114-689: The Olivetti M24 is a computer that was sold by Olivetti in 1983 using the Intel 8086 CPU . The system was sold in the United States under its original name by Docutel /Olivetti of Dallas. AT&T and Xerox bought rights to rebadge the system as the AT&;T PC 6300 and the Xerox 6060 series, respectively. (AT&T owned 25% of Olivetti around this time.) The AT&T 6300, launched in June 1984,
228-521: A binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. The Z3 was not itself a universal computer but could be extended to be Turing complete . Zuse's next computer, the Z4 , became the world's first commercial computer; after initial delay due to the Second World War, it was completed in 1950 and delivered to
342-632: A central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a microprocessor , together with some type of computer memory , typically semiconductor memory chips. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored information . Peripheral devices include input devices ( keyboards , mice , joysticks , etc.), output devices ( monitors , printers , etc.), and input/output devices that perform both functions (e.g. touchscreens ). Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source, and they enable
456-419: A keyboard , and computed and printed the results, demonstrating the feasibility of an electromechanical analytical engine. During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation . However, these were not programmable and generally lacked
570-524: A mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialized applications. At the University of Manchester , a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves. Their first transistorized computer and the first in the world, was operational by 1953 , and a second version was completed there in April 1955. However,
684-429: A monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip. Kilby's IC had external wire connections, which made it difficult to mass-produce. Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby. Noyce's invention was the first true monolithic IC chip. His chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon , whereas Kilby's chip
798-652: A 1998 retrospective, it was the first working machine to contain all of the elements essential to a modern electronic computer. As soon as the Baby had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project began at the university to develop it into a practically useful computer, the Manchester Mark 1 . The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1 , the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. Built by Ferranti , it
912-512: A Chip (SoCs) are complete computers on a microchip (or chip) the size of a coin. They may or may not have integrated RAM and flash memory . If not integrated, the RAM is usually placed directly above (known as Package on package ) or below (on the opposite side of the circuit board ) the SoC, and the flash memory is usually placed right next to the SoC. This is done to improve data transfer speeds, as
1026-641: A desktop case similar to that of the IBM PC. It weighs 32 pounds (15 kg) and is approximately 19.5 inches (50 cm) wide by 16 inches (41 cm) deep by 5.5 inches (14 cm) high. Similarly to the original IBM PC, the XT main board included a socket for the Intel 8087 floating point arithmetic coprocessor . This optional chip, when installed, greatly accelerated arithmetic for such applications as computer aided design or other software that required large amounts of arithmetical calculations. Only software that
1140-411: A factory option, as well as a "small expansion" sidecar hosting a hard drive for users who found themselves with no internal space left between floppies and expansion cards. After the 6300 Plus, AT&T announced that it was turning over both production and development of its PC products to Olivetti . In 1987, AT&T offered a true AT-based 286, their 6310 — a rebadge of Olivetti M28 . Equipped with
1254-441: A fixed black background), but could be expanded to 4 or 8 colours/greyscales in all resolutions, and 16 in all but 512×256, with the addition of a graphics memory expansion board holding between 32 and 96 KB RAM (the resolution:colour relationship being unintuitive due to Motorola HD6845 CRTC bandwidth and addressing limitations - 16 colours in the 640-pixel modes effectively combined the standard and expansion memory spaces into
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#17327979951371368-403: A medieval European counting house , a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money. The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer , according to Derek J. de Solla Price . It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in
1482-504: A moderate level of support from software developers, mostly for "serious" applications such as Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony ( Earl Weaver Baseball is however an example of a game that can use it), and was for a time both supported and emulated (as well as extended to e.g. 752x410) by various "Super EGA "/"any mode on any monitor" cards such as the ATI EGA Wonder . These, as well as any other replacement video card, could be used in
1596-525: A much more general design, an analytical engine , was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards , a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom . For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The engine would incorporate an arithmetic logic unit , control flow in
1710-529: A number of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma , was first attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical bombes which were often run by women. To crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the Colossus . He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building
1824-466: A one- wait state 8 MHz processor, it was a pretty slow machine for its class, even slower than the IBM XT 286 . Simultask was also an option for the 6310. The later-released 6312 addressed the speed problem with a 12-MHz CPU. After the announcement of the 6310, in April 1987, AT&T announced price cuts across its 6300 PC product line, with the 6300 Plus discounted by 27-38%, while the original 6300
1938-439: A poorly documented 512×256 mode for compatibility with the earlier M20 model (in conjunction with a Z8000 -based emulator card that included a necessary additional clock source). All modes were non-interlaced , albeit running at a then-common 50 Hz Vsync rate, and required the dedicated OEM 26.3 kHz, 12" monitor (either colour or multi-level monochrome) because of their comparatively high line frequency, with all but
2052-416: A reported performance penalty when running applications such as Microsoft Flight Simulator of around 15 percent. Such additional hardware was necessary to support these virtualisation features due to the limitations of the 80286. The PC 6300 Plus shipped with MS-DOS in 1985 though, because its Unix System V distribution would not be ready until the end of March 1986. The 6300 Plus did not sell as well as
2166-562: A sequence of sets of values. The whole machine was to be controlled by a read-only program, which was complete with provisions for conditional branching . He also introduced the idea of floating-point arithmetic . In 1920, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the arithmometer , Torres presented in Paris the Electromechanical Arithmometer, which allowed a user to input arithmetic problems through
2280-517: A single 64-bit wide bank); the expansion card also had its own monitor port built in allowing native dual-monitor support. CGA compatibility was necessarily limited to "RGB" modes, and "well behaved" software that only used the BIOS-preset modes and didn't attempt too much clever direct reprogramming of the CRTC registers (including setting of pseudo-text hack modes like 160×100 16 colours), as there
2394-460: A successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906. In his work Essays on Automatics published in 1914, Leonardo Torres Quevedo wrote a brief history of Babbage's efforts at constructing a mechanical Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. The paper contains a design of a machine capable to calculate formulas like a x ( y − z ) 2 {\displaystyle a^{x}(y-z)^{2}} , for
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#17327979951372508-402: A universal Turing machine. Early computing machines had fixed programs. Changing its function required the re-wiring and re-structuring of the machine. With the proposal of the stored-program computer this changed. A stored-program computer includes by design an instruction set and can store in memory a set of instructions (a program ) that details the computation . The theoretical basis for
2622-577: A wide range of tasks. The term computer system may refer to a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware , operating system , software , and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation; or to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network or computer cluster . A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems , including simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls , and factory devices like industrial robots . Computers are at
2736-500: Is an expansion chassis using an identical case and power supply to the XT, but instead of a system board, provides a backplane with eight card slots. It connects to the main system unit using an Extender Card in the system unit and a Receiver Card in the Expansion Unit, connected by a custom cable. The 5161 shipped with a 10 MB hard drive, and had room for a second one. The Expansion Unit can also contain extra memory, but
2850-463: Is the stored program , where all the instructions for computing are stored in memory. Von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to this paper. Turing machines are to this day a central object of study in theory of computation . Except for the limitations imposed by their finite memory stores, modern computers are said to be Turing-complete , which is to say, they have algorithm execution capability equivalent to
2964-507: Is the second computer in the IBM Personal Computer line, released on March 8, 1983. Except for the addition of a built-in hard drive and extra expansion slots, it is very similar to the original IBM PC model 5150 from 1981. IBM did not specify an expanded form of "XT" on the machine, press releases, brochures or documentation, but some publications expanded the term as " eXtended Technology " or just " eXTended ". The XT
3078-619: The Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera , between Kythera and Crete , and has been dated to approximately c. 100 BCE . Devices of comparable complexity to the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until the fourteenth century. Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in
3192-507: The E6B circular slide rule used for time and distance calculations on light aircraft. In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz , a Swiss watchmaker , built a mechanical doll ( automaton ) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically "programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines,
3306-641: The ETH Zurich . The computer was manufactured by Zuse's own company, Zuse KG , which was founded in 1941 as the first company with the sole purpose of developing computers in Berlin. The Z4 served as the inspiration for the construction of the ERMETH , the first Swiss computer and one of the first in Europe. Purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical equivalents, at
3420-637: The XT/370 ; they had an additional (co-)processor board that could execute System/370 instructions. An XT-based machine with a Series/1 co-processor board existed as well, but it had its own System Unit number, the IBM 4950 . In 1986, the XT 286 (model 5162) was released with a 6 MHz Intel 80286 processor. Despite being marketed as a lower-tier model than the IBM AT , this system runs many applications faster than
3534-497: The microcomputer revolution in the 1970s. The speed, power, and versatility of computers have been increasing dramatically ever since then, with transistor counts increasing at a rapid pace ( Moore's law noted that counts doubled every two years), leading to the Digital Revolution during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element , typically
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3648-504: The "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors have many advantages: they are smaller, and require less power than vacuum tubes, so give off less heat. Junction transistors were much more reliable than vacuum tubes and had longer, indefinite, service life. Transistorized computers could contain tens of thousands of binary logic circuits in a relatively compact space. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on
3762-525: The 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers. In the 1890s, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo began to develop a series of advanced analog machines that could solve real and complex roots of polynomials , which were published in 1901 by the Paris Academy of Sciences . Charles Babbage , an English mechanical engineer and polymath , originated
3876-528: The 6300 Plus, described below) put it in the fourth place in terms of market share in the US. Olivetti's M24 did much better in Europe, where it became the market leader in 1986. The company produced almost half a million M24 machines that year, about 200 000 of which went to the United States. As it claimed the crown of most PC machines sold in Europe that year, Olivetti also became the third largest PC manufacturer worldwide. Olivetti would however be unable to repeat
3990-522: The 6300 so long as they were designed to work either specifically with the machine (for high speed 16-bit cards), or in an IBM PC compatible mode (necessarily 8-bit at 4.77 MHz). However, the original graphics card had to remain in place even if no longer in use, as it formed an essential part of the bridge connecting the expansion board to the motherboard, and although it featured DIP switch jumpers to select between MDA / Hercules , 40 and 80 column CGA, and expanded video options including its own (as per
4104-523: The 6300) instead of the latterly more common 9-pin serial transmission. A January 1985 review in InfoWorld declared it "a fair performer, better than the 8088-equipped IBM PC and PC XT and about equal to the 8086-based Compaq Deskpro ", and taking pricing into account concluded that it was "a good deal, but by no means perfect." The reviewer wondered how the "5 MHz" 8086 in the Compaq ran as fast as
4218-450: The ATs of the time with 6 MHz 286 processors, since it has zero- wait state RAM. It shipped with 640 KB RAM standard, an AT-style 1.2 MB high-density diskette drive and a 20 MB hard disk. Despite these features, reviews rated it as a poor market value. The XT 286 uses a 157-watt power supply, which can internally switch between 115 or 230 V AC operation. Both
4332-619: The Cambridge EDSAC of 1949, became operational in April 1951 and ran the world's first routine office computer job . The concept of a field-effect transistor was proposed by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain , while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs , built the first working transistor , the point-contact transistor , in 1947, which was followed by Shockley's bipolar junction transistor in 1948. From 1955 onwards, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving rise to
4446-591: The EDVAC in 1945. The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-program computer . It was built at the University of Manchester in England by Frederic C. Williams , Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill , and ran its first program on 21 June 1948. It was designed as a testbed for the Williams tube , the first random-access digital storage device. Although the computer was described as "small and primitive" by
4560-455: The ENIAC were six women, often known collectively as the "ENIAC girls". It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes). Built under
4674-494: The Extender card inserts wait states for memory in the Expansion Unit, so it may be preferable to install memory into the main system unit. The 5161 can be connected to either an XT or to the earlier 5150 (the original IBM PC). PC DOS 2.0 offers a 9-sector floppy disk format, providing 180K/360K (single- vs. dual-sided) capacity per disk, compared to the 160K/320K provided by the 8-sector format of previous releases. The XT
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4788-576: The IBM Model M, but in a modified variant that used the XT's keyboard protocol and lacked LEDs). Submodels 267, 277 and 088 had the original keyboard, but 3.5" floppy drives became available and 20MB Seagate ST-225 hard disks in 5.25" half-height size replaced the full-height 10 MB drives. Submodel 788 was the only XT sold with the Color Graphics Adapter as a standard feature. Submodels 568, 588, and 589 were used as basis for
4902-481: The IBM PC/AT. The version of Simultask included with the 6300 Plus was based on Locus Computing Corporation 's Merge software . In order to allow MS-DOS applications to run as "concurrent UNIX tasks", a non-standard hardware unit known as OS Merge was provided, allowing DOS applications to "think" that they had "complete control over the system" and offering "almost complete compatibility with IBM PC software", with
5016-516: The IBM motherboard settings), there was no "disable" switch. Instead, the (socketed) Motorola HD6845 CRTC main controller chip had to be removed, and replaced with a simple but remarkably expensive bridging circuit (or a user installed set of jumper wires to the correct half-dozen socket terminals) to bypass the necessary bus signals through the card untouched. Some plasma-screen and early LCD based portables from Compaq and other manufacturers also copied
5130-496: The M20 mode using the 24 MHz system master crystal to drive the pixel clock either directly or (320×200 and 8×16 40-character only) divided in two (in comparison, contemporary IBM displays ran at 15.8 to 21.9 kHz with 14.3 to 16.3 MHz dot clocks). Colour depth remained the standard fixed 4-colour CGA palettes in 320×200, and "monochrome" in all higher modes (any selectable RGB(I) foreground colour/one of 15 shades, with
5244-720: The M24 The keyboard used a proprietary 9-pin D-sub connector built into the system board and had the unconventional option of plugging a mouse into the keyboard via another 9-pin D-sub connector. The mouse could be configured to simulate the usage of the keyboard's arrow keys in DOS applications without mouse support, aided by the choice of a parallel quadrature encoding design (as per the Microsoft Bus Mouse , Amiga , and Atari ST mice, all of which can be modified to work with
5358-481: The M24/6300's graphics hardware to make better use of early square-pixel 640×400 panels popular for Japanese and other non-IBM portables (still well suited to the basic CGA/EGA resolutions, but not so much EGA-high or MDA/EGA text, and unable to show MCGA /VGA-high or Hercules graphics without cropping or losing details) in an IBM Compatible hardware ecosystem that otherwise avoided the mode. However, it remained on
5472-763: The M240 (8086 at 10 MHz, which AT&T marketed in the USA as the 6300 WGS) while the M28 (and M28 SP) was succeeded by the M280 (80286 at 12 MHz). Olivetti also introduced an M380 series (both tower and desktop) using the 80386 processor. Computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation ). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs . These programs enable computers to perform
5586-531: The MOS transistor, was invented at Bell Labs between 1955 and 1960 and was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturized and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. With its high scalability , and much lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors, the MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits . In addition to data processing, it also enabled
5700-633: The Olivetti M24 were only 42 000 in the first year, well below the planned production capacity of 200 000 . As a result, AT&T introduced the faster models with hard drive and a math co-processor in March. Still, after about one year on the market, AT&T had only claimed about 1% of the PC market, on par with that of TeleVideo and Columbia Data Products , but well below that of Compaq and Kaypro . By December 1986 however, AT&T's PC line (including
5814-455: The Scottish scientist Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location. The differential analyser , a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration , used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform
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#17327979951375928-493: The U.S. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing-complete. Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. The programmers of
6042-538: The US, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) in 1942, the first "automatic electronic digital computer". This design was also all-electronic and used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory. During World War II, the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park achieved
6156-558: The XT. The 3270 PC , a variant of the XT featuring 3270 terminal emulation, was released in October 1983. Submodel 068 and 078, released in 1985, offered dual-floppy configurations without a hard drive as well, and the new Enhanced Graphics Adapter and Professional Graphics Adapter became available as video card options. In 1986, the 256–640 KB motherboard models were launched, which switched to half-height drives. Submodels 268, 278 and 089 came with 101-key keyboards (essentially
6270-898: The advent of the integrated circuit (IC). The idea of the integrated circuit was first conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence , Geoffrey W.A. Dummer . Dummer presented the first public description of an integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C. , on 7 May 1952. The first working ICs were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor . Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning
6384-866: The bad luck of launching just a few months before the IBM PC/AT, which introduced the entirely different 16-bit connector and signalling standard extension to the PC bus now known simply as "ISA", and so ended up featuring slots incompatible on all three fronts of physical configuration, complement and arrangement of signals, and data transfer rate, significantly restricting the number of compatible 16-bit cards produced for it. The M24/6300 had an unusual enhanced 32 KB CGA -compatible video card (Video Enhanced Adapter - EGC 2413) which, in addition to standard 200-line CGA graphics modes (automatically line doubled, transparent to software, with text modes also using 400 scanlines with higher quality 8×16 pixel fonts, or even 16×16 in 40-column mode with an expansion ROM ), also supported an additional 640×400 pixel graphics mode, as well as
6498-647: The basic concept which underlies all electronic digital computers. By 1938, the United States Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer small enough to use aboard a submarine . This was the Torpedo Data Computer , which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During World War II similar devices were developed in other countries as well. Early digital computers were electromechanical ; electric switches drove mechanical relays to perform
6612-530: The best Arithmetician that euer [ sic ] breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number." This usage of the term referred to a human computer , a person who carried out calculations or computations . The word continued to have the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. During the latter part of this period, women were often hired as computers because they could be paid less than their male counterparts. By 1943, most human computers were women. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives
6726-570: The calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using vacuum tubes . The Z2 , created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1939 in Berlin , was one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer. In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3 , the world's first working electromechanical programmable , fully automatic digital computer. The Z3
6840-471: The case via the video card which, rather than occupying an ISA slot, has two female edge connectors and plugs onto the ends of both the motherboard and the backplane , doubling as a bridge between them. The M24 has seven 8-bit ISA slots, as were standard for its time, but a number of slots (exact figure seeming to vary between one and at least four across extant machines) have proprietary second connectors to accept Olivetti-specific 16-bit cards. The machine had
6954-565: The concept of a programmable computer. Considered the " father of the computer ", he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After working on his difference engine he announced his invention in 1822, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society , titled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables". He also designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that
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#17327979951377068-704: The core of general-purpose devices such as personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones . Computers power the Internet , which links billions of computers and users. Early computers were meant to be used only for calculations. Simple manual instruments like the abacus have aided people in doing calculations since ancient times. Early in the Industrial Revolution , some mechanical devices were built to automate long, tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms . More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in
7182-499: The data signals do not have to travel long distances. Since ENIAC in 1945, computers have advanced enormously, with modern SoCs (such as the Snapdragon 865) being the size of a coin while also being hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, integrating billions of transistors, and consuming only a few watts of power. The first mobile computers were heavy and ran from mains power. The 50 lb (23 kg) IBM 5100
7296-515: The decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage , completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill ) in 1888. He gave
7410-460: The direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full operation at the end of 1945. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. The principle of
7524-483: The doll is at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel , Switzerland , and still operates. In 1831–1835, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual Calendar machine , which through a system of pulleys and cylinders could predict the perpetual calendar for every year from 0 CE (that is, 1 BCE) to 4000 CE, keeping track of leap years and varying day length. The tide-predicting machine invented by
7638-481: The early 11th century. The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BCE and is often attributed to Hipparchus . A combination of the planisphere and dioptra , the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy . An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar computer and gear -wheels
7752-435: The early 2000s. These smartphones and tablets run on a variety of operating systems and recently became the dominant computing device on the market. These are powered by System on a Chip (SoCs), which are complete computers on a microchip the size of a coin. Computers can be classified in a number of different ways, including: IBM XT 286 The IBM Personal Computer XT (model 5160, often shortened to PC/XT )
7866-399: The early 20th century. The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II , both electromechanical and using thermionic valves . The first semiconductor transistors in the late 1940s were followed by the silicon -based MOSFET (MOS transistor) and monolithic integrated circuit chip technologies in the late 1950s, leading to the microprocessor and
7980-426: The exact definition of the term "microprocessor", it is largely undisputed that the first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004 , designed and realized by Federico Faggin with his silicon-gate MOS IC technology, along with Ted Hoff , Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel . In the early 1970s, MOS IC technology enabled the integration of more than 10,000 transistors on a single chip. System on
8094-506: The expansion board), was divided down from a 24.0 MHz master crystal, with the CPU timing in particular using an Intel 8284 clock generator , as per the IBM PC, to produce the 33% duty cycle pulse wave required by the 8086. The system was designed "split-level", with the motherboard screwed onto the underside of the computer case and connected to the ISA bus backplane in the top section of
8208-780: The feat in the subsequent years, and so 1986 represents the company's apogee in terms of PC market share. The 6300 was also supported by Unix-based operating systems particularly by Venix /86 Encore, released in September 1984, and by a version of Xenix adapted for the machine by the Santa Cruz Operation , and announced in June 1985. In response to IBM's launch of their PS/2 line, Olivetti revamped their product line in July 1987 to include 3.5" floppy drives (in 5.25-to-3.5" converted bays though) and also introduced new 80386 -based products. The M24 (and M24 SP) were succeeded by
8322-508: The first Colossus. After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was delivered on 18 January 1944 and attacked its first message on 5 February. Colossus was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer. It used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it
8436-725: The first attested use of computer in the 1640s, meaning 'one who calculates'; this is an "agent noun from compute (v.)". The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean " 'calculating machine' (of any type) is from 1897." The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the "modern use" of the term, to mean 'programmable digital electronic computer' dates from "1945 under this name; [in a] theoretical [sense] from 1937, as Turing machine ". The name has remained, although modern computers are capable of many higher-level functions. Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers . The earliest counting device
8550-409: The form of conditional branching and loops , and integrated memory , making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete . The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with
8664-528: The hard drive-equipped version found it on par with the (6 MHz, 80286 equipped) IBM PC AT as far as processor performance was concerned, but with considerably slower I/O. The initial model of the AT&;T 6300 (no hard disk and only 360K floppy) had slow sales in 1984 with only 28 500 sold compared to 1.5 million IBM PCs. The sales were not much better in the first three months of 1985, with only 8500 sold in that time period. If fact, worldwide sales of
8778-415: The integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working integrated example on 12 September 1958. In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as "a body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated". However, Kilby's invention was a hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC), rather than
8892-411: The integration. In 1876, Sir William Thomson had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators . In a differential analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in
9006-590: The machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory , so it was not the first completely transistorized computer. That distinction goes to the Harwell CADET of 1955, built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell . The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as
9120-452: The modern computer was proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1936 paper, On Computable Numbers . Turing proposed a simple device that he called "Universal Computing machine" and that is now known as a universal Turing machine . He proved that such a machine is capable of computing anything that is computable by executing instructions (program) stored on tape, allowing the machine to be programmable. The fundamental concept of Turing's design
9234-403: The more famous Sir William Thomson. The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer , built by H. L. Hazen and Vannevar Bush at MIT starting in 1927. This built on the mechanical integrators of James Thomson and the torque amplifiers invented by H. W. Nieman. A dozen of these devices were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the 1950s,
9348-404: The more powerful 8.0 MHz Intel 8086 CPU rather than the 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 used in IBM 's own PC XT , configured for "maximum mode" that allowed direct installation of an 8087 math co-processor (also at 8 MHz) to the motherboard . The CPU clock, along with most others in the machine (other than the serial baud rate generator and an IBM-standard 14.3 MHz crystal used on
9462-407: The original 6300. Forrester Research estimated in December 1986 that AT&T's financial losses in PC market were about $ 600M for the year. In 1986, AT&T began offering 3.5" 720 KB floppies and 20 MB hard disks . The Xerox 6060 came standard with a single 360 KB 5.25" drive and a 20 MB hard drive. An Iomega Bernoulli 10/10 removable cartridge drive was also offered as
9576-716: The original XT and the XT/286 was discontinued in late 1987 after the launch of the IBM Personal System/2 (PS/2) line. The 8086-powered IBM PS/2 Model 30 served as the direct replacement for the XT in that PS/2 line. Unlike higher-end entries in the PS/2 line, which feature the Micro Channel expansion bus, the Model 30 contains 8-bit ISA bus slots, exactly like the XT. The XT was well received, although PC DOS 2.0
9690-486: The practical use of MOS transistors as memory cell storage elements, leading to the development of MOS semiconductor memory , which replaced earlier magnetic-core memory in computers. The MOSFET led to the microcomputer revolution , and became the driving force behind the computer revolution . The MOSFET is the most widely used transistor in computers, and is the fundamental building block of digital electronics . The next great advance in computing power came with
9804-427: The problem by adding three extra expansion slots for a total of eight. While the slots themselves are identical to those in the original PC, the amount of physical space in the chassis differs, so two of the new slots (located behind the hard drive) cannot accept full-length cards. In addition, the spacing of the slots is narrower than in the original PC, making it impossible to install some multi-board cards. The 5161
9918-548: The results of operations to be saved and retrieved. It was not until the mid-20th century that the word acquired its modern definition; according to the Oxford English Dictionary , the first known use of the word computer was in a different sense, in a 1613 book called The Yong Mans Gleanings by the English writer Richard Brathwait : "I haue [ sic ] read the truest computer of Times, and
10032-515: The same processor at 8 MHz in the AT&T machine; however, this appears to be a misunderstanding given that the Compaq was switchable between a guaranteed IBM PC-compatible 4.77 MHz and an enhanced-performance 7.16 MHz clock rate (respectively one-third and one-half of the same NTSC colourburst crystal used in the IBM, but not the Olivetti/AT&;T), and defaulted to the latter on boot, as detailed in other publications of
10146-591: The same time that digital calculation replaced analog. The engineer Tommy Flowers , working at the Post Office Research Station in London in the 1930s, began to explore the possible use of electronics for the telephone exchange . Experimental equipment that he built in 1934 went into operation five years later, converting a portion of the telephone exchange network into an electronic data processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes . In
10260-490: The stored-program computer was laid out by Alan Turing in his 1936 paper. In 1945, Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory and began work on developing an electronic stored-program digital computer. His 1945 report "Proposed Electronic Calculator" was the first specification for such a device. John von Neumann at the University of Pennsylvania also circulated his First Draft of a Report on
10374-443: The success of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers remained in use during the 1950s in some specialized applications such as education ( slide rule ) and aircraft ( control systems ). Claude Shannon 's 1937 master's thesis laid the foundations of digital computing, with his insight of applying Boolean algebra to the analysis and synthesis of switching circuits being
10488-665: The time, and endlessly misreported (including as "8 MHz", about as frequently as the miscalculated "7.14 MHz") ever since. The reason behind the M24/6300's failure to perform any better than equal with the 1/9th-slower Deskpro may be traceable, as hinted at in the InfoWorld review, to poorly optimised graphics routines in the BIOS, which would have a particularly noticeable effect in the high resolution 640x400 and extended colour modes. A November 1985 review in PC Magazine of
10602-403: The title of "highest clocked 8086 computer" as its processor was the fastest grade of 8086-2, rated for a maximum speed of exactly the same 10 MHz. To support this, the motherboard now featured a switchable 24/30 MHz master crystal, still divided by 3 to produce the 33% duty CPU clock, with an additional 4 MHz crystal to maintain that clock signal for peripherals that required it, and
10716-412: The versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers. The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine , invented by Sir William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin) in 1872. The differential analyser , a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration using wheel-and-disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in 1876 by James Thomson , the elder brother of
10830-414: The video board receiving its own 24 MHz crystal to maintain the same image size and scan frequencies at both processor speeds. In October 1985, AT&T launched the 6300 Plus that used a 6 MHz 286 microprocessor in the same case as the 6300. Prior to release, this machine had been referred to as the 8300 and codenamed "Safari 5" ( PC 7300 was "Safari 4"). On the hardware level, this machine
10944-439: The video controller, disk controller and printer interface) each came as separate expansion cards and could quickly fill up all five available slots, requiring the user to swap cards in and out as tasks demanded. Some PC clones addressed this problem by integrating components into the motherboard to free up slots, while peripheral manufacturers produced products which integrated multiple functions into one card. The XT addressed
11058-511: The whole a poorly supported oddity, much like IBM's own PGC and most Super EGAs outside of their limited library of applications with direct driver support, and PC graphics on the whole did not exceed 640×350 in 16 colours or 720×348 in monochrome until the arrival of both the VGA standard, and Windows 3.0 which provided a simple one-driver-for-all-programs framework for future expansion cards to build on. Olivetti produced 2 official keyboards for
11172-684: Was AT&T's first attempt to compete in the PC compatible market. It was also available in France as the PERSONA 1600 , built by LogAbax . The initial 1984 US version named AT&T 6300 came with either one or two 360 KB 5.25" floppy drives; a hard disk was not offered. In Europe, Olivetti launched a 10 MHz version: the Olivetti M24 SP , announced in November 1985, a contender for
11286-406: Was a 16-transistor chip built by Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein at RCA in 1962. General Microelectronics later introduced the first commercial MOS IC in 1964, developed by Robert Norman. Following the development of the self-aligned gate (silicon-gate) MOS transistor by Robert Kerwin, Donald Klein and John Sarace at Bell Labs in 1967, the first silicon-gate MOS IC with self-aligned gates
11400-625: Was an early example. Later portables such as the Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable were considerably lighter but still needed to be plugged in. The first laptops, such as the Grid Compass , removed this requirement by incorporating batteries – and with the continued miniaturization of computing resources and advancements in portable battery life, portable computers grew in popularity in the 2000s. The same developments allowed manufacturers to integrate computing resources into cellular mobile phones by
11514-537: Was built with 2000 relays , implementing a 22 bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz . Program code was supplied on punched film while data could be stored in 64 words of memory or supplied from the keyboard. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating-point numbers . Rather than the harder-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage 's earlier design), using
11628-484: Was criticized by an InfoWorld reviewer for being incompatible with AT cards . On the other hand, AT&T sold a package of the 6300 Plus bundled with Simultask , which ran MS-DOS and UNIX System V simultaneously, at a cost—with all software licenses included—on par with the IBM PC/AT with MS-DOS alone. A review in PC Magazine declared that AT&T's 6300 Plus was "flat out the better machine" compared to
11742-511: Was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951. At least seven of these later machines were delivered between 1953 and 1957, one of them to Shell labs in Amsterdam . In October 1947 the directors of British catering company J. Lyons & Company decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers. Lyons's LEO I computer, modelled closely on
11856-443: Was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968. The MOSFET has since become the most critical device component in modern ICs. The development of the MOS integrated circuit led to the invention of the microprocessor , and heralded an explosion in the commercial and personal use of computers. While the subject of exactly which device was the first microprocessor is contentious, partly due to lack of agreement on
11970-825: Was developed in the late 16th century and found application in gunnery, surveying and navigation. The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over it with a mechanical linkage. The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, by the English clergyman William Oughtred , shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm . It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions . Slide rules with special scales are still used for quick performance of routine calculations, such as
12084-402: Was discounted by 17-23% (depending on configuration). 6300s made in 1986-1987 have BIOS Version 1.43 which added proper support for 3.5" floppies and fixed a number of bugs. As with all contemporary systems, a BIOS upgrade required a physical chip replacement, which AT&T provided for $ 35. The M24 was designed to be highly compatible with IBM PC . One of its characteristics was the use of
12198-418: Was especially written to take advantage of the coprocessor would show a significant speedup. The power supply is 130 watts, an upgrade from the original PC. Those sold in the US were configured for 120 V AC only and could not be used with 240 V mains supplies. XTs with 240 V-compatible power supplies were later sold in international markets. Both were rated at 130 watts. IBM made several submodels of
12312-449: Was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan , Persia in 1235. Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe, an early fixed- wired knowledge processing machine with a gear train and gear-wheels, c. 1000 AD . The sector , a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry , multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots,
12426-477: Was made of germanium . Noyce's monolithic IC was fabricated using the planar process , developed by his colleague Jean Hoerni in early 1959. In turn, the planar process was based on Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick work on semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide. Modern monolithic ICs are predominantly MOS ( metal–oxide–semiconductor ) integrated circuits, built from MOSFETs (MOS transistors). The earliest experimental MOS IC to be fabricated
12540-643: Was most likely a form of tally stick . Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, likely livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The use of counting rods is one example. The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from devices used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BCE. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In
12654-438: Was no composite video output available and although some basic register settings remained the same, others were necessarily very different because of the line doubling trickery (itself a type of CRTC hack) and altered scan rates, and Olivetti's protective "scrambler" chip that attempted to convert custom settings to the nearest safe equivalents could only go so far. In its turn, the machine's headline 640×400 graphics mode received
12768-434: Was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained 1,500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark II with 2,400 valves, was both five times faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in
12882-524: Was not offered in a floppy-only model for its first two years on the market, although the standard ribbon cable with two floppy connectors was still included. At that time, in order to get a second floppy drive, the user had to purchase the 5161 expansion chassis. Like the original PC, the XT came with IBM BASIC in ROM . The XT BIOS also displays a memory count during the POST , unlike the original PC. The XT has
12996-417: Was regarded as an incremental improvement over the PC and a disappointment compared to the next-generation successor that some had anticipated. Compared to the original IBM PC, the XT has the following major differences: Otherwise the specifications are identical to the original PC. The number of expansion slots in the original IBM PC was a limiting factor for the product, since essential components (such as
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