The initial moment in the history of computers is tightly connected to Charles Babbage, who projected an analytical machine in 1830, a machine which had a tremendous contribution to the computers we know today. His ideas were later outrun by the technological possibilities of his times. Pascal and Leibnitz also made some attempts in this direction in the seventeenth century, but they had no luck.
The next reference point is 1937. That year, Howard Aiken projected a computer with automatic command, which was based on a combination between Babbage's ideas and the electromechanical computers manufactured by IBM. Its production started in 1939 and ended in 1944, the computer being named Mark I. This computer was the first electromechanical computer. The next step was the ENIAC, which was the first digital computer. It contained about eighteen thousand electronic tubes and did about five thousand calculations per second, having a memory of twenty numbers represented in decimals. There were a lot of calculations involved with the ENIAC and with Mark I, these calculations working at the same problem in parallel and being directed by a single command unit.
Apple Computer
The next version gave up on this parallel structure because the specialists considered that the speed of a calculation unit achieved with the help of electronic circuits was high enough. However, this solution was adopted again after 1980 and finally, INTEL made a supercomputer in 1996. This computer used over seven thousand PENTIUM processors which used the "massive calculation" technique. This technique was used for simulating nuclear tests, for genetic research and many more.
The Evolution of Personal Computers
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