Introduction

The computer has changed the way we live and work. Without this tool our lives would be drastically different. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has predicted that there will be a computer in every home in the near future. Personal Computers have become essential household appliances. They help us type our homework, balance our checkbook, research easily, get daily information and e-mail via the Internet, and they generally save us time. The world would be very different without the computer. Programs that we take for granted, such as the spreadsheet, let us do in minutes what would have taken weeks to do by hand. Programs tell the computer what to do. To write these programs, a person needs to know how to communicate with the computer. That's where languages step in. A computer programming language is a set of commands a person can program in to tell the computer what to do. Computer programming languages would not exist without the computer and computer programmers need to know how a computer works in order to program effectively.

Computers are very complex machines that are comprised of many components. A complex machine such as a computer must have an important use for it to be purchased. Luckily, a computer has many uses. It can be used for business applications such as spreadsheets and project planning. Computers also have educational purposes such as reference and word processing. Computers are also used as devices of entertainment as in computer games. But by far the most popular and well-known use of the computer is its ability to be connected to the internet. In this paper I will tell you more about an over-grown calculator, otherwise known as a computer. I will also discuss computer programming and how to apply it to make the computer serve you and not the other way around. I hope this paper will help open the world of personal computing to you, so that you may be part of the internet revolution that is sweeping through every home, school and office.

Inside the Computer

In order to program a computer effectively, a person needs to understand how a computer works. A computer is made up of physical parts and components, which are called hardware; and programs that run the computer, which are called software.

The hardware of a computer includes memory that stores data and instructions, the central processing unit (CPU) that carries out the instructions given to it by the person via an input device which is also an example of hardware. The computer also consists of storage devices such as a hard drive or disk drive, and output devices such a monitor or printer which generate the results of the computer's work.

Software tells the computer what to do. Programmers save their instructions to a storage device so that they do not have to retype the instructions. The operating system is a set of commands that tell the computer how to operate. It tells the computer where and what it's hardware is and it tells the computer how to run software.

The History of the Personal Computer

A computer is a machine that performs tasks under a set of instructions called a program. There are two types of computers: digital or analog. Analog computers were the first to be made. An example of an analog computer is the abacus. A digital computer is a computer that uses two numbers, 0 and 1 in order to compute calculations. An example of an electronic digital computer is the personal computer.

The electronic digital computer has been around about 60 years. The first true electronic digital computer was the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, otherwise known as ENIAC. It was designed by John Mauchley, an American physicist, and built by Presper Eckert, an American engineer. ENIAC was built by 1945 and used for military purposes, such as designing atomic weapons. This behemoth weighed more than 60,000 pounds and contained 18,000 vacuum tubes. Other large digital computers followed. UNIVAC, which was designed by the makers if ENIAC was the first commercially viable computer. There were 46 UNIVACs in use by 1957. These computers were revolutionary but they took up huge areas. A breakthrough was needed if the computer was to become what it is today.

That breakthrough was the transistor. In 1948 American physicists Walter Brattain, John Bardeen, and William Shockley developed the transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories. The transistor replaced the vacuum tube, which acted as an electric switch. The benefits of the transistor were smaller occupied area, greater reliability, greater energy efficiency, and lower cost.

Transistors made computers more reliable and smaller, however computers still occupied whole rooms. In the 1960s, integrated circuits replaced the individual transistors in the digital computer. Integrated circuits are made up of tiny resistors and other electrical components on a chip of silicon. Integrated circuits became smaller and smaller with more and more transistors on a single chip. In the 1970s the integrated circuit was refined to the point which led to the development of the modern microprocessor. In comparison to the first integrated circuits, which held about a thousand transistors, modern microprocessors can hold as many as ten million transistors and the number is climbing steadily.

Manufactures used microprocessors in order to build smaller and smaller computers. The first personal computer, the Altair 8800 was built by Ed Roberts in 1975, and sold by MITS, a company he founded. The computer was sold as a kit, but interest was high and sales boomed for the calculator company; which, before then, had serious debt. The Altair 8800 was a very crude computer by today's standards. It didn't have a keyboard or a mouse with which to enter instructions or even a monitor with which to display information. Instructions were entered by using switches, located at the front of the computer. Entering programs was tedious and time consuming. The users of these computers were mainly hobbyists and engineers. The computer needed to be simplified in order for it to reach to mass market as it has today. The first step in this journey was the development of a computer programming language for the personal computer. The first programming language for the personal computer was a simplified form of BASIC, which was widely used on the mainframes of the day. A mainframe was the continuation of the large computers; it was mainly used in businesses and for government purposes.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed BASIC for the Altair personal computer in 1975. These two men later formed the Microsoft Corporation. Because of their work the Altair became more accessible. More and more people started using the Altair and its various rivals, but the users were still technically oriented and the average person could not use them without major training. The personal computer industry needed a mass-market approach.

During this time, many new computer companies were started in a place in California known as Silicon Valley. One of these start-ups was a company called Apple Computer. Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak founded Apple in 1976. The company's first product was the Apple I, which was a computer circuit board sold without a case, keyboard, or monitor. The company managed to sell a total of six hundred Apple I s, which cost six hundred and sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents apiece. Apple was incorporated in January 1977. Later that year, Apple introduced the Apple II. The Apple II was a personal computer, which could generate color graphics. It was sold with a keyboard, power supply, case, and with eight slots for peripheral devices, which enabled the Apple II to be equipped with a monitor, printer or other such devices. Within five years, Apple became the first personal computer company to reach an annual sales rate of over a billion dollars. Such profits had been unimaginable several years before and Apple suddenly found itself in competition with a company that most people (at the time) associated with the word computer, IBM.

The International Business Machines Corporation, otherwise known as IBM was incorporated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in a merger of three smaller companies. In 1924 it bought the International Business Machines Corporation and assumed the company's name. Thomas Watson arrived the same year and began the process of turning the small company into the industrial giant that it is today. Shortly after, the company became the America's largest manufacturer of time clocks and it marketed the first electric typewriter. IBM entered the computer field in 1951. It developed mainframes, which government agencies and businesses used for their calculating needs. IBM soon stood out from among the competition by introducing two innovations. IBM was the first company to standardize its computers. Standardized computers meant that the same software would run on any IBM computer of the same family. IBM also introduced a policy dictating that no customer would be allowed to fail when implementing an IBM system. This policy insured that companies would have loyalty to IBM, otherwise known as "Big Blue." During the 1960's and 1970's, the company dominated the mainframe market. This set the stage for IBM's confrontation with Apple computer.

When Apple computer dominated the personal computer market, IBM began to feel threatened by the growing computer market, which it did not control. Head IBM executives devised a plan in which they would use standard off-the-shelf parts in order to catch up to Apple before it was too late. This required that IBM set aside its policy of only using IBM technology in the company's products. This also had a major impact on the personal computer industry, which would be felt much later. In order for a computer to run properly, it requires a set of commands that tell it the basics, such as how to save files and where its parts are. This set of commands is known as the operating system. IBM needed an operating system for its personal computer. After several companies were found to be unacceptable, IBM contacted the (then) relatively unknown Microsoft in order to obtain the license for an operating system and it's Basic interpreter. Microsoft quickly agreed and only received eighty thousand dollars in payment. What made Microsoft rich was the licensing of its operating system to the various clone manufacturers, which resulted when the IBM personal computer became successful. The IBM personal computer was finished in little more than a year from when the project was started. It was released in 1981 and became so successful that it inspired many clones. The clones could exist because IBM had used off the shelf technology in order to create its personal computer and Microsoft readily supplied its operating system, which was known as MS-DOS.

The growing personal computer market inspired such well-known companies such as Compaq and Hewlett-Packard to begin creating clones of the IBM PC. These companies sought to make money by making compatible computers that could run IBM software. IBM's success was two sided. The industry giant soon found its market share shrinking to the various clone makers. Apple also regained some of the market share it had lost to IBM. But Apple's fortunes would soon turn towards the worse. By 1982, Apple had become the first personal computer company to reach an annual sales rate of $1 billion. A year later Apple was in trouble. The Apple II was running out of steam. Saturation of the market and heavy competition from IBM caused Apple to begin trying to develop a new type of computer.

During this time Apple co-founder Steve Jobs visited the Xerox Company's Palo Alto Research Center. Xerox management created this center out of the fear over the future office's reliance on computers and not on paper. Top researchers were given a stress-free environment in order to ensure the company would be the leader of the virtual office. The researchers worked tirelessly in order to create their vision of the office of the future. As a result, they were very protective of their projects when Jobs visited Palo Alto. Xerox management had to order the researchers to show Jobs their projects. By doing this Xerox opened the door to Jobs who quickly incorporated the new ideas he had seen into future Apple products. Xerox had effectively thrown away its business in the GUI operating system branch of personal computers.

Steve Jobs stated that he had seen three things at Palo Alto. The first supposedly interested him so much that he completely ignored the next two. The first thing was Xerox's GUI or Graphical User Interface (pronounced gew-wee). The second thing he saw was networked computers, and the third was object-oriented programming. He would later revisit the final two ideas when working on the NeXT computer after he left Apple.

In the world of personal computing at the time of Steve Job's visit to Xerox, input and output to computers mainly involved text-based commands and display. The GUI that Steve Jobs saw enabled the user to give the computer commands by using a mouse to click on pictures or icons instead of typing in the commands. The GUI was a revolutionary step in the evolution of the computer, and Apple released the first commercially available computer with an operating system that included a GUI. The Xerox researchers had constructed several computers to take advantage of this technology but Apple was the first company that began selling GUI-based computers.

Shortly after his visit to Xerox, Steve Jobs convinced Apple's chairmen to begin building a new type of computer. This computer was called the LISA and it had a GUI-based operating system. The development of the LISA was slow and costly. Apple was losing market share steadily and it needed a new product to continue its growth. Unfortunately the LISA's cost was approached ten thousand dollars. At that price, the computer would never sell and Jobs knew it. Jobs began to become more and more obsessed with the project and he began interfering in the process rather than helping. As a result, Jobs was ousted from the project by Apple's leadership. He soon began work on a new project, called the Macintosh.

Jobs set out to create a cheaper LISA when he designed the Macintosh. Like the LISA, the Macintosh was a GUI based computer but it was much cheaper. Jobs announced the Macintosh to the public on January 24, 1984, for the price of $2,495.00. After a slow start, the Macintosh took off. Its sales saved Apple and turned the former Silicon Valley start-up's fortune around.

The Macintosh needed a "Killer App" or program that would convince consumers to buy it over a cheaper PC or Apple II. The Apple II had "VisiCalc" which was the first spreadsheet program, and the Macintosh needed applications such as this in order for it to be useful. At first, few developers were interested in the Macintosh. The IBM PC was the standard computer, and it was much safer developing software for the standard instead of for a radical new system.

Help came from an unlikely source... Microsoft. Microsoft was the maker of MS-DOS, which was the operating system for the IBM PC. On the surface, helping out Apple was not a good idea since Apple's computers were not compatible with IBM's. Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft had different ideas however. Microsoft was among the first big programming companies to invest in the Macintosh and create applications for it. Creating applications for the Macintosh would allow his programmers to get experience in programming with a GUI. Microsoft would later use this experience when creating their own GUI named "Windows."

Apple's computers were easier to use than IBM's and the computer giant soon found itself losing customers to the Macintosh. IBM called upon Microsoft to create a new operating system to compete with Apple's. This led to IBM and Microsoft collaborating to create OS\2. Since Microsoft had already started work on Windows, it found itself working on OS\2 and Windows at the same time. This was because Microsoft did not want to lose their position of providing the OS for the IBM PC and its many clones (which was the source of most of its profits). While still working on OS\2, Microsoft began developing newer and newer versions of Windows. As Windows became more popular, OS\2 slid further and further into obscurity. It would eventually find a niche as in OS for ATMs and cash registers.

The release of Windows 95 enabled Microsoft to become the dominant software company of the computer industry. Further versions, including Windows XP have cemented this status. Despite the Macintosh's early success, Apple's market share was reduced to a tiny fraction of the computer industry. IBM reorganized its strategy and refocused its attention back to business computing and services, where its success had originated. Dozens of clone makers now fight for control of the personal computer industry. The GUI operating system is now found on all of the world's computers in various forms. Personal computers are now found in schools, business places, and in our homes.

A person needs to issue commands to a computer in order for it to function correctly. A computer operates using a binary code of ones and zeros. A computer language translates the code of numbers into a language of words that can be easily understood by people. Computer languages have been used ever since the computer has been in use. Modern languages were developed when mainframe computer became widely used by government agencies and businesses. Several of these mainframe languages have been translated to the personal computer. These smaller versions of the languages help people develop programs for everyday use.

Popular personal computing languages include Basic, C, Pascal, and Java. Basic stands for Beginners All-Purpose Sybolic Instruction Code. John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College originally developed Basic in 1965. This language is very popular among beginning programmers and is found on virtually every type of computer. A recent version of Basic is Visual Basic, which is an Object-oriented programming language.

Dennis Ritchie developed C at Bell Laboratories in 1972. It was the immediate successor to the B programming language. C is considered the closest thing to a standardized computer language because of its wide spread use on many computer platforms. The Object oriented version of C is C++. C++ is used to create the majority of games and graphical programs. It is powerful yet relatively easy to learn by high level programmers. Pascal is named after Blaise Pascal, who was the inventor of the first computing device. It was developed in 1971 and it is based on a previous language, ALGOL. Pascal is widely used as a development language.

With the recent Internet explosion, Java has become a widely used language. Java is used to make Internet pages as well as the browser's people use to view them. It is derived from the C language and promises to become even more popular in the future.

Object oriented languages were developed in conjunction with the GUI. These languages let a person manipulate objects such as images with the language. Modern object oriented languages even let a person use a mouse to manipulate the object without typing or scripting any code.

There are several ways to learn a computer language. Books are available that vary from easy to use overviews to professional, in-depth journals. Classes are also available that are step by step courses taught by computer professionals. These classes are available through community colleges, high schools, and even computer stores.

In order to begin learning a language, a person needs to have a reason to do so. The benefits of learning a computer programming language are: creating useful programs, a greater knowledge of the personal computer, and the opportunity for employment by a computer software company. Creating web pages can be an entertaining if not useful hobby.

Once a person learns a computer programming language it is easy for them to create a program. In order to begin programming a person has to decide on what the program is going to do. The programmer begins the process by making a plan of the program, sort of like an outline for a paper. Then the programmer goes down the plan and uses simple logic to determine how they would program the part that they were looking at. Then the programmer transfers the logic into the programming language and types it into the computer. The programmer writes the script in sections, combining them at the end.

After a program is complete, there is a chance that it may malfunction under certain instructions from the computer. This is known as a "bug." Bugs are usually the result of the mis-typing of a word or command in the program. Sometimes it is a result of false logic and it therefore much harder to correct than a mistyped word. Special debugging programs may be used to help in the process. After all the bugs are rooted out, the program may be used for the job it was intended to do, be it entertainment or work.

Every once in a while a person needs to break away from the dull reality of everyday life. Some people go on walks, some people play sports, and still others read books in order to achieve this. But some people have always found comfort in playing games on the computer. Computer games have been around since the computer has been introduced. The two have gone hand in hand as each has become more complex and technologically advanced than the one before it.

The first computer games were text-based adventure games or military-simulation games. These primitive games were made for Unix mainframes in the 1960's and 1970's. The appearance of the Apple II and Atari 800 sparked a revolution in the computer gaming world. These were the first computers to have good color, sound, and graphics power. Programs were written on these machines in Basic or pure machine language, which is the binary language used by the computer's CPU. The success of the IBM PC forced many developers to begin writing games for MS-DOS, the original operating system of IBM PC.

Games have become more and more technologically advanced with the advent of newer and newer computer technology. The recent 3D computer game craze originated at, a then little known company called, Id. The year was 1991 and a shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D slipped on to various web sites and bulletin boards. The results of this game were not quite felt when id released a follow up to Wolfenstein. This game was called Doom. Doom sparked a computer revolution with its incredible 3D graphics, addicting game play, and organized destruction.

Since Doom, computer gaming has moved to the text-free pastures of Window 95 and has embraced hardware 3D accelerator cards, which drastically improve performance. Another recent trend in computer games has been multi-player gaming. The internet has allowed players from across the world to join in a friendly game of computer golf or a destructive free-for-all in the form of a "deathmatch." Computer gaming has grown from a mere hobby of mainframe programmers to a multi-billion dollar industry which will continue to grow and move into new markets.

Computers have changed the world in which we live in. Without them we would have to spend more time on tasks that the computer has sped up for us. Devices such as the cellular phone would have been impossible to make had the computer not been developed. Computers have made publishing easier and information more accessible.

Programming the computer opens new world for the computer user. Problems can be resolve by making programs to solve them, games can be made that are more entertaining, and businesses can become more profitable with specialized programs.

This topic has interested me since I first started playing with my dad's IBM PC. I was only five, but ever since then I have loved the computer. This topic was easy to research and I would recommend it to anyone with interest in technology. Computers are the windows to a better world in which our way of life is enhanced. By researching them I have helped myself prepare for a future life in which computers are part of every home, school, and office.

originally written in 2000
last updated August 03, 2005
Michael Labowicz