Minsung's Results

semiconductor
Source: answers.com/semiconductor
Def: Any of various solid crystalline substances, such as germanium or silicon, having electrical conductivity greater than insulators but less than good conductors, and used especially as a base material for computer chips and other electronic devices.
Inventor: TI
Date of Invention:

microprocessor
Source: answers.com/microprocessor
Def: An integrated circuit that contains the entire central processing unit of a computer on a single chip.
Inventor: Intel and TI
Date of Invention: Late 190s Early 1970s

circuit board
Source: answers.com/circuit board
Def: An insulated board on which interconnected circuits and components such as microchips are mounted or etched.
Inventor: Paul Eisler
Date of Invention: 1936

radio
Source: answers.com/radio
Def:The wireless transmission through space of electromagnetic waves in the approximate frequency range from 10 kilohertz to 300,000 megahertz.
Inventor: Heinrich Hertz and Guglielmo Marconi
Date of Invention: 1901

bluetooth
Source: answers.com/bluetooth
Def: Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles via a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency.
Inventor: Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Toshiba / Bluetooth Special Interest Group
Date of Invention: 1998

television
Source: answers.com/television
Def: a) The transmission of dynamic or sometimes static images, generally with accompanying sound, via electric or electromagnetic signals. b) An electronic apparatus that receives such signals, reproducing the images on a screen, and typically reproducing accompanying sound signals on speakers. c) The visual and audio content of such signals.
Inventor: No specific inventor.
Date of Invention: First version 1884, but was made from past experiments by others.

mechanical computer
Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_invented_the_first_mechanical_computerDef:
Inventor: Vannevar Buh
Date of Invention: 1928

electrical computer
Source: http://www.city-net.com/~ched/help/general/tech_history.html
Def: Inventor: Howard Aiken, IBM
Date of Invention: 1943

digital computer
Source: answers.com/digital computer http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi152.htm
Def: A computer that performs calculations and logical operations with quantities represented as digits, usually in the binary number system.
Inventor: John Atanasoff
Date of Invention: 1937

CD-ROM
Source: answers.com/cd-rom web.mit.edu/invent/iow/russell.html
Def: A compact disk that functions as read-only memory.
Inventor: James T. Russell
Date of Invention: 1965

DVD
Source: answers.com/dvd http://inventors.about.com/library/bl/bl12a.htm
Def: A high-density compact disk for storing large amounts of data, especially high-resolution audio-visual material.
Inventor: Matshusita
Date of Invention: 1996

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Definition

inventor

date of invention

semiconductorwww.inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmicrochip.htmAn element, such as silicon, that is intermediate in electrical conductivity between conductors and insulators, through which conduction takes place by means of holes and electrons.Robert Noyce

microprocessorwww.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm - 24kA master control circuit.Ted Hoff1968

circuit boardhttp://www.answers.com/circuit%20boardBoards used in electronic devices that are made from an insulating material and contain electronic components that are interconnected to form a circuit or group of circuits that perform a specific function.Charles Ducas 1850s

radiohttp://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htmAn instrument that uses radio waves to communicate with other vesselsNikola Tesla1943

bluetoothhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/06/ericsson_drops_bluetooth_dev/A wireless connection that enables devices to exchange information.Ericsson

televisionhttp://www.videouniversity.com/farnhal.htmTelevision is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distancePhil, Cliff1927

mechanical computerhttp://www.answers.com/mechanical%20computerhttp://www.diycalculator.com/popup-h-mechcomp.shtmlA machine such as a Charles Babbage's analytical engine.Joseph-Marie Jacquard early 1800s

electrical computer

digital computerhttp://www.reference.com/search?q=digital%20computerA programmable machine which operates using binary digital data.
CD romwww.web.mit.edu/invent/iow/russell.html Compact Disk Read-Only MemoryRussell1970s

DVDwww.web.mit.edu/invent/iow/thomasf.html

Digital Versatile Disc Warren Lieberfarb 1996

Diana Jung

Diana Jung
definitioninventordate of invention
semiconductordefinition: a substance, as silicon or germanium, with electrical conductivity intermediate between that of an insulator and a conductor: a basic component of various kinds of electronic circuit element (semiconductor device) used in communications, control, and detection technology and in computers. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/semiconductor)inventor: Robert Noycedate: 1970 (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/hoff.htmhttp://www.answers.com/microprocessor)
microprocessordefinition: integrated circuit semiconductor chip that performs the bulk of the processing and controls the parts of a system; "a microprocessor functions as the central processing unit of a microcomputer"; "a disk drive contains a microprocessor to handle the internal functions of the drive" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/microprocessor)inventor: Ted Hoff (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm)date: 1968 (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm)
circuitboarddefinition: a sheet of insulating material used for the mounting and interconnection (often by a printed circuit) of components in electronic equipment (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/circuit%20board)inventor: Austrian engineer Paul Eisler(http://www.answers.com/circuitboard)date: 1936 (http://www.answers.com/circuitboard)
radio definition: The wireless transmission through space of electromagnetic waves in the approximate frequency range from 10 kilohertz to 300,000 megahertz (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/radio)inventor:Nicola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi, Reginald Fessenden, Nathan Stubblefield (http://www.answers.com/who%20invented%20radio%3F)*date: 1892 (http://www.answers.com/Who%20invented%20radio%20and%20when%3F)
bluetoothdefinition: an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles via a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency. The Bluetooth specifications are developed and licensed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.(http://www.answers.com/bluetooth)inventor: Ericsson (http://www.answers.com/Who%20invented%20bluetooth%3F)date: 1998 (http://www.answers.com/Who%20invented%20bluetooth%3F)
televisiondefinition: The transmission of dynamic or sometimes static images, generally with accompanying sound, via electric or electromagnetic signals.(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/television)inventor: The Americans will tell you it was Philo Taylor Farnsworth. The Russians and RCA will tell you it was Vladimir Zworykin. Like all complex devices, the television has many contributing inventors./ Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird, the father of this pervasive technology, first publicly demonstrated television date: 26 January 1926
mechanicalcomputerdefinition: The transmission of dynamic or sometimes static images, generally with accompanying sound, via electric or electromagnetic signals.inventor: Willoughby Smith, Paul Nipkow,John Logie Baird , Charles Francis Jenkinsdate: 1873-1926(http://www.answers.com/television)
electricalcomputerdefinition: Related to or associated with electricity, but not containing it or having its properties or characteristics; often used interchangeably with electric.inventor: John Vincent Atanasoffdate: 1974(http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/hpcwireWWW/03/1031/106295.html)
digitalcomputerdefinition: A computer that performs calculations and logical operations with quantities represented as digits, usually in the binary number system.inventor: John Vincent Atanasoffdate: 1974

BrainMan

Savant Syndrome - Daniel Tammet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bVVQ0FZeys

The internet search

A semiconductor is a solid whose electrical conductivity can be controlled over a wide range, either permanently or dynamically.
Stanford Ovshinsky
1904 - 1949
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may97/862851265.Eg.r.htmlhttp://www.answers.com/semiconductor
An integrated circuit that contains the entire central processing unit of a computer on a single chip.
Marcian Edward "Ted" Hoff, Jr.
1970s
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/hoff.htmhttp://www.answers.com/microprocessor
An insulated board on which interconnected circuits and components such as microchips are mounted or etched.
Paul Eisler
1936
http://www.answers.com/circuit%20board

The wireless transmission through space of electromagnetic waves in the approximate frequency range from 10 kilohertz to 300,000 megahertz.
Alexander Stepanovich Popov,Nikola Tesla,Guglielmo Marconi ,Reginald Fessenden ,Lee de Forest ,Edwin H. Armstrong, Roberto Landell de Moura,
1893-1895
http://www.answers.com/radio
A wireless personal area network (WPAN) technology from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (http://www.bluetooth.com/)
Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba.
1998
http://www.answers.com/bluetooth
The transmission of dynamic or sometimes static images, generally with accompanying sound, via electric or electromagnetic signals.
Willoughby Smith, Paul Nipkow,John Logie Baird , Charles Francis Jenkins
1873-1926
http://www.answers.com/television
A machine such as a Charles Babbage's analytical engine.
Konrad Zuse
1938
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050298.htm
Related to or associated with electricity, but not containing it or having its properties or characteristics; often used interchangeably with electric.
John Vincent Atanasoff
1974
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/hpcwireWWW/03/1031/106295.html
A computer that performs calculations and logical operations with quantities represented as digits, usually in the binary number system.
John Vincent Atanasoff
1974
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/hpcwireWWW/03/1031/106295.html
A compact disk that functions as read-only memory
James T. Russell
1960s
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/russell.html
A high-density compact disk for storing large amounts of data, especially high-resolution audio-visual material.
Fred Thomas
1983
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/thomasf.html

Jacky

Test

Semiconductor
Definition: A material that is neither a good conductor of electricity (like copper) nor a good insulator (like rubber). The most common semiconductor materials are silicon and germanium. These materials are then doped to create an excess or lack of electrons. Computer chips, both for CPU and memory, are composed of semiconductor materials. Semiconductors make it possible to miniaturize electronic components, such as transistors. ...
Inventor: Gordon E. Moore csc.lsu.edu/~chen/HGAwardList.htm
Date of Invention: 1991 www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/m/Moore:Gordon_E=.html
Microprocessor The silicon chip with thousands of electronic components that serves as the central processing unit (CPU) in microcomputers. Ted Hoff www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm 1968 www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm Circuit Board A thin board, usually fiberglass, on which components are mounted. Also called a printed circuit board (or PCB) because the connections between the components are printed onto the board. Paul Eisler www.ecp13.gr/ 1943 http://www.answers.com/Circuit%20BoardRadio Region of the electromagnetic spectrum corresponding to radiation of the longest wavelengths. Guglielmo Marconi http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htm 1895 http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htmBluetuse Bluetooth is a computing and telecommunications industry specification that describes how mobile phones, computers and PDAs can easily interconnect with each other and with home and business phones and computers using a short wireless connection. Ericsson http://www.answers.com/bluetooth 1998 http://www.answers.com/bluetoothTelevision System that converts both audio and visual information into corresponding electrical signals which are then transmitted through wires or by radio waves to a receiver which reproduces the original information. Paul Gottlieb Nipkow http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelevision.htm#Mechanical%20Television 1884 http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelevision.htm#Mechanical%20TelevisionMechanical Computer Charles Babbage http://www.diycalculator.com/popup-h-mechcomp.shtml 1834 school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/inventioncomputertechnology/ Electrical Computer a machine for performing calculations automatically http://www.thefreedictionary.com/electronic+computer John Atanasoff http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050898.htm 1941 http://www.k9ape.com/publicservice/Who%20Invented%20The%20Computer.htmlDigital Computer A machine that expresses data using a system of pre-set values. Digital computer representations can be broken down to simple binary expressions. All modern computers are digital as opposed to analog computers which would express values as individual points on a continuum. A slide-rule would be an analog computer. George Stibitz inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blstibitz.htm 1939 inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blstibitz.htmCD Rom CD ROM stands for Compact Disk Read-Only Memory. CD ROMs store and read massive amounts of information on a removable disk platter or solid state storage chip. Unlike the data on hard drives and diskettes, data on CD ROMs can only be read--not altered--by the user. Also called "firmware." 1984 http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa010500a.htmDVD "Digital Versatile Disk." (Formerly Digital Video Disk.) Same size as a CD but stores seven times CD capacity on a single side. DVDs can also be double-sided or dual layer. Today most DVDs are used to display full-length commercial motion pictures, plus additional material such as outtakes, director's notes, movie trailers, etc.
* Definition is all from Google

Semiconductor

(Lily Baik)

http://www.answers.com/semiconductor

A solid crystalline material whose electrical conductivity is intermediate between that of a metal and an insulator. Semiconductors exhibit conduction properties that may be temperature-dependent, permitting their use as thermistors (temperature-dependent resistors), or voltage-dependent, as in varistors. By making suitable contacts to a semiconductor or by making the material suitably inhomogeneous, electrical rectification and amplification can be obtained. Semiconductor devices, rectifiers, and transistors have replaced vacuum tubes almost completely in low-power electronics, making it possible to save volume and power consumption by orders of magnitude. In the form of integrated circuits, they are vital for complicated systems. The optical properties of a semiconductor are important for the understanding and the application of the material. Photodiodes, photoconductive detectors of radiation, injection lasers, light-emitting diodes, solar-energy conversion cells, and so forth are examples of the wide variety of optoelectronic devices.

Semi- Conductor

Hyeon Chung

Definition: http://www.answers.com/topic/semiconductor
Any of various solid crystalline substances, such as germanium or silicon, having electrical conductivity greater than insulators but less than good conductors, and used especially as a base material for computer chips and other electronic devices.

Inventor: http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/ovshinsky.html
In the 1950s, Stanford Ovshinsky created an entirely new realm of materials science, which in turn has given new life to the engineering of semiconductors, solar energy, and electric cars.
Stan Ovshinsky was born in Akron, Ohio in 1922. After graduating from high school, he went straight to work. In 1955, he began working the field of amorphous materials, that is, materials that lack a definite crystalline structure. Ovshinsky was the first engineer to devise a method, called "phase change," for crystalizing these disordered materials, with resulting novel uses: for example, films that gain metallic properties without losing their original optical capabilities. One result was amorphous semiconductors --- which the engineering community had previously considered an utter impossibility.
In 1960, Ovshinsky founded Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (ECD), in order to continue and expand his work in amorphous semiconductors. Meanwhile, engineers nationwide had eagerly entered an entirely new field: "ovonics" (from Ovshinsky Electronics).
Ovshinsky earned numerous patents in the 1970s and '80s for amorphous semiconductor materials. These materials became essential to optoelectronic copying and fax machines, as well as large, flat-panel liquid crystal displays like those of computer monitors. As early as 1970, Ovshinsky had used his ovonic phase change principle to invent a reversible optical memory disk: that is, a prototype rewritable CD-ROM. Today, thirteen high tech companies around the world are developing rewritable CDs using Ovshinsky's technology.
Ovshinsky went on to use his thin-film amorphous silicon to invent a manufacturing method that might do for solar energy what the assembly line did for automobiles. In 1983, he patented a system that allowed photovoltaic solar panels to be manufactured in continuous rolls 1000 feet in length. Ovshinsky's "Continuous Amorphous Solar Cell Production System" operates much like a newspaper rollpress, speedily imprinting a plasma of amorphous silicon semiconductors in a continuous web onto a thin, anodized metal sheet.
The high energy-conversion efficiency of the thin-film cells and the high throughput of the process make Ovshinsky's photovoltaic cells a revolutionary leap forward for solar energy. They have been installed at various sites around and above the globe, from Mexican mountain villages to the Mir space station. Ovshinsky's "Uni-Solar" roofing tiles, for residential buildings, have won Popular Science's "Best of What's New" Grand Award (1996) and Discover Magazine's Discover Award in the Environment category (1997).
More recently, Ovshinsky has taken a strong step closer to a feasible electric car. After years of development, he earned a patent in 1994 for a high energy-storage, environment-friendly, maintenance-free, rechargeable battery. Although he is far from alone in the search for the perfect electric car battery, Ovshinsky's nickel metal-hydride (NiMH) model, when compared with its nickel-cadmium and lead-acid competitors, is twice as powerful, with none of their fatigue and discharge problems. In fact, Ovshinsky's battery shattered the Department of Energy's performance targets. Recently, ECD formed a joint venture with GM, whose EV1 features Ovshinsky's NiMH battery, to mass produce the battery for electric cars worldwide. A more modest version of the NiMH battery has been licensed by many of the world's major battery companies for retail consumption.
In total, Stan Ovshinsky has earned about 200 US patents, at a pace which has not flagged since the early 1970s: eight granted in 1999, and three more by February 1 of this year. He has also won many local, national and international awards for his work, which extends far beyond the products described above; and he will doubtless win further fame, as the once impossible products he has invented come into broader use.

Def. of Microchip

Lily Baik
http://www.answers.com/microchip

Microchips, also termed "integrated circuits" or "chips," are small, thin rectangles of a crystalline semiconductor, usually silicon, that have been inlaid and overlaid with microscopically patterned substances so as to produce transistors and other electronic components on its surface. It is the components on the chip, not the chip itself, that are micro or too small see with the naked eye. The microchip has made it possible to miniaturize digital computers, communications circuits, controllers, and many other devices. Since 1971, whole computer CPUs (central processing units) have been placed on some microchips; these devices are termed microprocessors.

Invention & definition of Microchip

Hyeon Chung

Definition: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci212564,00.html
A microchip (sometimes just called a "chip") is a unit of packaged computer circuitry (usually called an integrated circuit) that is manufactured from a material such as silicon at a very small scale. Microchips are made for program logic (logic or microprocessor chips) and for computer memory (memory or RAM chips). Microchips are also made that include both logic and memory and for special purposes such as analog-to-digital conversion, bit slicing, and gateways


Inventor: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa080498.htm
"What we didn't realize then was that the integrated circuit would reduce the cost of electronic functions by a factor of a million to one, nothing had ever done that for anything before" - Jack Kilby
It seems that the integrated circuit was destined to be invented. Two separate inventors, unaware of each other's activities, invented almost identical integrated circuits or ICs at nearly the same time.
Jack Kilby, an engineer with a background in ceramic-based silk screen circuit boards and transistor-based hearing aids, started working for Texas Instruments in 1958. A year earlier, research engineer Robert Noyce had co-founded the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. From 1958 to 1959, both electrical engineers were working on an answer to the same dilemma: how to make more of less.
In designing a complex electronic machine like a computer it was always necessary to increase the number of components involved in order to make technical advances. The monolithic (formed from a single crystal) integrated circuit placed the previously separated transistors, resistors, capacitors and all the connecting wiring onto a single crystal (or 'chip') made of semiconductor material. Kilby used germanium and Noyce used silicon for the semiconductor material.
In 1959 both parties applied for patents. Jack Kilby and Texas Instruments received U.S. patent #3,138,743 for miniaturized electronic circuits. Robert Noyce and the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation received U.S. patent #2,981,877 for a silicon based integrated circuit. The two companies wisely decided to cross license their technologies after several years of legal battles, creating a global market now worth about $1 trillion a year.
In 1961 the first commercially available integrated circuits came from the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. All computers then started to be made using chips instead of the individual transistors and their accompanying parts. Texas Instruments first used the chips in Air Force computers and the Minuteman Missile in 1962. They later used the chips to produce the first electronic portable calculators. The original IC had only one transistor, three resistors and one capacitor and was the size of an adult's pinkie finger. Today an IC smaller than a penny can hold 125 million transistors.
Jack Kilby now holds patents on over sixty inventions and is also well known as the inventor of the portable calculator (1967). In 1970 he was awarded the National Medal of Science. Robert Noyce, with sixteen patents to his name, founded Intel, the company responsible for the invention of the microprocessor, in 1968. But for both men the invention of the integrated circuit stands historically as one of the most important innovations of mankind. Almost all modern products use chip technology.

What is Semiconductor?

URL:http://www.answers.com/semiconductor
Brian Lee

A solid crystalline material whose electrical conductivity is intermediate between that of a metal and an insulator. Semiconductors exhibit conduction properties that may be temperature-dependent, permitting their use as thermistors (temperature-dependent resistors), or voltage-dependent, as in varistors. By making suitable contacts to a semiconductor or by making the material suitably inhomogeneous, electrical rectification and amplification can be obtained. Semiconductor devices, rectifiers, and transistors have replaced vacuum tubes almost completely in low-power electronics, making it possible to save volume and power consumption by orders of magnitude. In the form of integrated circuits, they are vital for complicated systems. The optical properties of a semiconductor are important for the understanding and the application of the material. Photodiodes, photoconductive detectors of radiation, injection lasers, light-emitting diodes, solar-energy conversion cells, and so forth are examples of the wide variety of optoelectronic devices.

invention of digital computer

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-1825/digital-computer
Hyeon Chung

Blaise Pascal of France and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of Germany invented mechanical digital calculating machines during the 17th century. The English inventor Charles Babbage, however, is generally credited with having conceived the first automatic digital computer. During the 1830s Babbage devised his so-called Analytical Engine, a mechanical device designed to combine basic arithmetic operations with decisions based on its own computations. Babbage's plans embodied most of the fundamental elements of the modern digital computer. For example, they called for sequential control—i.e., program control that included branching, looping, and both arithmetic and storage units with automatic printout. Babbage's device, however, was never completed and was forgotten until his writings were rediscovered over a century later.


Of great importance in the evolution of the digital computer was the work of the English mathematician and logician George Boole. In various essays written during the mid-1800s, Boole discussed the analogy between the symbols of algebra and those of logic as used to represent logical forms and syllogisms. His formalism, operating on only 0 and 1, became the basis of what is now called Boolean algebra, on which computer switching theory and procedures are grounded.
John V. Atanasoff, an American mathematician and physicist, is credited with building the first electronic digital computer, which he constructed from 1939 to 1942 with the assistance of his graduate student Clifford E. Berry. Konrad Zuse, a German engineer acting in virtual isolation from developments elsewhere, completed construction in 1941 of the first operational program-controlled calculating machine (Z3). In 1944 Howard Aiken and a group of engineers at International Business Machines Corporation completed work on the Harvard Mark I, a machine whose data-processing operations were controlled primarily by electric relays (switching devices).
Since the development of the Harvard Mark I, the digital computer has evolved at a rapid pace. The succession of advances in computer equipment, principally in logic circuitry, is often divided into generations, with each generation comprising a group of machines that share a common technology.
In 1946 J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly, both of the University of Pennsylvania, constructed ENIAC (an acronym for electronic numerical integrator and computer), a digital machine and the first general-purpose, electronic computer. Its computing features were derived from Atanasoff's machine; both computers included vacuum tubes instead of relays as their active logic elements, a feature that resulted in a significant increase in operating speed. The concept of a stored-program computer was introduced in the mid-1940s, and the idea of storing instruction codes as well as data in an electrically alterable memory was implemented in EDVAC (electronic discrete variable automatic computer).
The second computer generation began in the late 1950s, when digital machines utilizing transistors became commercially available. Although this type of semiconductor device had been invented in 1948, more than 10 years of developmental work was needed to render it a viable alternative to the vacuum tube. The small size of the transistor, its greater reliability, and its relatively low power consumption made it vastly superior to the tube. Its use in computer circuitry permitted the manufacture of digital systems that were considerably more efficient, smaller, and faster than their first-generation ancestors.
The late 1960s and '70s witnessed further dramatic advances in computer hardware. The first was the fabrication of the integrated circuit, a solid-state device containing hundreds of transistors, diodes, and resistors on a tiny silicon chip. This microcircuit made possible the production of mainframe (large-scale) computers of higher operating speeds, capacity, and reliability at significantly lower cost. Another type of third-generation computer that developed as a result of microelectronics was the minicomputer, a machine appreciably smaller than the standard mainframe but powerful enough to control the instruments of an entire scientific laboratory.
The development of large-scale integration (LSI) enabled hardware manufacturers to pack thousands of transistors and other related components on a single silicon chip about the size of a baby's fingernail. Such microcircuitry yielded two devices that revolutionized computer technology. The first of these was the microprocessor, which is an integrated circuit that contains all the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry of a central processing unit. Its production resulted in the development of microcomputers, systems no larger than portable television sets yet with substantial computing power. The other important device to emerge from LSI circuitry was the semiconductor memory. Consisting of only a few chips, this compact storage device is well-suited for use in minicomputers and microcomputers. Moreover, it has found use in an increasing number of mainframes, particularly those designed for high-speed applications, because of its fast-access speed and large storage capacity.
By the beginning of the 1980s integrated circuitry had advanced to very large-scale integration (VLSI). This design and manufacturing technology greatly increased the circuit density of microprocessor, memory, and support chips—i.e., those that serve to interface microprocessors with input-output devices. By the 1990s some VLSI circuits contained more than 3 million transistors on a silicon chip less than 0.3 square inch (2 square cm) in area.
The digital computers of the 1980s and '90s employing LSI and VLSI technologies are frequently referred to as fourth-generation systems. Many of the microcomputers produced during the 1980s were equipped with a single chip on which circuits for processor, memory, and interface functions were integrated. See also supercomputer.

The History of Computers

URL:http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm
David Hyun

First man to create digital computer

(Lily Baik)
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/bulgaria-faq/part7/section-1.html

The name John Atanasoff is not very well known but this is the manwho has created the modern digital computer. 50 years have passedsince John Atanasoff has created the first digital computer.

John V. Atanasoff, 91, who invented the first electroniccomputer in 1939

Earlist Mechanism by Paul Lee

Examples of early mechanical computing devices included the abacus, the slide rule and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism (which dates from about 150-100 BC).

First Radio By Paul Lee

History
Guglielmo Marconi successfully sent the first radio message across the Atlantic Ocean in December 1901 from England to Newfoundland. Marconi's radio did not receive voice or music. Rather, it received buzzing sounds created by a spark gap transmitter sending a signal using Morse code.
The radio got its voice on Christmas Eve 1906. As dozens of ship and amateur radio operators listened for the evening's traffic messages, they were amazed to hear a man's voice calling "CQ, CQ" (which means calling all stations, I have messages) instead of the customary dits and dahs of Morse code. The message was transmitted by Professor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden from a small radio station in Brant Rock, Massachusetts.
In the years from 1904 to 1914, the radio went through many refinements with the invention of the diode and triode vacuum tubes. These devices enabled better transmission and reception of voice and music. Also during this time period, the radio became standard equipment on ships crossing the oceans.
The radio came of age during World War I. Military leaders recognized its value for communicating with the infantry and ships at sea. During the WWI, many advancements were made to the radio making it more powerful and compact. In 1923, Edwin Armstrong invented the superhetrodyne radio. It was a major advancement in how a radio worked. The basic principles used in the superhetrodyne radio are still in use today.
On November 2, 1920 the first commercial radio station went on the air in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was an instant success, and began the radio revolution called the "Golden Age of Radio." The Golden Age of Radio lasted from the early 1920s through the late 1940s when television brought in a whole new era. During this Golden Age, the radio evolved from a simple device in a bulky box to a complex piece of equipment housed in beautiful wooden cabinets. People would gather around the radio and listen to the latest news and radio plays. The radio occupied a similar position as today's television set.
On June 30, 1948 the transistor was successfully demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. The transistor allowed radios to become compact, with the smallest ones able to fit in a shirt pocket. In 1959, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce received the first patent for the integrated circuit. The space program of the 1960s would bring more advances to the integrated circuit. Now, a radio could fit in the frame of eyeglasses or inside a pair of small stereo earphones. Today, the frequency dial printed on the cabinet has been replaced with light emitting diodes or liquid crystal displays.