A SHORT HISTORY OF COMPUTING: 3D Gallery

INTRO

I have used the excellent Crash Course Computer Science course as the source for this gallery.

The full playlist is here

There are 40 episodes and I thoroughly recommend for anyone thinking of taking Computer Science beyond GCSE.

Even if you're not, they provide excellent links between the theory topics and will really improve understanding and grades.

CHARLES BABBAGE AND ADA LOVELACE

The 19th century saw the Industrial Revolution, a huge increase in the population and increased mechanisation. Both Babbage and Lovelace had ideas to automate processes that would eventually lead to modern day computers.

Punch cards to the moon!

Margaret Hamilton was a programmer who worked on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. It was she who coined the term 'software engineer'. All of the code was written by hand and transferred onto punch cards. It was then tested and once complete, another team of women threaded copper wires through magnetic rings (a wire going through a core was a 1; a wire going around the core was a 0) to create rope memory that was built into the onboard navigation computer.

If you have Amazon Prime, have a look at Hidden Figures.

Another ***** recommended watch!

THE FIRST 'BUG'

Grace Hopper coined the term 'computer bug'. Find out more from the video.

ALAN TURING AND BLETCHLEY PARK

WW2 saw the Germans using the Enigma machine which was used to generate coded messages. The Enigma code was too complex for humans to break as the Germans changed the key every 24 hours. It took a team of talented mathematicians led by Alan Turing, to invent a machine that could carry out the necessary calculations & kick-started the next phase in computer development.

RANDOM FACT

If you visit Bletchley Park you can see an original Enigma machine and a working replica of the Bombe.

If you have Amazon Prime, check out The Imitation Game which tells the Alan Turing story.

THE IMITATION GAME

If you have Amazon Prime, check out the film called The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightly. It tells the story of Alan Turing from his boyhood, through the Bletchley Park years and....I won't spoil the ending if you haven't seen it.

Recommended *****

VON NEUMANN

The stored program concept AKA the Von Neuman architecture remains the basis of all computing devices.

It means that programs and data can be stored in memory and that the device can therefore switch between different programs.

JOHN VON NEUMANN

This is John Von Neumann who came up with the stored program idea.

You will need to know about the Von Neumann Architecture for your GCSE. Put simply it is the stored program concept. Programs are stored on a hard drive, and data and instructions are loaded into memory (RAM) as needed and sent to the CPU for processing.

Nowadays we switch between apps all the time without thinking about it. Thanks John!

A FINAL OVERVIEW

This excellent TED video recaps memory and storage and leads us nicely into the next unit - which is how the CPU itself works.

Make sure you are really comfortable with the concepts outlined here and with the stored program concept.

If not, ask!

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg - all names you are probably familiar with. Add them to your timeline along with their first names and their contribution to the world of Computer Science.

Add the following to your timeline as well:

Radia Perlman -

Vint Cerf -

Tim Berners-Lee -

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A SHORT HISTORY OF COMPUTING