computing science
The history
Tim berners-lee
Timothy John Berners-Lee was born on 8 June 1955 and grew up in London. He studied physics at Oxford University and became a software engineer.
In 1980, while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, he first described the concept of a global system, based on the concept of 'hypertext', that would allow researchers anywhere to share information. He also built a prototype called 'Enquire'.
In 1984, Berners-Lee's returned to CERN, which was also home to a major European Internet node. In 1989, Berners-Lee published a paper called 'Information Management: A Proposal' in which he married up hypertext with the Internet, to create a system for sharing and distributing information not just within a company, but globally. He named it the World Wide Web.
Alan Turing
23 June 1912: Alan Mathison Turing was born in London
1926: Aged 14, he was sent to Sherborne School in Dorset. His first day of term coincided with the 1926 General Strike. Turing was so determined not to miss his first day of school that he cycled the 97km from his home in Southampton. His teachers worried that he leaned too heavily towards maths and science, at the expense of the classics. The headmaster wrote to his parents: "If he is to be solely a scientific specialist, he is wasting his time at a public school".
1927: At the age of 16, Turing got to grips with Albert Einstein's work and extrapolated Einstein's questioning of Newton's Laws of Motion from a text in which this was never made explicit.
1930: Turing's close school friend Christopher Morcom dies suddenly from bovine tuberculosis. Turing renounces his religious faith and becomes an atheist.
1931: Turing goes to study Mathematics at King's College, Cambridge
1935: Turing proves the central limit theorem in his dissertation and is made a fellow at King's at the age of just 22.
1936: Turing published his paper On Computable Numbers and an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem) in which he outlines the Universal Machine, which later became known as the Turing Machine. This was an idealised computing device that is capable of performing any mathematical computation that can be represented as an algorithm.
1936-1938: Turing spent time at Princeton in the US studying under Alonzo Church. There he started to study cryptology as well as mathematics. In 1938 he received his PhD; his dissertation was called Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals and introduced original logic and relative computing.
September 1938: Turing started to work part-time at the Government Code and Cypher School.
1939: The day after war is declared in September 1939, Turing arrives at Bletchley Park. There he works with Gordon Welchman to develop the Bombe, a device for decrypting the messages sent by Germans using their Enigma machines. The Bombe built on a machine that the Polish had already made, called the Bomba Kryptlogiczna. Turing used statistical techniques to optimise the trial of different possibilities in the code-breaking process using probability.
1941: Turing proposes to his co-worker Joan Clarke, a fellow mathematician and cryptanalyst. Shortly after, Turing had second thoughts, admitting to his fiancee that he was homosexual.
1942: Turing sent to the US as part of an intelligence collaboration. He shared what he knew about Enigma in return for being allowed to inspect the speech encryption system being set up to allow conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt. Turing was somewhat dismissive of US cryptanalysis, believing the Americans to rely too heavily on machinery instead of thought.
1941-43: Turing and colleagues manage to break the more complicated German Naval Enigma system. This is extremely helpful for the Allies during the Battle of the Atlantic as it could help them avoid the fearsome German U-boats, which had been responsible for sinking more than 700 Allied ships with 2.3 million tons of vital cargo.
1945: At the end of World War II, Turing is awarded an OBE for his services to his country
October 1945: Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory where he worked on developing an electronic digital stored-program computing machine that would later become the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine). By 1946 he had a finished proposal for the computer, but NPL did not have the resources to turn it into reality.
1947: Turing returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year. The Pilot ACE was built in his absence and executed its first program on 10 May 1950.
1949: Turing became deputy director of the Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, working on software for one of the earliest stored program computers -- the Manchester Mark 1. He also explored the problem of artificial intelligence and proposed an experiment (in his seminal paperComputing Machinery and Intelligence) which became that attempted to define a standard for machine intelligence, which would later become known as the Turing test. The core idea was that a computer could be said to "think" if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human being. Turing also worked with his former colleague D G Champernowne on a chess program for a computer that did not exist yet.
1952: Without a computer powerful enough to execute his chess program, Turing played a game in which he simulated the computer, taking about half an hour to perform each move. The program lost to Turing's colleague Alick Glennie, but won against Champernowne's wife.
January 1952: Turing meets a man called Arnold Murray and invites him over to his house. Murray visits Turing's house on a number of occasions, staying the night. Murray later helps an accomplice break into Turing's house. Turing reports the crime and admits having a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts are illegal in the UK and so both were charged with gross indecency. Turing is given the choice of being imprisoned or chemically castrated with oestrogen hormone injections. He chooses the latter. Turing's conviction means his security clearance is removed which means he is barred from his cryptopgraphic consultancy for the British government.
08 June 1954: Turing's cleaner finds him dead. It appears that Turing poisoned himself using a cyanide-laced apple.
The four generation of computers
Generation 1
The vacuum tube was invented in 1906 by an electrical engineer named Lee De Forest (1873–1961). During the first half of the twentieth century, it was the fundamental technology that was used to construct radios, televisions, radar, X-ray machines, and a wide variety of other electronic devices. It is also the primary technology associated with the first generation of computing machines.
Generation 2
Generation 3
The third generation of computer technology was based on integrated circuit technology and extended from approximately 1964 to 1970. Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce (1927–1990) of Fairchild Semiconductor were the first to develop the idea of the integrated circuit in 1959. The integrated circuit is a single device that contains many transistors.
Generation 4
Generation 5
Fifth generation computing devices, based on artificial intelligence, are still in development, though there are some applications, such as voice recognition, that are being used today. The use of parallel prossecing and superconductors is helping to make artificial intelligence a reality. quantum compilation and molecular and nanotechnology will radically change the face of computers in years to come. The goal of fifth-generation computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-organization.
DID YOU KNOW...?
An integrated circuit is a small electronic device made out of a semiconductor material. The first integrated circuit was developed in the 1950s by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor
computer components
inputs
outputs
what divices can store data
what is ram and is it the same as rom
ROM is memory that cannot be changed by a program or user. ROM retains its memory even after the computer is turned off. For example, ROM stores the instructions for the computer to start up when it is turned on again.
RAM is a fast temporary type of memory in which programs, applications and data are stored. Here are some examples of what's stored in RAM:
- the operating system
- applications
- the graphical user interface (GUI)
If a computer loses power, all data stored in its RAM is lost
drives
A drive is a medium that is capable of storing and reading information that is not easily removed like a disk. The picture is an example of different drives listed in Microsoft Windows My Computer.
In the example shown below, drive A: is the floppy drive, C: is the hard disk drive, D: and E: partitions of the hard drive, and F: is the CD-ROM drive. Typically the CD-ROM drive is the last drive so in most situations the hard drive is the C: drive and a CD-ROM or other disc drive is the D: drive.
computer monitor
The CPU (Central Processing Unit
Mother Board
Alternatively referred to as the mb, main board, mobo, mobd, backplane board,base board, main circuit board, planar board, system board, or a logic board on Apple computers. The motherboard is a printed circuit board that is the foundation of a computer, located at the bottom of the computer case. It allocates power to the CPU, RAM, and all other computer hardware components. Most importantly, the motherboard allows hardware components to communicate with one another.
Below is a picture of the ASUS P5AD2-E motherboard with names of each major component of the motherboard. Clicking on the image below gives you a larger more detailed version of the picture below.
THE RASPBERRY PI
1. Mod My Pi
Mod My Pi do a great range of colourful cases, using state of the art injection moulding techniques, and they're not a bad price either.
2. Make your own Pi case
Fancy making your own case? Then this printable PDF will do the trick nicely. It's a template to cut out and glue to together (very Blue Peter), which will form a case for the RPi.
3. Living room PC
Now your Pi is in a cool looking case, hook it up to your TV and enjoy a mini-media experience with OpenELEC. Follow the instructions, and you'll be up and running in no time.
4. A mini Web browser
Since your Raspberry Pi is already hooked up to your TV, why not enjoy some big screen surfing? You'll need a better browser than Midori for this though, so try Chromium. Just drop into a Terminal and type: 'sudo apt- get install chromium-browser', then hit Enter.
5. ZX Spectrum Pi
That lovable rubber keyboarded gem has made a grand entrance once again, this time with Raspberry insides. Getting the hardware to work is one thing, but to emulate this wonderful 8-bit beauty, type the following into the Terminal: 'sudo apt-get install fuse-emulator-common', and press Enter. Type 'y' to confirm the download and install.
Once Fuse has been installed, and you are returned to the prompt, type: 'sudo apt-get install spectrum-roms fuse-emulator-utils', and press Enter. When, once again, you return to the prompt, type in: 'sudo amixer cset numid=3 2', and press Enter.
6. Retro Pi
If the Spectrum whetted your appetite, then check out the RetroPie Project. With this you can emulate a wealth of old consoles: SNES, Mega Drive etc. The setup takes its toll on the old RPi and it's not the quickest install ever, but it's certainly worth it in the end. Follow these instructions and get gaming.
It's important to remember that Nintendo takes an extremely dim view of you downloading even very old games that you own. But there are free classic games available legally online, with the permission of their creators, such as these.
7. Arcade Pi
In fact, why not go one step further and create a full sized arcade cabinet? You could follow the instructions in this blog post from RPi user, Darren. Or, hunt around on eBay for an old arcade cabinet to tinker with.
8. Windows 3.0 on a Pi
While we're on the subject of going retro, have a go at running DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0 via QEMU. First, pay a visit to Kirsle and extract the VirtualBox (VDI) image, and using VirtualBox convert the VDI to a raw IMG by typing: 'vboxmanage clonehd "image.vdi" "image.img" --format RAW' (replacing 'image' with the name of your image).
Next install QEMU by typing: 'sudo apt-get install qemu'. Then convert the raw image to a QEMU qcow image by typing: 'qemu- img convert -f raw image.img -O qcow2 image.qcow'. Finally run the image by typing: 'qemu image.qcow'. It's far from perfect, and has a tendency to freeze, but it's still fun.
9. Robotics
Robots are generally quite cool -- obviously aside from the ones that wish to except for the ones that try to kill all of humanity. There are plenty of friendly robots out there. Online magazine RPi MagPi has a feature (from page 9 onwards) about how to make a robotic arm work with the RPi.
10. Robotics 2
While we're on the subject of robots, MagPi also has a great project involving Big Track and the RPi.
11. Learn to program
The RPi makes for a great programming platform, with a huge choice of languages available. Check some of them out on the eLinux wiki.
12. Scratch the Pi
Scratch is a programming language that's easy to get to grips with and easy to use, which makes it good for children to start learning with and for creating rich programming projects. Check out this tutorial, featuring a bonus cat.
13. Spectrum BASIC for RPi
Although you can play Spectrum games via the emulator, programming BASIC through the emulator just isn't the same. That being the case, use SpecBAS instead, which is a remake of Sinclair BASIC that's available with full instructions.
14. Pi Hacker
Being as small as it is, the RPi would make an excellent hacking tool. Regardless of the ethics involved, try out this security penetration testing project.
15. Firefox OS on Pi
Although still in the developmental stages, Oleg Romashin an engineer at Nokia, has managed to getFirefox OS running on the Raspberry Pi. FFOS isn't out officially, but check out what's been achieved so far. (Update: You can find more from another developer here.)
16. RISC OS for Pi
If you fancy a blast from the past, then give RISC OS for the RPi a try. Downloads and full instructionsare available.
17. Beer can keyboard
A keyboard made from beer cans? True enough, the Robofun team hooked up an Arduino board to a Raspberry Pi along with many cans of beer. Have a look at their video below.
18. BitTorrent Server
If you frequent the various Torrent sites, then why not create a dedicated lean Torrent machine? Just hook it up to your router and leave it to do its business. Full instructions, scripts and downloads come courtesy of the snapdragon:IT blog.
19. RPi cloud server
Fancy building your very own cloud server? By using Own Cloud you can. Follow the instructions, and the customised script from pet Rock Blog and you'll become your own cloud provider in no time.
20. RPi UAV
The concept is brilliant, an RPi UAV (or flying drone to the likes of you and I) -- just think of the possibilities! Be inspired by Maggie -- possibly the first Raspberry Pi-powered quadcopter in the world.
21. RPi Weather Station
This DragonTail mapping tutorial would make an excellent science project for school, the Raspberry Pi weather station. Using a Maplin bought USB Wireless Touch Weather Station, the RPi can log all relevant data.
22. 10-inch RPi Touch screen
Using a 10-inch capacitive touch screen and a HDMI-LVDS converter you can create a touch screen Raspberry Pi. The full kit can be purchased from Chalkboard Electronics and then constructed using the instructions in the YouTube video below.
23. Home automation
There's a new product called Pi Face that's perfect for home automation. It hooks up to the RPi and allows it to detect switch states from a door sensor, a pressure pad or any number of other switch types.
24. Minecraft
The indescribably popular game Minecraft is available for the Raspberry Pi, allowing you to get all your block-bashing kicks in miniature. Best of all, it's free to download, with full instructions here.
25. Raspberry Pi Cluster
Many Pi's make light work. Check out these instructions from the University of Southampton to make a RPi Supercomputer.
Rapid Prototyping
Rapid prototyping involves using a CNC machine to make a working model of a part directly from a CAD program. It can produce complicated 3D shapes, although the material used is often not what would be used in large-scale production. Rapid prototypes are normally used to evaluate a design, but they can be used for enclosures.
There are a range of different rapid-prototyping processes: typically they involve building up a product by depositing layer after layer of material. It often takes many hours, or even days, to produce a part. They are only suitable for making one-off products where cost is not an important factor.
most looks copy and pasted.
too much information on Raspberry Pi and Alan Turing, you could have left a link.
7/10