Computer Architecture

One of the great success and failures towards the development of computer was Babbage Folly Machine which was supposed to be first automatic mechanical computer but it never worked. The machine however generated the idea about processing the information.

Babbage divided the machine into three parts:

1. Store
2. Mill
3. Control

The Store is what we call memory on today's days. Folly machine had 2 stores : 1 for holding data and other for holding the instruction which is told what to happen to the data. The Mill is the part of the machine that performs instruction on the data. The Control is the part which over saw the movement of data and instructions. 

 First Electronic Computer

During 1940s, the 'MARK' series of computer were developed at Harvard University. It stored and counted numbers mechanically using 3,000 decimal storage wheels, 1,400 rotatory dial switches, 500 miles of wires. It was programmed by using punch cards, and it weighed 5 tons and could do multiplication operation in 6 seconds. MARK-I computer stored data in a separate part of machine from the instruction. The instructions were stored in different format than the data. This technique has been recognized as 'Harvard architecture'.

A major problem with early computers were the size of the components which made computers heavy. In 1950s, transistors were used instead of vacuum tubes which was 1/200 size of vacuum tubes. And so on, as the time passed, the computer became more powerful in terms of speed and memory and less in size.