From Mechanical Gears to Smart Rooms: The Wild Ride of Computer Evolution

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Talking about how computers evolved, it’s crazy to think about how far we’ve come in such a relatively short time!

The journey starts with Charles Babbage (1792-1871) and his brilliant assistant Ada Byron (1815-1852). Babbage had this visionary idea in 1823 for an “analytical engine” – a massive, steam-powered beast with thousands of gear wheels that could perform arithmetic and store information on punched tape. Talk about being ahead of your time! The technology to build it didn’t even exist yet, so his dream machine was never completed during his lifetime.

Fast forward to World War II, and suddenly Babbage’s concepts became vitally important. British scientists built the Colossus in 1943 to crack German military codes. This early electronic computer contained 1,500 vacuum tubes – those bulky glass devices that controlled electrical current but generated tons of heat and burned out frequently.

Then things really started moving! In 1944, Harvard built the Mark I, which was over 50 feet long, 8 feet high, and weighed 5 tons. It could perform about 3 calculations per second (my  dell palm pilot probably does billions). The following year, the ENIAC appeared – this monster used 18,000 vacuum tubes, occupied 1,500 square feet, weighed 30 tons, and consumed 150,000 watts of power. But it could perform 5,000 calculations per second, which was mind-blowing at the time.

The real breakthrough came in 1947 with the invention of the transistor – a solid-state component made of semiconductor material like germanium or silicon. Transistors were vastly superior to vacuum tubes: smaller, generated almost no heat, more reliable, and used way less energy. IBM unveiled the first transistor computer in 1955, and it operated on just 5% of the power needed for vacuum tube machines.

Scientists soon figured out they could pack multiple transistors onto a single semiconductor, creating the integrated circuit (IC) in the early 1960s. This was the key that unlocked everything we have today.

The personal computer revolution began with the Altair in 1974 – it had no keyboard or screen but represented the first attempt at a consumer computer. Then in 1977, two college kids named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Corporation, and by 1980, IBM jumped into the PC market, setting off a decade-long competition with Apple for dominance.

Today’s computers range from ultra-powerful supercomputers (like Intel’s machine with 9,200 Pentium Pro ICs containing 5.5 million transistors each) all the way down to tiny specialized microcomputers in everyday items like microwaves, cars, and appliances.

The future looks even wilder!  Nine years back (1995 MIT’s Media Research Lab started a project called “Things That Think”, developing technology that sounds straight out of Star Trek – tiny computers that can be placed around a room or even in your clothing, responding to voice commands or body movements. They’ve already created rooms where simply saying “I’d like to watch a movie” automatically dims the lights and starts the film, and devices that transfer business card information with just a handshake!

What’s most incredible is realizing that computers have gone from experimental room-sized machines that only governments and major corporations could afford to devices small enough to wear on your wrist – all in less than a human lifetime!