A Timeline of Hardware History

As mentioned, my reasoning for making this blog is twofold. I wanted an excuse to deep dive into technology concepts. Simultaneously, I used it to persue an interest I have had with almost everything, history. People are only on Earth for a limited time. Knowing this, I have always been extremely invested in things older than me. This pursuit has been successful too as I currently own a Compaq Armada 1750. 



All this to say, my choice of “Hardware components of computer systems” and “History and future of computers” is well founded. Not only is it something I am interested in, but it also allows me to cover many important topics within tech. 


The Basics | How Hardware Developed

The first area to discuss is the fundamentals of tech. This is a broad topic, so we will mainly look at the systems needed to make computers run. In a sense, the history of computers and understanding these fundamentals go hand in hand. Take a major hardware component, the CPU, for example, “CPUs are the one piece of equipment on computers that can’t be sacrificed... if you remove the CPU, you simply no longer have a computer.” (Powell, P., 2025) The history of computers are marked by advances in hardware such as these.

Consider the invention of the transistor. Its forbearers, the relay and vacuum tube technically did what they set out to do, but they sacrificed something:

  • With relays, the system was mechanical with moving parts. It did its job, but people eventually ran into mechanical, physical limitations. (Rfinsights, 2025) 
  • The vacuum tube was much faster than a relay but could not be used at scale due to huge overhead costs from power consumption and component ware. (Rfinsights, 2025)  

The transistor was the solution for all of these problems. It was able to control and boost electrical signals simultaneously. Today, we use incredibly small transistors, allowing us to put more computing power in the same space. As Rahul Rao points out in his article for Popular Science, “Without the transistor, electronics as we know them could not exist. Almost everyone on Earth would be experiencing a vastly different day-to-day”. The fact of the matter is that better hardware results in better, more complex computer systems.


Hardware and Software | A Match Made in Heavan

Next up is my research topic’s relation to the history, operation, and major components of computers.

Often times, the development of hardware is in tandem with the development of computer systems. Before 1968, computers took up entire rooms and operation involved physically inserting punched cards or outright using machine language. So, what changed? How did computers become digitized? The answer comes in the form of the development of the Graphical User Interface.  

The GUI

Despite focusing on hardware, software is still integral to this story. The most valued sense in the human body is sight (Enoch, J., et al., 2019). Therefore, something that is hard to understand visually will be harder to learn. The GUI solved many problems at once, but its primary goal was to fix this specific issue. Alongside the invention of the GUI was the invention of the mouse and keyboard (Reimer, J., 2005). Combined, this revolutionized the way people used computers and made the technology available for a wider audience.

It's no small stretch to say hardware limitations can set back the development of software. Likewise, hardware innovations are pointless without software capable of harnessing new power. If you will take anything from this section, consider this:

Development in one area typically requires some innovation in the other.

The Operating System

When computers were initially invented, only those with an extremely high level of knowledge about computing could use it. That’s because computers could only run machine language, the 1’s and 0’s if you will. It's no exaggeration to say to run a computer back then, you needed to be the one that built it. Even if you could use it, it could only perform simple math (Gupta, S., 2022).

The Operating System was a solution to this complexity. At its core, it bridges the gap between hardware and software. Initial developments did not create software. The most primal OS used punch cards as a physical solution to what we now know as code. Eventually, multithreading and the GUI were introduced, skyrocketing performance and reducing the barrier to entry further (Gupta, S., 2022). Software has not taking over our lives. Web browsers connect us to the rest of the world. Productivity apps make monotonous jobs quicker. Most importantly, we no longer rely on machine language anymore, as coding languages like Python and Java translate readable words into machine language, which the OS comes in to send to the hardware for execution. 


Working at Scale | Databases and Their Security

These topics also touch on specific developments in databases and security. Databases are integral to business operations today. As computing became more relevant in day-to-day business, people quickly realized some data being calculated could be useful if stored. Therefore, people built hardware systems to support this storage. The first database concept stored data through magnetic tapes. Today, services like MySQL and XML store, manage, and interact with massive data sets; whose continued operation keeps the world running. (GeeksforGeeks, 2024) 

In the same vein, we are also able to cover data security. In an increasingly digitized world, data is valuable, and some people make careers out of stealing valuable things. Although security cannot be fully covered, we can at least look at security hardware. Despite the abstraction of software, databases are still physical places in the world. This means they require physical barriers as well (IBM, 2025). This security is divided up into a few sections: 

  • Physical protection like cameras, locks, and more literally walls. 
  • Data protection like firewalls and data backups. 

From there, software management systems monitor suspicious activity. The combination of software and hardware make comprehensive systems hard to breach. 


Works Cited

Powell, P. (2025, April 16). The history of Central Processing Unit (CPU). IBM. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/central-processing-unit-history 

Rfinsights. (2025, April 2). Step-by-step breakdown of Transistor Invention. RFIC Design. https://www.rfinsights.com/insights/design/device/the-invention-of-the-transistor-a-step-by-step-breakdown/ 

Rao, R. (2022a, December 4). The small, mighty, world-changing transistor turns 75. Popular Science. https://www.popsci.com/science/transistors-changed-the-world/ 

Enoch, J., McDonald, L., Jones, L., Jones, P. R., & Crabb, D. P. (2019). Evaluating Whether Sight Is the Most Valued Sense. JAMA ophthalmology, 137(11), 1317–1320. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2019.3537 

 

Reimer, J. (2005, May 5). A history of the GUI. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/05/gui/ 

Gupta, S. (2022, November 21). History of operating system. Scaler Topics. https://www.scaler.com/topics/history-of-operating-system/ 

History of DBMS. GeeksforGeeks. (2024, October 11). https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/history-of-dbms/ 

IBM. (2025, April 15). What is IT security? https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/it-security 

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