Example Computer Science Essay

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Journal

Week 1:

The first week gave me a glimpse into the history of computing. All these years, I have never bothered to learn the history of computing, though I have used the computer numerous times. This topic gave me a new sense of revelation and I felt like I was taking a peek into the very evolution of technology and computing.
As soon as I heard the lecture, I decided to do a little research on Turing and Nuemann and found some interesting incidents that played a vital role in computing, as we known it today.

The references I used to learn more about them are:

http://www.caslon.com.au/biographies/turing.htm
http://wwp.mathematik.hu-berlin.de/~mrw/Dozenten/vonNeumann/VonNeumann.html
www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/philh/pubs/Machine%20IntelligenceShort.pdf

From the above sources, I learned a lot about the life and work of Alan Turing and Von Neumann. They designed and developed machines that were the forerunners of the computers that we use today. Neumann was born in Budapest while Turing was born in London and they came to the United States to further their ideas and to put them into practice. Their approach and their unique ideas were truly remarkable.
Turing introduced a machine called Turing Machine that moved from one form to another, based on a set of predefined rules. These rules were read from a tape and it represented a crude form of artificial intelligence. Von Neumann, on the other hand, was interested in using the computer to find answers to applied mathematical problems, rather than using it for just calculation purposes. Turing and Neumann met in Princeton University, where Neumann invited Turing to work with him.
Neumann developed a new architecture known as “Von Neumann architecture.” This architecture was the first step towards parallel processing. He understood the potential of parallel computing, but could not implement it during his time due to the numerous design and construction problems associated with it. Neumann played an instrumental role in the formation of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) and its sister-institutions around the world. He became a consultant for IBM during the 1950s and he proposed many new projects. He worked tirelessly until his death in 1957, to bring harness the power of computers to provide computational solutions for a wide range of problems. He played an important part in finding nuclear solutions for the development of hydrogen bombs.

Week 2:

The lectures this week were very interesting. I came to understand a lot about how calculations were made during the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The machines that were developed by the geniuses of that time are awe-inspiring. The first known device for math computing was developed by Pascal to make his job easier. He worked as a tax administrator for the French Government and he created a simple machine that can add and subtract numbers. This machine had eight gears that worked like a car’s odometer. Unfortunately, this system was not very popular because it was slow and broke down easily. Also, people were not very comfortable to use machines. But, this machine laid the foundation for the development of other machines. From this point on, many people added their ideas to make it more and more useful for people and business.
Leibinz calculating machine is a classic example of how the calculator developed by Pascal was used as the basis for adding more and more features. This machine could do multiplication as well. It performed multiplication through multiple additions. This machine was known as the Step Reckoner and it represented the decimal numbers in 10-position dials. Leibinz was the first person to conceive the use of binary numbers for easier operations because it consisted of only two states – on and off. Later, this binary system was used to build computers because the electrical circuits had only two states and it was easy to represent.
He introduced this calculator in the market in 1673 and it took a while for people to use it. It was not a huge success due to many reasons. The main reason was the slow acceptance from people to use machines to do their mathematical calculations. Also, the person using the machine required a lot of training and this became very cumbersome and time-consuming. But, this was an important step in the evolution of computers.

http://www.crews.org/curriculum/ex/compsci/articles/history.htm
http://www.gwleibniz.com/calculator/calculator.html
http://www.ssplprints.com/image.php?id=82528
http://www.thocp.net/hardware/leibnitz_calculator.htm

Week 3:

Charles Babbage’s difference engine was the next step in the world of computing. It is a mechanical calculator that can perform a wide range of functions like arithmetic, logarithmic and trigonometric. Besides, it could also calculate complex polynomial functions. It had odd columns and even columns and the operations were performed through a set of iterations. This was a great improvement over the conventional way of doing mathematical calculations. During the development of the difference engine, Babbage also thought of an analytical engine that could store and retrieve data and can perform a set of predefined instructions. This engine was more like a programmable device that can give the intended results.
While Babbage was creating the prototype of the difference engine, he met Ada Lovelace. Ada Lovelace was a female mathematician who realized how much computers can change the world. She was the first person to write a computer program to calculate Bernoulli numbers. Though the potential of computers to generate programs was used only during the 1970s, this first program gave the idea that computers could do way more than mere calculations. She became interested in Babbage’s work and communicated her ideas to him. These ideas helped Babbage to improve the difference engine to make it more efficient.
The analytical engine was an important step in the history of computers because it was a direct fore-runner of the computers that we use today. The input to this engine was given in the form of punched cards and the output was through printers and a bell. It even had a memory that could hold 1000 numbers of 50 decimals each. The CPU was a set of internal instructions that were stored within the engine. These instructions were used to perform complex operations. These analytical engines were not so popular because of its technical limitations.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/lpae.html
http://plus.maths.org/issue34/features/ada/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine

Week 4:

Herman Hollerith invented the punched card system. This was the first tabulation system that was put to practical use. It was used to record the census of 1890. This system used punched cards to store the information. The information stored on each punched card was different for different institutions and it followed a certain logic or pattern that was known only to the users of this information. So, this provided a lot of security and customization and was the fore-runner of the modern technological solutions available today.
The punched cards came in different sizes, depending on the amount of information that had to be stored. The census of 1890 could be completed only due to the usage of these cards. Otherwise, it would have taken more than 10 years to compile and store all the information in books and ledgers. Even a bigger problem would have been the retrieval. The books and ledgers had to be searched to find the required information. With the usage of punched cards, the storage was very simple. In the case of retrieval, the information was identified in the right card through the indexing process.
The success of punched cards brought about a revolution in the storage and retrieval of information. It became so popular that Hollerith started a company called Tabulating Machine Company. This company was later merged with three other companies to become Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and this later came to be known as IBM. This company started making customized solutions for all kinds of businesses.
The punched cards underwent a lot of change as different companies made changes to it. For example, a German company called Deutsche introduced the usage of 9’s complement instead of 10’s complement. This made it easier to record negative numbers for banks. More and more developments were made to punched cards to make it more accessible to people. It was very popular until the 1950s when magnetic tapes took over.

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/census-tabulator.html
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/hollerith.htm
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/builders/builders_hollerith.html

Week 5:

Howard Aiken was a pioneer in the field of computing and he made some important contributions to this field. He developed a series of computers called the MARK series that had the capability to perform a wide range of functions.
Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper developed the MARK series of computers in Harvard University. The first computer, known as MARK I, was developed in 1944. This device weighed 5 tons and was 55 feet long. This computer used punched paper for input and it was capable of doing many mathematical functions, including logarithmic and trigonometric functions. Data was stored using wheels and dials. Mark 1 contained 3000 wheels, 1400 dial switches and more than 500 miles of wiring. This is the reason for the huge amount of space used by the computer. One of the major differences between the MARK series and the previous set of computers was the input. While the previous computers used stored programs, the MARK computers read instructions from a tape and executed them. This brought about a separation between the device and the instruction.
After the completion of Mark I, he went on to design MARK II. It was financed by the US Navy and it used electro-magnetic relays for operations. This made it much faster than Mark I and another highlight was the floating point hardware. This was followed by Mark III and Mark IV. Mark III used magnetic drum memory while Mark IV was completely electronic.
Another parallel development that enabled the development of more and more programmability of computers was the IBM relay. This relay consisted of electromagnet and a set of switches that allowed one to control the flow of current. When the right circuits were connected, the computer could perform a particular operation. This is the basic version of the silicon chips that is used today.

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/specialprod2/specialprod2_7.html
http://www.nzeldes.com/HOC/Relays.htm
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa052198.htm

Week 6:

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, also known as ABC, represented the next step in computing. It was the first electronic and digital computing device that performed certain operations. It did not have the capacity to execute programs, but it was used to solve linear equations. It was developed by Dr.Atanasoff and a graduate student, Clinton Berry at the Iowa State College. It was tested in 1942 after a long period of hard work. Though it was not a huge success in terms of its usage, it was a breakthrough in the design aspects. It was the first computer to use binary arithmetic and electronic switching circuits to perform various operations. It also had parallel processing and a memory that can regenerate. There was a distinct separation between memory and computing functions of the computer.
Four years after Atanasoff-Berry computer, the ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was developed. The creators were John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert and they got funding for this project from the United States Army. It took 18 months and $500,000 to build this computer. The military wanted to use it for calculating artillery firing tables during the Second World War.
This massive computer weighed 30 tons and consumed about 160 KW of power. It had numerous vacuum tubes, resistors, capacitators, switches and soldered joints. Its speed was incredible as it could perform more than 5,000 additions in one second. The highlight of this machine was its speed which was made possible by the usage of vacuum tubes instead of switches. Though it was very difficult to reprogram and required long hours of maintenance, it was a big turnaround in the history of computing. This was the first time vacuum tubes were introduced to increase the speed.
Later, Neumann made many changes to the ENIAC to enable parallel computing. However, there were a lot of technical difficulties and he could only enable serial operations.

http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/jva-archive.shtml
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050898.htm
http://www.buzzle.com/chapters/computers-and-the-internet_history-and-the-human-experience_atanasoff-berry-computer.asp
http://www.2think.org/eniac.shtml
http://www.archives.upenn.edu/faids/upd/eniactrial/eniac4.html

Week 7:

Breaking the code is a film based on the life and work of Alan Turing. The role was played by Derek Jacobi and it was set during the Second World War. It is a 90 minute film that was shot in 35mm lens. This movie describes the story of Alan Turing and how he helped the allies to break the code designed by the German forces during World War II. Some people even believe that this code enabled the allies to win the war. Alan Turing was given complete authority over the code by Winston Churchill and he was given the necessary resources required to break the code.
Turing was first approached by his boss, Dillwyn Knox to perform this job. Turing’s honesty and his commitment to work coupled with his brains and the deep interest in the field of computing made him a prominent figure during the military operations of the Second World War. This meeting took place in the famous Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, UK.
The Germans used a machine called the enigma machine to encrypt messages. This machine is a mechanical and electrical one that has rotating disks called rotors. The mechanical parts make it possible to substitute one letter for another electrically. This machine acted as a scrambler to encrypt messages.
Alan Turing was a world-class cryptologist who learned to break this code. So, the messages sent by the Germans were decrypted at Bletchley Park and based on these messages, the allied forces made their military moves. The operation of decrypting the German messages was a project authorized by the most powerful people and it was codenamed ULTRA. This is the reason many people believe that Turing was very instrumental in the victory of the Allies in the Second World War.

http://www.dramahouse.co.uk/page11.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_code
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/breaking_the_code/

Week 8:

Max Newman was a British mathematician who played an important role in the Second World War. He worked on a project called Colossus, a highly secret project known only to the top circles of the British Army. It was made public decades after the Second World War. Newman headed the project that involved the decryption of German codes that were generated by the Lorenz machines. This was way different when compared to the codes generated by the Enigma machine, which were decoded by Turing himself. The codes generated by the Lorenz machine were high level messages that had a very strategic role in the war. So, the breaking of these codes gave the allied forces a crucial advantage and it helped them to win the Second World War. The Lorenz machines used a wheel-based system to generate links and these links were used to transmit messages to different people positioned in different places. With the help of Colossus, the allied forces were able to break 10 of these links and the messages were read regularly.
Turing designed Colossus and this was later completed by Newman. Colossus was very different from its predecessor, Bombe that was created by Turing to break the Enigma codes. Colossus was more of a digital computer that could break codes while Bombe was an electro-mechanical device that had very little resemblance to computers.
The encryption codes generated by the Lorenz machines required a very high number of mathematical and statistical techniques and so the idea of a machine that can perform this complex operation was conceived. The key parts of the decryption process were done by Colossus and this made the process much faster. The system had about 1600 vacuum tubes that operated in tandem to quicken the process of decryption. However, it lacked internally stored programs and it was not suited to perform the regular operations that could be performed in other computers.

http://www.computer50.org/mark1/maths.html
http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/pages/Reference%20Articles/BriefHistofComp.html#Col
http://www.computer50.org/mark1/turing.html

Week 9:

The next step in the evolution of computing was the Small-scale Experimental Machine, also known as SSEM or “The Baby.” This was built at the University of Manchester and it is the basic version of the computers that we know today. This was the first computer that could store data and short user programs in memory. These programs could also be processed, based on the speed of the underlying electronics. This was the first version of the modern computer. It was designed by Freddie Williams and it became operational in 1948.
SSEM had the first CRT that had the dot-dash and focus-defocus modes of operation. It had a memory that could store about 2048 bits. After the development of the CRT, a computer was built around it. This computer used Random Memory Access to store data as well as to perform calculations. Also, when the memory had to be reset, a keyboard was enough. This avoided the re-configuring of the entire electronic circuitry of the computer. “The Baby” could also store programs and execute them at the speed of the electronics. The first program that was run on this machine was to determine the highest factor of any given number. A small number was used and the output was accurate, though it took about 52 minutes for execution.
In the meantime, Alan Turing continued with the design and development of computers that had more and more features. The Automatic Computing Engine, also called as Pilot ACE, was a computer that could store and execute programs. He understood that the size of the memory and the speed of the computer were important to popularize it. So, he built a computer that had a memory of 25 KB and it could be accessed at a speed of 1 MHz.

http://www.computer50.org/mark1/new.baby.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Computing_Engine

Week 10:
Week 11:

EDSAC, also known as, Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator was based on Neumann’s architecture. It was one of the first computers that had stored programs with practical usage. EDSAC was developed at the University of Cambridge and it ran for the first time on 6 May, 1949.
These computers used punched cards for input and the output was through a teleprinter. It used derated vacuum tubes for logic and mercury lines for memory. This computer’s memory used 1024 bits and it used two’s complement and binary numbers for calculation. It also had the world’s first assembler.
Elliot 803 is another computer that was manufactured by the Elliot Brothers in the UK during the 1960s. These computers had large memory and it supported floating point hardware. It used the world’s first process control system called the ISI-609 process system. Another highlight of this computer was its ability to perform mass storage on magnetic tapes. It also used logic gates to perform various tasks.
LEO computer is another computer that was developed by a British company called Lyons Electronic Office. It resembled EDSAC and it was the first computer that was used for commercial business applications. There are many unique aspects about this computer. First and foremost, it used multiple streams for input and output. This was a great leap from punched cards that were given as input for most of the earlier computers.
The Whirlwind computer was another creation by the geniuses who lived during the 19th century. It was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and it was the first computer to be used for real time operations. It had a video display for output and it was one of the first computers that were way more than a mere mechanical or electronic device.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Delay_Storage_Automatic_Calculator
http://www.g6lvb.com/803.htm
http://www.kzwp.com/lyons/leo.htm
http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/
http://www.cedmagic.com/history/whirlwind-computer.html