Hi folks. Just doing an update on one of the introductory computer courses we put on and thought some might be interested in the following little tidbits. Basically use them to convince folks just starting out that everything changes so fast, even starting late, they really aren't that far behind!!
Sorry bought the formatting...didn't come across from Word too pretty!
Selected Important Dates in Microcomputer History
1945 John von Neumann describes concept of using a stored program computer (no more paper tape)
1946 ENIAC computer built by Eckert and Mauchy
$400,000 – 30 tons – 19,000 vacuum tubes – 1000 square feet – 5000 operations/second
1947 development of the transistor
1956 first transistor based general purpose computer built at MIT
1981 IBM PC Desktop Computer – MS DOS – 4.77Mhz Intel 8088 - 29,000 transistors
Osborne introduces first “portable” (suitcase size!)
1982 Lotus 123
1983 Microsoft Word
1984 Apple Mac computer – Graphical User Interface (GUI)
1985 Pagemaker
1990 Windows 3.0
1993 Mosaic – an early browser causes WWW traffic to proliferate at a 341,634% annual growth rate
Intel introduces the Pentium CPU (first to go by a 'real name'?)
1995 Windows 95
Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy begin providing Internet access
Netscape goes public
Canadian Government and the Vatican go ‘online'
1999 You take a computer class!
Processor Advances
Year Chip Speed Transistors M.I.P.S iComp 1 iComp 2 iComp3
1979 8088 5 Mhz 29,000 0.35 - - -
1982 80286 6 Mhz 134,000 0.9 - - -
1985 80386 16 Mhz 275,000 6.0 - - -
1989 80486 25 Mhz 1,200,000 20.0 122 - -
1993 Pentium 60 Mhz 3,100,000 100.0 510 - -
1997 Pentium MMX 200 Mhz 4,500,000 - - 182 -
1997 Pentium II 300 Mhz 7,500,000 - - 332 -
1998 Celeron 266 Mhz 7,500,000 - - 213 -
1998 Pentium II 450 Mhz 7,500,000 - - 483 1240
1999 Pentium !!! 450 Mhz 9,500,000 - - - 1500
1999 Pentium !!! 600 Mhz 9,500,000 - - - 1930
M.I.P.S and iComp 1, 2 and 3 are rating systems used to indicate the relative performance of processors. More detail on the differences amongst these CPUs can be found at: intel.com
Internet Growth (WWW)
Date Servers Registered Address
70 -na- 9
81 -na- 213
83 -na- 562
88 -na- 33,000
93 130 1,776,000
94 2,738 3,212,000
95 23,500 8,200,000
96 252,000 16,729,000
97 1,117,255 26,053,000
98 2,410,067 36,739,000
99 6,177,453 56,218,000
...dkp...
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