The History of Computers

Leggi e ascolta. The history of computers

I’ve come to the Science Museum in London to find out about the history of computing. It’s a great place to visit. There are models of some of the world’s oldest computing machines – and you learn a lot of surprising facts, too. Did you know that in the 1800s, ‘computers’ were people, not machines?

‘Computers’ were often young women. They did calculations for places like banks. But it was hard work to sit at a desk all day and do Maths, and when the ‘computers’ were tired they made mistakes. In the 1820s, an English mathematician called Charles Babbage began to design calculating machines. His idea was simple – machines don’t get tired, so they don’t make mistakes.

High Five Exam Trainer . Reading comprehension 3 p. 10 © Oxford University Press PHOTOCOPIABLE Babbage also invented computer memory and a simple computer program. Babbage’s program used cards with holes to tell machines what to do. Unfortunately, he never finished any of his machines, but he left a lot of instructions and drawings. Two hundred years later, engineers at the Science Museum used them to design and build one of his machines – the Difference Engine. Today, I’ve come to see it.

After Babbage’s death, most people forgot about his machines. But during the 1930s and 1940s, lots of scientists around the world used Babbage’s ideas to develop the first electronic computers. The first computers were as big as houses because they needed lots of very big individual parts. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer. It weighed as much as five elephants, and it had millions of parts. It took hours to program, and it used as much electricity as 1.6 million lights!

Computers only became smaller when people invented smaller parts for them. In 1959, Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit: one of the most important devices in history. Later, people made smaller integrated circuits or microchips, and used the material silicon. Today, some microchips have a few billion parts, and you can find them everywhere. They are in computers, TVs, phones and fridges – and even in some clothes!

High Five Exam Trainer . Reading comprehension 3 p. 10 © Oxford University Press PHOTOCOPIABLE In 1981, IBM produced the world’s first home computer, the PC (Personal Computer). It was very expensive, and it wasn’t easy to use, but cheaper, better machines and easy computer programs, like Windows (1985), soon followed.

In the early 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web – the most important part of today’s Internet. Within a few years, millions of people bought home computers because they wanted to use the Internet. Today, two billion people use the Internet.

Before my visit to the Science Museum, I downloaded the museum app onto my smartphone. Now my phone is using GPS to follow my movements around the museum. The virtual guide on my smartphone tells me about all the objects in each room. I stop in front of Babbage’s Difference Engine. It’s 3.4 metres long, 2.1 metres high and it weighs 2.6 tonnes. But my tiny smartphone can do much, much more!