Unit - History of Computer Technology
Part 1: Computer History and Development
In this assignment you will create a slide show or other presentation that summarizes the history of computer technology and provide an overview of the evolution of computer hardware and software. To be included are:
- Title Slide – History of Computer Technology
- Slides providing overviews of the following:
- Generation of Computers: 1 - 5
- Moore's Law
- Metcalfe's Law
- Tour of the Museum of Computer History - showing that you have viewed the exhibit and have gained an understanding of how computers have developed over time from the very beginnings to the present.
Resources:
Museum of Computer History:
Online Textbook Article: History of Computers and the Internet
Museum of Computer History:
- Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing: http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/
- http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/
- Virtual Tour: https://www.guidigo.com/Web/CHM-Revolution-Tour/DHTH2i2fYjA/Stop/1/Calculators-Abacus
- Exhibits at the Museum of Computer History: http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/online/
- Short Visit: http://www.computerhistory.org/planvisit/_media/docs/chm-1hr-tour.pdf
- Center of Computing History - http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/
- Specifically = http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/cgi/computing-timeline.pl
- Highlights of Silicon Valley: www.computerhistory.org/planvisit/_media/docs/chm-siliconvalley.pdf
- Computer Science Lab - http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/History.htm
Online Textbook Article: History of Computers and the Internet
computer_history_and_development_textbook.pdf |
Part 2: Specific Computer
Select one of the following computers:
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Create a slideshow or other presentation that answers the following questions for your chosen computer:
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It is possible to choose to do research on another computer system, but you will need to run your choice past Ms. McKay before getting started.
Part 3: In Conclusion... Your Thoughts
- What do you know about computers and computing history now that you didn’t know before your research?
- What was your most interesting discovery? What surprised you?
- What topic or innovation was missing from the exhibition that you feel should have been included? Why?
- What more do you want to learn about careers in engineering, technology, or computer science?
- In your opinion, what is the future of technology?
- What innovations do you want to invent, and why?
- How do you think the world will be impacted, helped, or changed because of technology.
- What issues or challenges do we face in the world today that could benefit from new technologies?
- What technological innovations would you invent to address these issues?
Evaluation
Evaluation of Slideshow / Website:
- How effectively did you use your time
- Quantity and quality of material included in project
- On-task during class time
- Slideshow or Website Content
- Quantity and quality of research
- Skimpy, gaps, important details skipped
- Errors – wrong names, dates, places, etc.
- Too much detail
- Overwhelming, lost in stats and versions
- Who actually understands it
- Understanding
- Structure and organization of the actual slides / pages
- Content summarized with several points per slide
- Usually one point per paragraph (rough approximation) - but make sure to provide as much detail as possible on each slide (for each topic)
- Image use must support text content
- Content summarized with several points per slide
- Quantity and quality of research
- Slideshow / website formatting
- Consistency of design (Use only 1 or 2 font types / sizes and a single background color)
- Transitions – gentle
- Format fit the topic
- Balance of text and graphics
- spelling and grammar
- font choice and size (not too large or too small)
- Appropriate use of color (sufficient contrast with between background and text)
- Presentation Showmanship to Class –
- Quiet and shy vs. jittery and nervous
- Volume level in terms of speech and personality
- Eye contact
- Memorizing vs. reading the slides vs. speaker notes
- Recovery
- Appearance
- Clarity – mumble vs clear enough to understand
Alternative:
Check your assignment (it will be from one of the following topics). list can be modified and extended. Create cards and let students pick one. 1. Human computers 2. Abacus 3. Ada Lovelace 4. Babbage 5. Hollerith's Punched Card 6. ENIAC 7. Grace Hopper 8. Colossus 9. Woz 10.Pong 11.The Altair 8800 12.Fairchild Semiconductor 13.Douglas Engelbart 14.World Wide Web 15.IBM's Watson
Check your assignment (it will be from one of the following topics). list can be modified and extended. Create cards and let students pick one. 1. Human computers 2. Abacus 3. Ada Lovelace 4. Babbage 5. Hollerith's Punched Card 6. ENIAC 7. Grace Hopper 8. Colossus 9. Woz 10.Pong 11.The Altair 8800 12.Fairchild Semiconductor 13.Douglas Engelbart 14.World Wide Web 15.IBM's Watson
Take a look at the history of computer science timeline below. (from http://blog.connectionsacademy.com/discover-the-history-of-coding-for-computer-science-week/)
Computer Science Timeline
Computer Science Timeline
- 1843 – Mathematician Ada Lovelace writes about programming while she works with Charles Baggage, who creates the first plans for a mechanical computer. Lovelace writes an algorithm, or program, that could be used on this computer, which is why many consider her the first computer programmer.
- 1938 – Konrad Zuse completes the design and build of the Z1, the first freely programmable computer. It is a complex mechanical calculator that uses binary code, or “ones and zeros.”
- 1945 – John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert complete the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC), the first electronic computer. This makes it much faster than previous mechanical machines. Used by the U.S. Military to do ballistics calculations, the ENIAC weighs 30 tons and fills an entire 1,800 square foot room. Six women become the ENIAC’s main programmers: Jean Jennings Bartik, Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman.
- 1959 – COBOL, the first programming language to use words instead of numbers, is developed based on the work of Grace Hopper, a math professor and Navy rear admiral.
- 1963 – Douglas Engelbert invents the computer mouse. The device is nicknamed a “mouse” because it resembles the rodent, and the term seems to stick. At Stanford Research Institute, he helped to lay the foundation for the graphical user interface (GUI), which allows users to operate the computer visually on a screen using icons and a pointing device.
- 1969 – Computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider’s work greatly influences the development of the modern Internet. An Internet pioneer, he develops the ARPANET, the direct predecessor of the Internet, named after the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). He and his team exchange computer communications between universities.
- 1969 – Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Doug McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna begin working on a multiuser operating system at AT&T’s Bell Labs. The system will become known as UNIX.
- 1970 – The programming language SQL, which stands for “Structured Query Language,” begins development at IBM.
- 1973 – The Xerox Alto is released, becoming one of the first personal computers for individual use. It is also the first computer with a desktop monitor and GUI. Before GUIs, computers were operated with only a keyboard. The Xerox Alto offered the capability to program in four different languages.
- 1973 – The fourth edition of UNIX is rewritten in C programming language. This allows the operating system to be moved to different computers, which will have a huge impact on the development of later systems.
- 1975 – Programmers Bill Gates and Paul Allen partner up to found a startup company called Microsoft. Their goal is to get “a computer on every desktop and in every home.”
- 1976 – Programmers Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer Company.
- 1977 – Apple Computer releases the first personal computer with color graphics, the Apple II.
- 1980 – Tim Paterson leads the development of 86-DOS (“Disk Operating System”), the first in a series of early operating systems, at Seattle Computer Products.
- 1981 – An early version of MS-DOS, Microsoft’s first computer operating system, is developed by Microsoft to run on IBM computers.
- 1981 – The IBM personal computer debuts, transforming the market with its affordable price and combination of personal and business capabilities.
- 1983 – The C++ programming language is developed by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup.
- 1983 – The first mobile phone, Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, is released. It has a basic operating system that stores contacts, marking the beginning of mobile application development.
- 1984 – Apple releases its first Macintosh personal computer.
- 1985 – Microsoft releases its new operating system Windows 1.0, which can be operated using a mouse.
- 1989 – The World Wide Web (WWW) is created by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, a center for scientific research. It is intended to internationally share information between scientists. In the following year, Berners-Lee also establishes the web’s essential components: hypertext markup language (HTML) for creating web documents, the uniform resource locator (URL) for designating websites, and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) for sending and retrieving information on the web.
- 1991 – Dutch programmer Guido van Russum creates the Python programming language, which focuses on condensing and simplifying code.
- 1991 – Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer science student, releases Linux kernel. It evolves into Linux, a hugely popular operating system that is open source, which means it is free and can be customized by users.
- 1993 – CERN’s World Wide Web code is released to the public, allowing anyone to use and customize it. It quickly becomes a universal web service used on the Internet.
- 1995 – Java programming is created by James Gosling. It’s designed to run on most platforms.
- 1995 – Microsoft releases Windows 95. At the time of release, the majority of computers throughout the world run a Microsoft operating system.
- 1999 – At this point, most dates in code are formatted as “MM/DD/YY,” with the computer recognizing that there is a “19” before the year digits. As a result, everyone fears that computers will fail to shift from 1999 to 2000 and cause major problems. Billions of dollars are spent on fixing the code of the Y2K bug before the clock changes.
- 2000 – Danish software engineer Anders Hejlsberg develops C#, a simple general-purpose programming language.
- 2002 – Visual Basic .NET, a high-level programming language, is created by Microsoft.
- 2009 – The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) is founded to protect institutions and infrastructures from malicious cyberthreats.
- 2013 – The nonprofit Code.org is launched to promote computer programming education in schools.