Research

The first generation of computers is said by some to have started in 1946 with ENIAC, the first 'computer' to use electronic valves (ie. vacuum tubes). Others would say it started in May 1949 with the introduction of EDSAC, the first stored program computer. Whichever, the distinguishing feature of the first generation computers was the use of electronic valves.

The World's First Microprocessor - The Intel 4004 In 1970 and '71, responding to a request for 12 custom chips for a new high-end calculator, and with incredible overkill, a young startup company named Intel built the world's first single chip general purpose microprocessor. Then it bought back the rights for $60,000.

In the third quarter of the 1984 Super Bowl, a strange and disorienting advertisement appeared on the TV screens of the millions of viewers tuned in to the yearly ritual. The ad opens on a gray network of futuristic tubes connecting blank, ominous buildings. Inside the tubes, we see cowed subjects marching towards a cavernous auditorium, where they bow before a Big Brother figure pontificating from a giant TV screen. But one lone woman remains unbroken. Chased by storm troopers, she runs up to the screen, hurls a hammer with a heroic grunt, and shatters the TV image. As the screen explodes, bathing the stunned audience in the light of freedom, a voice-over announces, "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984."

Dear Friend, In this video commentary, I discuss how the computer was invented. Why is it called a “computer?” And how did it help the allies win World War II? Tune in!

The story of CAD/CAM was accelerated in early 1950s. Upto year 2011 it has become one of the supreme technology available on Planet earth. It is being used in almost all the fileds of engineeirng but primarily in mechanical engineering branches. the development in the field is still gaining speed.

A timeline outlining many of the major events that have taken place in the world of CAD throughout the past quarter of a century.

Medusa, was used mainly as a 2D drafting software. It was similar to drawing on paper in that you started out with a pre-formatted sheet size, set your drawing scale and then made your drawing. There were 2 basic kinds of lines. Regular non-clump lines and clump lines. With clump lines, a part could be drawn in a 2D view as an individual part or (clump of lines). This 2D part (clump) could then be selected as a unit and moved around, saved, deleted or changed. Different parts (clumps) could be joined together into an assembly (a higher level clump) and that could then be moved around as a unit.

25 years ago, nearly every drawing produced in the world was done with pencil or ink on paper. Minor changes meant erasing and redrawing while major changes often meant recreating the drawing from the scratch. If a change to one drawing affected other documents you were dependent upon having someone manually recognize the need to make the changes to the other drawings and to do so. CAD has fundamentally changed the way design is done.

USB Overview In the past, connecting multiple peripheral devices to computer has been a real problem. There were too many different port types (serial port, parallel port, PS/2 etc.) and their use imposes limitations such as no hot-pluggability and automatic configuration. There are very limited number of ways to attach the peripheral devices in the original IBM PC implementation due to the requirements in terms of non-shareable IRQ lines and I/O address space. The main reason that Universal Serial Bus was implemented to provide a replacement for those legacy ports on a computer to make the addition of the peripheral devices quick and easy for end user.

In a world where Microsoft increasingly threatens to dominate computing and the Internet, the strongest potential rival to its dominance is no longer its traditional commercial rivals but, surprisingly, a seemingly motley collection of free software tools and operating systems collectively dubbed "open source" software. Unlike most commercial software, the core code of such software can be easily studied by other programmers and improved upon--the only proviso being that such improvements must also be revealed publicly and distributed freely in a process that encourages continual innovation. From an operating system called Linux, named for a student from Finland who wrote its core code, to a web server named Apache, put together as literally "a patchy" set of updates to older software by a band of volunteer programmers, these open source programs are emerging not just as inexpensive but as more robust and dynamic alternatives to commercial software.