History of the Microprocessor

Today's world is overrun by computers from the small to the big. These include the desktop that is in many homes to the cell phones in your pocket. Even things like your car, dishwasher, dvd player, and even TVs include some form of computers. All this would not be possible without the invention of the integrated circuit or IC. This led to the creation of the Microprocessor or CPU (central processing unit) which acts as the brain of the computer. To better help illustrate the function and need for a CPU you must go back to the first all electric computers. Now computers have a long history but modern electronic computers got their start with the vacuum tube based machines of late forties and fifties. The vacuum tube, invented at the same time as the light bulb by none other than Thomas Edison, is what made electronic computers achievable. The great thing about these tubes was they were able to make signals stronger or amplify them. The tubes could also start and stop the flow of electricity. The first major of general purpose computer to use vacuum tubes was the ENIAC conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania which consisted of eighteen thousand tubes[B1], seven thousand two hundred crystal diods, seventy thousand resistors ten thousand capasitors and five million hand soldered points.
[pic]Pic.1
The trouble with the ENIAC was that it took up lots of room, 1800 square feet to be exact. Another problem with the machine was power consumption. It was said that the ENIAC would cause rolling brown outs but this was not true. It did however use 150 Kw of power. The heat generated by the machine was an addition difficulty to overcome. This was somewhat counteracted by large fans as seen in pic. 1 but the heat was so great that tubes still burnt out. Furthermore programming on the ENIAC was done using a large collection of plug boards and switches. It took several weeks to map out the program then several days to