Seminar Round-up: A Brief History of Computing

The history of computing dates back as far as few thousands of BCs ago. Back then, 'computing' were but a way of doing simple additions. Those who were good in calculations then, were called, the computers (Yes! Computers ARE a profession!). The idea of computing, could be traced to various source,of which, are the abacus, the napier bones and the circular slide rule, with the intention of doing calculations faster. Its amazing how the need for tools to aid in rapid mathematics created the computers we have today!

As computing slowly evolved, the first electrical binary programmable computer, known as the z1 finally appeared in 1936(that is, hidden within his own living room then...).In the 1940s, the US military pumped in large amount of money to push out a computing system, known as the Mark I. The primary purpose, is to have precise aiming for its gunnery and ballistic applications.The system itself, is a massive chunk 55 feet long and 8 feet high and weighs a hefty 5 ton! It was also at this point of time where the term "computer bug" came into the computing world, which literally, is a bug(moth) in the system, resulting in the malfunction of the program.

It was not until 20 years later, when the first personal computer. SCAMP(Special Computer, APL Machine Portable) developed by IBM came to sight. This geek-only computer only had 16kb of memory(16kb! Imagine doing ANYTHING with that!) and can only be operated by trained personnels. A few months later, IBM came out with a portable disk (the famous IBM 23FD) which can hold 76kB (Yeah!), with a writing speed of 33.3kb/s.(note:1kB=8kb!)

To date, mega computing companies like Sun, Apple, Microsoft have taken over the computing industry.In 2008, Sun came up a super computer,dubbed theRanger that could run at 579.4TFlops (That, simply to say, is 579.4 tera of information in 1 second!). Even household laptops can run at more then 1Gig a second on average and barely weighing just a kilogram!

Its amazing how computers have changed through out the years, bringing convenience to our lives, changing our lives and making everything so much faster. Imagine if computers did not exist, we would not have our efficient transport networks, ibankings, computer games and even your handphone. Even so, computer engineers are not yet been recognise as true engineers. Lets hope the society will slowly see the importance of computer engineers and return the engineers their true glory.

Written by: Byron, Hongjing

Light a fire!

This blog is for students of Freshman seminar module FMC1202: The Wonderfully Weird World of Software for posting module-related stuff.

Our module tag line "Light a fire" (as in "when teaching, aim to light a fire, not to fill a bucket") explains exactly what this module is about.

More specifically, it aims to give students an "outside-in" look at real-world software-related phenomena, leading to a "sneak peek" of the underlying Computer science issues.

So FMC1202 students, I hope you enjoy this module while you gain some knowledge about Computer Science.

-Damith (module coordinator)