Each chapter in this book looks at a major area of the history of the computer, beginning the computer itself, we then move on to look at programming languages, the microprocessor, operating systems, and computer games.
Computing hardware has been an essential component of the process of calculation and data storage since it became useful for numerical values to be processed and shared. The earliest computing hardware was probably some form of tally stick. In this chapter we'll take a look at some of the most significant advances that have been made in the world of computing over the past few hundred years.
This article discusses the major developments in the history of programming languages.
The first programming languages predate the modern computer. Herman Hollerith realized that he could encode information on punch cards when he observed that railroad train conductors would encode the appearance of the ticket holders on the train tickets using the position of punched holes on the tickets.
A microprocessor (sometimes abbreviated �P) is a digital electronic component with transistors on a single semiconductor integrated circuit (IC). One or more microprocessors typically serve as a central processing unit (CPU) in a computer system or handheld device. Microprocessors made possible the advent of the microcomputer.
A computer�s operating system (OS) provides a set of functions needed and used by most applications, and provides the necessary linkages to control a computer's hardware. On the first computers, without an operating system, each program would need its own drivers for the video card, memory card, and other peripherals. The evolution of computer applications and their complexity led to the OS necessities.
Although the history of computer and video games spans five decades, computer and video games themselves did not become part of the popular culture until the late 1970s. Over the past three or four decades, video games have become extremely popular, either in the form of hand held consoles, or with games that run on computers or attached to TVs. The range of games available is also immense, with action, strategy, adventure, and sports games being very popular. In this chapter we will look at how computer and other video games have evolved since the 1960s.