Origen Del Latin

HISTORY OF COMPUTING
One of the first mechanical devices for counting was the abacus, whose history dates back to ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. This device is very simple, consisting of beads on rods which in turn are mounted on a rectangular frame. By moving the accounts on rods, their positions represent stored values, and it is through such positions that it represents and storesdata. In this device you can call computer lacking the essential element called program.

Another mechanical inventions was the Pascaline invented by Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) of France and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 - 1716) of Germany. With these machines, the data is represented by the positions of the gears, and the data were entered manually by setting these end positions of thewheels, as similarly to read the numbers on the odometer of a vehicle.

The first computer was created by the Analytical Engine Charles Babbage, mathematician professor at the University of Cambridge in the nineteenth century. The idea was Charles Babbage was born on a computer because the development of mathematical tables was a tedious and error prone. In 1823 the British government supported theproject to create a different machine, a mechanical device to perform repeated addition.

Meanwhile Charles Jacquard (French), textile manufacturer, had created a loom that could automatically play weaving patterns by reading the information encoded in patterns of holes punched in paper cards rigid. Upon learning this method left Babbage difference engine and dedicated to the project of theAnalytical Engine could be programmed with punched cards to perform any calculation with an accuracy of 20 digits. The technology was not enough time to realize their ideas.

The world was not ready and would not be a hundred years.

In 1944 he built the Harvard Mark I, designed by a team led by Howard H. Aiken. This machine is not considered electronic computer because it was not general purposeand its operation was based on electromechanical devices called relays.

In 1947 was built at the University of Pennsylvania's ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator) was the first electronic computer, the design team led the engineers John Mauchly and John Eckert. This machine occupied the entire basement of the University, had more than 18 000 vacuum tubes, consumed 200 kW ofpower and required an entire air conditioning system, but his ability to perform arithmetic operations on five thousand a second.

The project, sponsored by the Department of Defense of the United States, culminating two years later, when he joined the team engineer and Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann (1903 - 1957). Von Neumann's ideas were so fundamental to further development, which isconsidered the father of computers.

The EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was designed for this new team. It was about four thousand bulbs and used a type of memory based on mercury-filled tubes through which electrical signals circulated subject to delays.

The fundamental idea of ​​von Neumann was: allow data coexist in memory with instructions, for then the computercan be programmed in a language, and not through wires electrically interconnecting various control sections, as in the ENIAC.

The whole development of computers often glimpsed by generations and the criteria to be determined to determine the change of generation is not well defined, but it is apparent that must be met at least the following requirements:

• The way they are built.
• How thehuman beings communicate with them.
First Generation

In this generation there was great ignorance of the capabilities of computers, since a study that determined this time with twenty computers would saturate the U.S. market in the field of data processing.

This generation spanned the fifties. And is known as the first generation. These machines have the following characteristics:

•...