Overview

      Computer hardware and software work together for data processing. [1] Which can complete many assist works to raise the work efficiency, fast calculating and huge storage size are the two main benefits of compters. Computer was invented based on many human achievements, and today's computer is much different from the old ones. Software in general is various programs that perform certain tasks in a computer, such as application software, and systems software.

 

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The Pre-History of Electronic Compter

 

The development of the modern day computer was the result of advances in technologies and man's need to quantify. Papyrus helped early man to record language and numbers.[12]

 

3000BC, the abacus was invented in Babylon. [11, P53] And it was one of the first counting machines.

 

In 1623, Wilhelm Schickard constructed the first mechanical calculating machine “Speeding Clock” in Germany. [12, P120] Which could only been proved from two letters of Schickard and Kepler and no actual machine was seen. The publicly known first adding machine was invent by Blaise Pascal in 1642, the machine “Pascaline” could do eight-digit number addition. And in 1694, Gottfried Leibniz reformed the “Pascaline” machine and constructed the first such machine that could execute all four basic arithmetical operations. [12, P130]

 

 

  The Pascaline machine

 

In 1801 Jacquard invented a mechanical loom that has holes punched in pasteboard, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design.[14] Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together in order. [13] The punching-hole method was used to store information till today.

 

      

         Loom with the puching-hole techonology

 

Charles Babbage began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions. Babbage's difference engine was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of finite differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division. [11, P164][15]

 

    

      The difference engine

 

In the year 1889, Herman Hollerith built a machine under contract for the Census Office, it used Jacquard’s punching-hole method to store and calculate data. And this machine was used for the 1890 census, and it completed in only one year, with it took 8 years to complete the 1880 census.[15] Hollerith then started his own business in 1896, founding the Tabulating Machine Company. It renamed International Business Machine later, which is still one of the largest computer companies today.

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The World First Electronic Computers

 

ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was an early electronic, digital, general-purpose, programmable computer. It was the first Turing-complete, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems,[17] although earlier machines had been built with some of these properties. ENIAC was designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. It was started on May 31,1943. [11, P270] The ENIAC could be programmed to perform complex sequences of operations, which could include loops, branches, and subroutines. The task of taking a problem and mapping it onto the machine was quite complex, and usually took weeks. [18] The ENIAC was a signal that showed the appearance of the digital age.  

 

     

        The ENIAC -- the first electronic computer

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Hardware and Software

 

Computer hardware is the physical presence of the computer. [9] It can be cataloged by appearance as personal computer and laptop computer. All computers are organized based on Von Neumann architecture. [2] It has five parts – Processor, Control Unit, Memory, Input Devices, and Output Devices.

 

Present computers’ processor and control unit are combined together as CPU (Central Processing Unit). There are two main CPU factories in the world, Intel and AMD, which are both American factories. CPUs are often compared with clock rate, also with the number of cores, cache size. [4] The newest CPU is Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition, which has a 3.2 GHz clock rate with 4 cores and 8 MB Last Level Cache. [5]  The Intel 4004 was generally regarded as the very first single-chip microprocessor. It has a 0.74MHz clock rate.

 

 

  The world first CPU

 

Memory are divided into two parts – memory and storage, memory always refers to a form of semiconductor storage known as random access memory (RAM) [3] and storage refers to mass storage and magnetic storage, which are slower but can store more data than RAM, such as optical disk and hard disk. There are various types of memory (RAM), such as DDR SDRAM (Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic RAM). RAM is compared with memory size and bandwidth, most computers are installed with 1, 2 or 4 GB (Gigabytes) RAM, and DDR 400 SDRAM can exchange data 3.2 GB per second. [6] The storage is mainly about optical disk and hard disk, and also the USB disk. Hard disk is the non-volatile storage for personal computers; it can store the data without power for ten years. Present hard disk has the storage size 250 GB, 500 GB or 1 TB (Terabytes), it is much larger than RAM, but its data exchange speed are much lower, with the highest theoretic speed 160 MB/s with SCSI Ultra320 technology, which the actual speed is between 70 to 80 MB/s. [7] And the most popular SATA hard disks only have the actual speed between 20 to 50 MB/s.

 

Input and output (I/O) devices are the interfaces of a computer, which computer can receive and send data through these interfaces. The input devices include keyboard, mouse, video camera, scanner, microphone, and so on. The output devices include monitor, printer, speaker, and so on. Hard disk also can be considered as the I/O device. These devices are linked to the I/O interfaces of the computer, send or receive data with the memory and processor through these interfaces.

 

Present multimedia computer is usually combined with CPU, Memory, Motherboard, Video Card, Sound Card, Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Speaker, and some other devices.

 

Software is used to process tasks. It includes system software, application software. System software usually indicates to the operating system. There are several kinds of operating system, mainly about Windows (by Microsoft), Mac OS (by Apple), UNIX (by Sun) and Linux (Open Source). Historically, the DOS (Disk Operating System) used to be the most popular operating system from late 1980s to 1995. The DOS is a single task operating system that it can only do one task at one specific time, and the others are multitask operating systems that they can do several tasks at one specific time.

 

The operating system has a basic function of providing interfaces for application software to run on the computer hardware, the necessity of the operating system is that you can run the same applications on different computer with different hardware but same operating system and get the same result.

 

Application software includes websites, programs and games. Operating system support the basic funtions for addtion and other sample tasks, application software combine these functions to more organized ones, and can complete much more complicatied tasks. Microsoft Office Word is the most widely used program for word processing. The newest Office is office 2007, it was released in 2007. Also, there are OpenOffice Software to complete the office works. Also, search engine such as Google, and Social Networking such as Facebook, and online video program such as Youtube are considered as application software, too.

 

Software is coded with various types of programming languages, such as C++, ASP, and so on.

 

The physical presence of software is the magnetic pole status which stands for 0 or 1. It is called the "binary", refer to the punching-hole method, it is the same theory of storing data.

 

Hardware and software can only work together to complete tasks. Hardware has the capability to rapid calculating basic binary addition and logical judgment. Software manage the work of hardware. [10] With the operating system have the basic function to display information on monitor, get the signal from the keyboard and other simple functions, the application software reacts in a pre-set way, which was designed by software architecture.

 

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Implications For Media Ecology

 

Hardware and software can be considered as a new form of media. With the multimedia capability, a personal computer can display text, audio, video and images. And 76% of people in the U.S own a computer [8], and most of them linked to the Internet, it can transfer news and other programs much wider and faster than newspaper, television because the Internet is linked all together and it transport electrical signal as the speed of light. And it is mutual, you can react to the news like making a comment to news, or skip the video you don’t like, it is superiority than the television. People get much more information today through the computer. With the computer, the amount of information you can get is million times than the books and television. There are more than 22 billion results from Google if you search the character “1” on it. Books are local because they cannot be moved fast. Television can broadcast faster and wider but it is limited by the network. But the computer linked the world together.

 

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References

 

[1] Data processing, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_entry >

[2] Von Neumann Architecture, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture >

[3] Computer Storage, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_storage >

[4] Clock Rate, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_rate >

[5] Intel CPU, < http://compare.intel.com/pcc/default.aspx?familyID=1>

[6]DDR SDRAM, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR_SDRAM>

[7] SCSI, < http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/scsi/protSpeed.html >

[8] How many people in the us own a computer ,< http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_in_the_US_own_a_computer_today >

[9] Miller, Keith W. "Hardware and Software." Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics. Ed. Carl Mitcham. Vol. 2. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 896-898. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Iowa Wesleyan College. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=GVRL&u=mt85337 >.

[10] Software, < http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software >.

[11] Michael, R. Williams, A History of Computing Technology, 2nd Edition. IEEE Computer Society Press. ISBN 0-8186-7739-2

[12] http://www.hitmill.com/computers/computerhx1.html

[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Marie_Jacquard

[14] http://www.ied.edu.hk/has/comp/comphist/comphist.htm

[15] http://www.computer.org/portal/site/ieeecs/menuitem.c5efb9b8ade9096b8a9ca0108bcd45f3/index.jsp?&pName=ieeecs_level1&path=ieeecs/about/history&file=CShistory.xml&xsl=generic.xsl&

[16] http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/firsttw.html

[17] Shurkin, Joel, Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframes to Microprocessors, 1996, ISBN 0-393-31471-5

[18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#cite_note-2 

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Original Author:  Chris Walz, Harry Huang