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The history of computers is short but very complicated. Computers have been through lot of changes throughout the past half-century. They also affect our society in many different ways today. The following paper describes how the computers have changed from 1970 to present. During 1970, Intel came out with a chip, which was the best selling semiconductor memory chip in the world. The chip was called Intel 1103 and it was first DRAM, dynamic Random Access Memory) chip. D.r. Robet H. Dennard developed it. His team and him had been working on it since 1966. The engineers needed to build a new type of chip for a calculator in 1971. So, they came out with a chip called Intel 4004. It was the first single chip general-purpose microprocessor built bye Intel. The chip was 4-bit and ran at a rate of 108 kHz and it also contained 2300 transistors. The chip dealt with up to 1 Kb of program memory and up to 4 Kb of data memory. In the early 70’s lot of new technology was being built. In 1973, IBM came out with the first hard disk drive. The hard disk used two 30 Mb platters. During the next decade, the hard disks were used in primary data storage, than in minicomputers and later in the early 80’s in personal computers. The first personal computer to use a hard disk was IBM PC/XT in 1983. In 1974, Gary Kildall developed CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers). It was the first operating system to run on machines. CP/M became the permanent operation system for software development on small systems, but later the personal chose not to use CP/M. In 1975, MITS Altair was the first personal computer to get attention by a lot of people. It was made of Intel’s 8-bit 8080 processor. The MITS included 256 bytes of memory, toggle switches and an LED panel. Apple II was the beginning of the personal computers. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak developed the Apple II in 1977. It had a built in keyboard, graphics display and BASIC built in ROM.
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