Discovery of Computers (Phase-2)

           Discovery of Computers (Phase-2)

 

1.     1937 A.D :- Alan Turing develops first software using binary

2.     1945 A.D:-  John Presper Eckert and John W Mauchly  develop ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator  And Computer)

3.

    1947A.D:-  Physcist William Shockely and his team invent transistor at Bell Laboratories in U.S.A.

4.     1961A.D:-  Richard Mattesssch develops computerized spread sheets for use in accounting.

5.     1962A.D:-  Steve Russel invents Space war – the game intended for computer use.

Prnanav mistry sixth sense device (with video)

                            Sixth sense and Its uses

Sixthsense is a wearable gestural interface device developed by Pranav Mistry, a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is similar to Telepointer, a neckworn projector/camera system developed by Media Lab student Steve Mann[1] (which Mann originally referred to as "Synthetic Synesthesia of the Sixth Sense").[2]

Construction and workings:- 

The SixthSense prototype comprises a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera contained in a pendant like, wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to a mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques.[3] The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tips of the user’s fingers. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected 
application interfaces. SixthSense supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

Example applications:- 

The SixthSense prototype contains a number of demonstration applications.

The map application lets the user navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface using hand gestures to zoom and pan 

The drawing application lets the user draw on any surface by tracking the fingertip movements of the user’s index finger.

SixthSense also implements Augmented reality; projecting information onto objects the user interacts with.

 The system recognizes a user's freehand gestures as well as icons/symbols drawn in the air with the index finger, for example:

 A 'framing' gesture takes a picture of the scene. The user can stop by any surface or wall and flick through the photos he/she has taken.

Drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application while an ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail.

The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch.

               Discovery of computers (Phase 1)

 Some important inventions led to discovery of computers are:-

2400 BC:-

The abacus- the first known calculator is invented in Babylonia.

500-300 BC:-Ancient Indian writer Pingala describes the first binary (two digit) numbering system.

1492 AD:- Italian Leonardo Davinci designs the first mechanical calculator and a humanoid robot.

1614 AD:-Scotsman John Napier invents a system of movable rods based on logarithms which could do sums.

1642 AD:-Frenchman Blaise Pascal invents the “PASCALINE”, the first serious calculating machine to help his father, a judge in a tax court.

1679 AD:German Gottfried Leibniz perfects the binary system.

1801 AD:-

Joseph Marie jacquard invents an automatic sewing machine controlled by punched cards. During its first demonstration in Lyon, France, the machine is destroyed an angry mob.

1834 AD:-

Charles Babbage designs the Analytical engine – the world’s first computer, with punch card input devices, an arithmetic processor and a memory to store numbers. He runs out of money before it is ever built.

  

iPhone (history)

                                             iPhone (history)

Development of the iPhone began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' direction that Apple engineers investigate touchscreens. Apple created the device during a secretive and unprecedented collaboration with AT&T Mobility—Cingular Wireless at the time—at an estimated development cost of US$150 million over thirty months. Apple rejected the "design by committee" approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessful collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house.

Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007 at Macworld 2007. Apple was required to file for operating permits with the FCC, but since such filings are made available to the public, the announcement came months before the iPhone had received approval. The iPhone went on sale in the United States on June 29, 2007, at 6:00 pm local time, while hundreds of customers lined up outside the stores nationwide. The original iPhone was made available in the UK, France, and Germany in November 2007, and Ireland and Austria in the spring of 2008.

On July 11, 2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G in twenty-two countries, including the original six. Apple released the iPhone 3G in upwards of eighty countries and territories. Apple announced the iPhone 3GS on June 8, 2009, along with plans to release it later in June, July, and August, starting with the U.S., Canada and major European countries on June 19. Many would-be users objected to the iPhone's cost, and 40% of users have household incomes over US$100,000. In an attempt to gain a wider market, Apple retained the 8 GB iPhone 3G at a lower price point. When Apple introduced the iPhone 4, the 3GS became the less expensive model. Apple reduced the price several times since the iPhone's release in 2007, at which time an 8 GB iPhone sold for $599. An iPhone 3GS with the same capacity now costs $99. However, these numbers are misleading, since all iPhone units sold through AT&T require a two-year contract (costing several hundred dollars), and a SIM lock.

Apple sold 6.1 million original iPhone units over five quarters.The sales has been growing steadily thereafter, by the end of fiscal year 2010, a total of 73.5 million iPhones were sold. Sales in Q4 2008 surpassed temporarily those of RIM's BlackBerry sales of 5.2 million units, which made Apple briefly the third largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenue, after Nokia and Samsung. Approximately 6.4 million iPhones are active in the U.S. alone. While iPhone sales constitute a significant portion of Apple's revenue, some of this income is deferred.

The back of the original iPhone was made of aluminum with a black plastic accent. The iPhone 3G and 3GS feature a full plastic back to increase the strength of the GSM signal. The iPhone 3G was available in an 8 GB black model, or a black or white option for the 16 GB model. They both are now discontinued. The iPhone 3GS was available in both colors, regardless of storage capacity. The white model was discontinued in favor of a black 8 GB low-end model. The iPhone 4 has an aluminosilicate glass front and back with a stainless steel edge that serves as the antennae. It is available in black; a white version was announced, but has as of January 2011 not been released.

The iPhone has garnered positive reviews from critics like David Pogue and Walter Mossberg. The iPhone attracts users of all ages, and besides consumer use the iPhone has also been adopted for business purposes.

Hardware

Screen and input

The touchscreen is a 9 cm (3.5 in) liquid crystal display with scratch-resistant glass. The capacitive touchscreen is designed for a bare finger, or multiple fingers for multi-touch sensing. The screens on the first three generations of the iPhone have a resolution of 320 x 480 (HVGA) at 163 ppi, while the display on the iPhone 4 has a resolution of 640 x 960 at 326 ppi.

The touch and gesture features of the iPhone are based on technology originally developed by FingerWorks. Most gloves and styluses prevent the necessary electrical conductivity; however, capacitive styli can be used with iPhone's finger-touch screen. The iPhone 3GS also features a fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating.

The iPhone has a minimal hardware user interface, featuring only four or five buttons, depending on whether the volume control is counted as one button or two. The only physical menu button is situated directly below the display, and is called the "Home button" because it closes the active app and navigates to the home screen of the interface. The home button is denoted not by a house, as on many other similar devices, but a rounded square, reminiscent of the shape of icons on the home screen. A multifunction sleep/wake button is located on the top of the device. It serves as the unit's power button, and also controls phone calls. When a call is received, pressing the sleep/wake button once silences the ringtone, and when pressed twice transfers the call to voicemail. Situated on the left spine are the volume adjustment controls. The iPhone 4 has two separate circular buttons to increase and decrease the volume; all earlier models house two switches under a single plastic panel, known as a rocker switch. Directly above the volume controls is a silence button that mutes all sound when engaged. All buttons except Home were made of plastic on the original iPhone and metal on all later models. The touchscreen furnishes the remainder of the user interface.

The display responds to three sensors. A proximity sensor deactivates the display and touchscreen when the device is brought near the face during a call. This is done to save battery power and to prevent inadvertent inputs from the user's face and ears. An ambient light sensor adjusts the display brightness which in turn saves battery power. A 3-axis accelerometer senses the orientation of the phone and changes the screen accordingly, allowing the user to easily switch between portrait and landscape mode. Photo browsing, web browsing, and music playing support both upright and left or right widescreen orientations. Unlike the iPad, the iPhone does not rotate the screen when turned upside-down, with the Home button above the screen. The 3.0 update added landscape support for still other applications, such as email, and introduced shaking the unit as a form of input. The accelerometer can also be used to control third party apps, notably games. The iPhone 4 also includes a gyroscopic sensor, enhancing its perception of how it is moved.

A software update in January 2008 allowed the first generation iPhone to use cell tower and Wi-Fi network locations trilateration, despite lacking GPS hardware. The iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 employ A-GPS, and the iPhone 3GS and 4 also have a digital compass.

History of Touchscreens

                               History of Touch screens

The first touch screen was a capacitive touch screen developed by E.A. Johnson at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, UK. The inventor briefly described his work in a short article published in 1965 and then more fully - along with photographs and diagrams - in an article published in 1967. A description of the applicability of the touch technology for air traffic control was described in an article published in 1968.

Note: Contrary to many accounts, while Dr. Sam Hurst played an important role in the development of touch technologies, he neither invented the first touch sensor, nor the first touch screen.)

Touchscreens first gained some visibility with the invention of the computer-assisted learning terminal, which came out in 1975 as part of the PLATO project. Touchscreens have subsequently become familiar in everyday life. Companies use touchscreens for kiosk systems in retail and tourist settings, point of sale systems, ATMs, and PDAs, where a stylus is sometimes used to manipulate the GUI and to enter data.

From 1979–1985, the Fairlight CMI (and Fairlight CMI IIx) was a high-end musical sampling and re-synthesis workstation that utilized light pen technology, with which the user could allocate and manipulate sample and synthesis data, as well as access different menus within its OS by touching the screen with the light pen. The later Fairlight series III models used a graphics tablet in place of the light pen.

The HP-150 from 1983 was one of the world's earliest commercial touchscreen computers. Similar to the PLATO IV system, the touch technology used employed infrared transmitters and receivers mounted around the bezel of its 9" Sony Cathode Ray Tube (CRT), which detected the position of any non-transparent object on the screen.

Touch screens

                              Touch Screen

A special thanks goes to Jason Ford of Elo TouchSystems, the company whose founder invented touch screen technology, for providing the following historical information.

In 1971, the first "touch sensor" was developed by Doctor Sam Hurst (founder of  Elographics) while he was an instructor at the University of Kentucky. This sensor called the "Elograph" was patented by The University of Kentucky Research Foundation. The "Elograph" was not transparent like modern touch screens, however, it was a significant milestone in touch screen technology.

In 1974, the first true touch screen incorporating a transparent surface came on the scene developed by Sam Hurst and Elographics. In 1977, Elographics developed and patented five-wire resistive technology, the most popular touch screen technology in use today. On February 24, 1994, the company officially changed its name from Elographics to Elo TouchSystems

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus. Touchscreen is common in devices such as all-in-one computers, tablet computers, and smartphones.

The touchscreen has two main attributes. First, it enables one to interact directly with what is displayed, rather than indirectly with a cursor controlled by a mouse or touchpad. Secondly, it lets one do so without requiring any intermediate device that would need to be held in the hand. Such displays can be attached to computers, or to networks as terminals. They also play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such as the personal digital assistant (PDA), satellite navigation devices, mobile phones, and video games.

                                History of television

John Logie Baird gave up his job as an electric-power engineer in 1922 and devoted himself to television research. He produced televised objects in outline in 1924 and recognizable human faces in 1925 and in 1926 became the first person to televise pictures of objects in motion. He demonstrated colour television in 1928. The German post office gave him facilities to develop a television service in 1929. When the BBC television service began  (1936) is system competed with that of Marconi Electric and Musical Industries; the BBC adopted the latter exclusively in 1937.

In its early stages of development, television employed a combination of optical, mechanical and electronic technologies to capture, transmit and display a visual image

In 1884 Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a 23-year-old university student in Germany, patented the first electromechanical television system which employed a scanning disk, a spinning disk with a series of holes spiraling toward the center, for rasterization

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the transmission of moving silhouette images in London in 1925 and of moving,monochromatic images in 1926.

In 1926, Hungarian engineer Kálmán Tihanyi designed a television system utilizing fully electronic scanning and display elements, and employing the principle of "charge storage" within the scanning (or "camera") tube.

By 1927, Russian inventor Léon Theremin developed a mirror-drum-based television system which used interlacing to achieve an image resolution of 100 lines.

Also in 1927, Herbert E. Ives of Bell Labs transmitted moving images from a 50-aperture disk producing 16 frames per minute over a cable from Washington, DC to New York City, and via radio from Whippany, New Jersey. Ives used viewing screens as large as 24 by 30 inches (60 by 75 centimeters). His subjects included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

In 1927, Philo Farnsworth made the world's first working television system with electronic scanning of both the pickup and display devices, which he first demonstrated to the press on 1 September 1928.

Television [T.V]

                                 TELEVISION (T.V)

Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochromatic (shades of grey) or multicolored. Images are usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming, television transmission.

Electronic system for transmitting still or moving images and sound to receivers that project a view of the images on a picture tube or screen and recreate the sound.

Early versions (1900–20) of the cathode-ray (picture) tube, methods of amplifying an electronic signal, and theoretical formulation of the electronic scanning principle later became the basis of modern TV. RCA demonstrated the first all-electronic TV in 1932. Cable TV systems (introduced in the late 1940s), colour TV (in the 1950s), and recording or playback machines (in the 1980s; see VCR) followed. Digital high-definition (HDTV) systems (1990s) provide sharper, clearer pictures and sound with little interference or other imperfections and have the potential to merge TV functions with those of computers.

Discovery of LED's

                                Discovery of LED’s

Electroluminescence as a phenomenon was discovered in 1907 by the British experimenter H. J. Round of Marconi Labs, using a crystal of silicon carbide and a cat's-whisker detector. Russian Oleg Vladimirovich Losev reported on the creation of a first LED in 1927. His research was distributed in Russian, German and British scientific journals, but no practical use was made of the discovery for several decades. Rubin Braunstein of the Radio Corporation of America reported on infrared emission from gallium arsenide (GaAs) and other semiconductor alloys in 1955.[10] Braunstein observed infrared emission generated by simple diode structures using gallium antimonide (GaSb), GaAs, indium phosphide       Hj Round

(InP), and silicon-germanium (SiGe) alloys at room temperature

and at 77 kelvin. 

In 1961, American experimenters Robert Biard and Gary Pittman working at Texas Instruments, found that GaAs emitted infrared radiation when electric current was applied and received the patent for the infrared LED

Light emitting diodes[LED"S]

Semiconductor diode that produces visible or infrared light when subjected to an electric current, as a result of electroluminescence.

Visible-light LEDs are used in many electronic devices as indicator lamps (e.g., an on/off indicator) and, when arranged in a matrix, to spell out letters or numbers on alphanumeric displays. Infrared LEDs are used in optoelectronics (e.g., in auto-focus cameras and television remote controls) and as light sources in some long-range fibre-optic communications systems. LEDs are formed by the so-called III-V compound semiconductors related to gallium arsenide. They consume little power and are long-lasting and inexpensive