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In the first reading assignment from “Computers: The Life Story of a Technology,” there were many links to early invention that help develop technologies today. Without the early invention, many of the things will not exist today. The beginning of the reading introduced a lot of the earlier discoveries which help improve a lot of the new inventions; mathematics being one of the most important inventions.  With Roman numerical numbers invented and spread around the world, date and time were easily recorded for documentary purposes. Although mathematics is one of the simplest operation, it is the root to many things.

John Vincent Atanasoff, was frustrated with calculating long mathematics equation by hands, therefore he decided to invent a computer to do so. Even old calculators would take weeks to solve a long equation. With funding from various corporations, John was able to invent the first computer in which he was showered with awards after the 1970s.

Although the first computer was very convenient, there were some flaws to it: excess heat, bulky size, and penchant for failure.  John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain, from Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, invented the point-contact transistor, made out of germanium, a semiconductor material, in 1947. A transistor is basically a smaller and more efficient version of the first computer.

From the second generation computer comes the third, integrated circuits, was the new and improved microprocessors. The only problem with these was that they were very small in size; therefore it was very difficult for people to wire them with magnifying glasses.  But with these new microprocessors built, computers slowly became a necessity in the every day’s life.  Eventually super computers were invented, which were able to process many tasks at once without overloading. The software industry bloomed fast, and everybody started to adapt to the life with computers.