INGENIEUR
Do You
Know?
Digital
Technology
Pathway
By Pang Soo Mooi
The word "computer" was first recorded as
being used in 1613 and originally was used to
describe a human who performed calculations
or computations. The definition of a computer
remained the same until the end of the 19 th
century, when the industrial revolution gave rise to
machines whose primary purpose was calculating.
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Computer) was amongst the earliest electronic
general-purpose computers made. The total cost
to build was about US$487,000, equivalent to
US$6,887,000 in 2017. By the end of its operation
in 1956, ENIAC contained 20,000 vacuum tubes,
7200 crystal diodes, 1500 relays, 70,000
resistors, 10,000 capacitors, and approximately
5,000,000 hand-soldered joints. It weighed more
than 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 2.4 m ×
0.9 m × 30 m (8 × 3 × 100 feet) in size, occupied
167 m 2 (1,800 ft 2 ) and consumed 150 kW of
electricity. This power requirement led to the
rumour that whenever the computer was switc