Computers had their origin in the well known ABACUS computer. ABACUS was used centuries before and it was invented in between 1000BC and 500BC. This computer actually had beads which were used to perform simple mathematical calculations. The first device which might be considered as a mechanical computer was proposed by Charles Babbage and this first mechanical computer was called Difference Engine. Difference engine was only partially completed when Babbage conceived the idea of another more sophisticated machine called an Analytical Engine. However the invention of vacuum tubes changed the whole concept and we moved towards electronic computers. The invention of vacuum tube was an extremely important step in the advancement of computers. Its purpose was to act like an amplifier and a switch. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. ENIAC was massive compared to modern PC standards. It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. The ENIAC led to other vacuum tube type computers like the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) and the UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer). In 1947 three scientists, John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain working at AT&T's Bell Labs invented what would replace the vacuum tube forever. This invention was the transistor which functions like a vacuum tube in that it can be used to relay and switch electronic signals. The transistor was faster, more reliable, smaller, and much cheaper to build than a vacuum tube. One transistor replaced the equivalent of 40 vacuum tubes. These transistors were made of solid material, some of which is silicon. Therefore they were very cheap to produce. Transistors were found to conduct electricity faster and better than vacuum tubes. They were also much smaller and gave off virtually no heat compared to vacuum tubes. Transistors were a tremendous breakthrough in advancing the computer. However no one could have predicted that thousands even now millions of transistors (circuits) could be compacted in such a small space. The integrated circuit, or as it is sometimes referred to as semiconductor chip, packs a huge number of transistors onto a single wafer of silicon. Placing such large numbers of transistors on a single chip vastly increased the power of a single computer and lowered its cost considerably. Today we have entered into the fourth generation of computers with the invention of microprocessors.8085 was the first microprocessor envisaged. It was an 8 bit microprocessor able to carry out operations on 8 bits at a time. It wasn't until the 1970's that people began buying computer for personal use. One of the earliest personal computers was the Altair 8800 computer kit. Today we have developed 64 bit processors and processor speed has reached in Giga Hertz Now we might just find ourselves in such a situation where we can't get the desired output from these high end systems because of the lack of software support. AMD Athlon 64 bit was successful, but it was not used with its full capacity until Microsoft released 64 bit Windows. So the current focus is on developing software support which can use such high end systems efficiently and rather than having a single high end system, industry is focusing more on distributed computing. Distributed computing, at its most basic level deals with computing the task with the help of many computers connected in a network. Today Personal Computers have entered life of almost each and every individual and it has certainly made the quality of users’ life better.
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