British? No, you're inventing it |
British inventors have dreamed up dozens of things we now take for granted - but most of their countrymen don't appreciate their brilliance. That is the finding of a poll on what people know about our scientific achievments. Three-quarters did not realise cloning and jet engines began in Britains, only a few more knew DNA and computers were pioneered here and half did not realise a Briton built the first steam engine. The London Science Museum,which held the poll, said the level of ignorance was "staggering".[Metro] |
The modern PC is the result of many stages of development in
computing. In theory we could go all the way back to devices like the
Abacus,but in
more recent times,the concept of
programming
a universal machine was initially started by
Charles
Babbage who made a computing engine from mechanical parts.
Subsequently,the mathematical foundation of what we now know as a computer
was laid down by
Alan
Matheson Turing at Manchester
University. Alan was a critical aid during the cracking of the
ENIGMA code
during WW2,it was his ideas of using a universal computing device which broke
the German Cipher Codes.
His work has led to theoretical ideas about
how
the brain works and to the pursuit of
artificial
intelligence in modern
robots. Alan also pioneered the 'Turing Test" which he devised to determine
the difference between a human being and a machine - if a machine could fabricate
the same responses,such that a human operator was unable to determine the
difference between the responses a human might make and those of the machine,then
he said we would have to say that the machine was artificially intelligent.
Mill Technology
Some of the concepts inside a computer are actually based on old mill
technologies -and so you will find in procesors of yore that they had parts
called "The Mill" - it is as well to understand that after the Industrial
Revolution, moves to automate things gathered pace and whilst it may seem
that a computer is a foreign and hard to understand device many of the ideas
behind it started in the Mills which contained looms -in particular the Jacquard
loom which used paper tape with holes in to 'program' a pattern into a piece
of material was one of the concepts borrowed when some of the first computers
were made. You will find that very old computers used 'punched tape' and
'punched card' systems to program them - which was a laborious task - and
one mistake in the punching of the paper tape or card could lead to compound
errors in the results.
Valve Technology
The earliest computers filled whole rooms with vacuum tubes and were 'valve
technology' devices.Valves were prone to overheating and were basically
untrustworthy,neverthless Alan Turing used such a machine to crack the ENIGMA
code.
Transistor Technology
Later machines were 'transistor technology' devices.These were much smaller,but
were still unreliable and prone to failure.
Microchip Technology
With the advent of the silicon chip,computer became much more reliable.Circuits
etched onto a crystal of silicon at a microscopic level could process millions
of instructions per second. The first computers entered the home market and
were called "8 bit microcomputers" because computers use arithmetic based
on 2,not upon 10 and 8 of the binary digits or
'bits' made up one letter
of computer language. These computers could only have one program in memory
at a time and their operating system was held in ROM,which meant as soon
as you switched the computer on - it was ready to run. Subsequently,processors
have handled longer and longer words and used faster and faster processors.
VLSI and parallel Technology
As many more transistors were etched onto a silicon chip VLSI chips (Very
Large Scale Integration) were used. These days, the processors you will find
inside a PC may harbour millions of individual components. Modern computers
can run many programs simultaneously using
"Windows",but their operating system
is "soft" - that is - it has to be installed from some sort of media,usually
CD-rom,and then it may
take a while to "boot up" and start the operating system. This renders the
computer more flexible,in that it needn't use the operating system supplied
with it,but it takes longer before you can do anything with the computer.
Computers are also being made with more than one processor
(CPU) and all of them
work together collectively to achieve the end result - this is called 'working
in parallel'.
GOOD GRID: The first map of the worlds most powerful computer grids is to be unveiled this week. Nine of the largest grids are featured in the display at the supercomputing festival in Tampa Florida. The map uses Google Earth to pinpoint more than 300 sites on six continents. Grids are made up of hundreds or thousands of PCs linked together to create a supercomputer. They are vital for scientists who need extra computing power to process large amounts of data.[Metro Minicosm Nov16,2006]. |
Supercomputers and AI
Supercomputers,such as those that
predict the
weather sometimes have to be water cooled or use special liquids to take
the heat away from the processors. Inside your PC,the same process is carried
out by fans,because the CPU is working so
fast that,much like a car engine,it needs to be kept cool. One of the problems
for supercomputers is how to get rid of this heat,you might like to compare
what is going on with how your own brain manages to do the same job. Robots
are beginning to take humanoid shape and as computing systems get more complex
,the possibility that they maybe able to think comes into sight. Many people
think it is an impossibility and that perhaps their own belief systems are
called into question should a machine achieve consciousness.
Other's believe a machine with no soul would be a Frankensteinian creation
- Science fiction writer
Isaac Asimov
created his
3
rules of robotics in order that machines would not be able to harm humans
The Future
In the future computers may well take advantage of
Quantum Physics
and the first
Quantum Computer
is already on the horizon.Such machines use the
QBIT rather
than the bit. A bit can be either a 1 or a 0 - a Qbit takes on a 'superposed'
state that can be both 1 and 0 at the same time,the curious physics which
allows this may well be the same physics that your own brain uses,and so
it maybe that such machines will be able to think like a human being.
Supercomputers 'to fit in palm of hand' |
TINY supercomputers that fit into the palm of the hand could hit the shops
in about a decade after groundbreaking research, it was claimed yesterday.
The gadgets look set to be made using wires 1,000 times thinner than a human
hair, said a team at Edinburgh University. The biggest problem was the discovery
that wires measured in millionths of a millimetre take on 'very weird shapes'
when attempts are made to bend them. Researchers led by Dr Michael Zaiser
overcame this problem by creating a computer programme that predicts when
this problem is going to happen, allowing engineers to avoid it. Dr Zaiser
said: 'Holding a supercomputer in the palm of your hand will one day be possible
and we are going to make sure all the wires are in the right place.' The
next step is to make microchips much smaller than existing ones. |
See Also: The Computer ,Computers,Find Out More: The Computer,How it Works: The Computer,The History of the Digital Computer, Turing Archive, Alan Turing Biog,Parallel Power,Certainty from Uncertainty,Artificial Intelligence,AI