for the Allies) they showed no interest. After the war Zuse wrote the first high level computer language called Plankalkul, and started the Zuse AG computer company which was acquired by Siemens in 1969.
RCA was also involved with early computer development, most notably with their analog Typhoon computer developed for the Navy during World War II. RCA also developed ultra-reliable vacuum tubes for the ENIAC computer so the computer could be turned on and off and still work. The British had earlier found it necessary to leave their Colossus units on all the time, as the chances of at least one vacuum tube burning out when the computer was switched on were pretty high. RCA made a major mistake when the corporation failed to take over funding for the ENIAC from Mauchly and Eckert. Remington Rand Corp. ultimately brought out the two inventors, and went on to market the highly successful http://wiki.answers.com/univac-cronkite.htmlcomputer.
The only "Dr Ram Baran" I know of is Dr. Ram Baran Yadav (sometimes spelt "Yadahv"; other variations exist), the President of Nepal. He received his MD from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, in Chandigarh, India. He was elected president of Nepal in July, 2008. I am unaware of any connection he may have with computer history, nor can I find any reference in any of his bios to such. A search on Google and Wikipedia, plus a browse through various sites and references on important figures in computing history, fails to turn up a reference to Dr Ram Baran.
What is the purpose of normalisation?
If you are referring to normalization of floating point numbers, it is to maintain the most precision of the number possible. Leading zeros in floating point representation is lost precision, thus normalization removes the leading zeros by shifting left and adjusting the exponent. If the calculation was done in a hidden extended precision register (like IEEE 80-bit format) extra precision bits may be shifted in to the LSBs before restoring the result to a standard single or double precision register, reducing loss of precision.
