Exam 4: A History of Computing Devices: From Calculators to Microcomputers

…………….is popularly recognized in Germany as the father of the computer and his Z1, a programmable automaton built from 1936 to 1938, is said to be the world's 'first programmable calculating machine'.

The Apple IIe, the Radio Shack TRS-80, and the Genie III are examples of microcomputers and are essentially …………..generation devices.

……………..have from 4k to 64k storage location and are capable of handling small, single-business application such as sales analysis, inventory, billing and payroll.

In…………., Babbage designed a more ambitious machine, called the Analytical Engine but unfortunately it also was only partially completed.

In 1970 …………………of Bell Labs developed yet another simplification of CPL called simply B, in connection with an early implementation of the UNIX operating system.

……………….of Cambridge developed a subset of CPL called BCPL (Basic Computer Programming Language, 1967).

The DEHOMAG D11 tabulator was invented in…………...

………………, together with Ada Lovelace recognized several important programming techniques, including conditional branches, iterative loops and index variables.

………………….invented the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) which introduced electronic binary logic in the late 1930s.

In the……………, the growing demand for a smaller stand-alone machine brought about the manufacture of the minicomputer, to handle tasks that large computers could not perform economically.

…………………first machine was known as Mark I and originally named the IBM ASCC and this was the first machine that could solve complicated mathematical problems by being programmed to execute a series of controlled operations in a specific sequence.

…………..built the Z4, a relay computer with a mechanical memory of unique design, during the war years in Berlin.

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was displayed to the public on February 14, 1946, at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of…………………..

The first multi-purpose or programmable computing device was probably Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, which was begun in …………….but never completed.

A second early electronic machine was Colossus, designed by ……………….for the British military in 1943.

………………, supercomputer and Internet pioneer, was born in 1954, in Nigeria, Africa.

A computer ……………is a computer peripheral device that produces a hard copy (permanent human-readable text and/or graphics, usually on paper) from data stored in a computer connected to it.

The first general purposes programmable electronic computer was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), built by J. Presper Eckert and John V. Mauchly at the University of………………..

……………were well known in the 1940s although they are now uncommon.

The …………..defines the instructions to be executed by the computer while RAM is the functional equivalent of computer memory.