History of Computing Prehistory – the World Before 1946
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"Computers" Abacus—The First Calculator
Component 4: Introduction to Information and Computer Science Unit 1: Basic Computing Concepts, Including History Lecture 4 BMI540/640 Week 1 This material was developed by Oregon Health & Science University, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under Award Number IU24OC000015. The First "Computers" • The word "computer" was first recorded in 1613 • Referred to a person who performed calculations • Evidence of counting is traced to at least 35,000 BC Ishango Bone Tally Stick: Science Museum of Brussels Component 4/Unit 1-4 Health IT Workforce Curriculum 2 Version 2.0/Spring 2011 Abacus—The First Calculator • Invented by Babylonians in 2400 BC — many subsequent versions • Used for counting before there were written numbers • Still used today The Chinese Lee Abacus http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/ Component 4/Unit 1-4 Health IT Workforce Curriculum 3 Version 2.0/Spring 2011 1 Slide Rules John Napier William Oughtred • By the Middle Ages, number systems were developed • John Napier discovered/developed logarithms at the turn of the 17 th century • William Oughtred used logarithms to invent the slide rude in 1621 in England • Used for multiplication, division, logarithms, roots, trigonometric functions • Used until early 70s when electronic calculators became available Component 4/Unit 1-4 Health IT Workforce Curriculum 4 Version 2.0/Spring 2011 Mechanical Computers • Use mechanical parts to automate calculations • Limited operations • First one was the ancient Antikythera computer from 150 BC Used gears to calculate position of sun and moon Fragment of Antikythera mechanism Component 4/Unit 1-4 Health IT Workforce Curriculum 5 Version 2.0/Spring 2011 Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519, Italy Leonardo da Vinci • Two notebooks discovered in 1967 showed drawings for a mechanical calculator • A replica was built soon after Leonardo da Vinci's notes and the replica The Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci's Adding Machine . -
Simulating Physics with Computers
International Journal of Theoretical Physics, VoL 21, Nos. 6/7, 1982 Simulating Physics with Computers Richard P. Feynman Department of Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91107 Received May 7, 1981 1. INTRODUCTION On the program it says this is a keynote speech--and I don't know what a keynote speech is. I do not intend in any way to suggest what should be in this meeting as a keynote of the subjects or anything like that. I have my own things to say and to talk about and there's no implication that anybody needs to talk about the same thing or anything like it. So what I want to talk about is what Mike Dertouzos suggested that nobody would talk about. I want to talk about the problem of simulating physics with computers and I mean that in a specific way which I am going to explain. The reason for doing this is something that I learned about from Ed Fredkin, and my entire interest in the subject has been inspired by him. It has to do with learning something about the possibilities of computers, and also something about possibilities in physics. If we suppose that we know all the physical laws perfectly, of course we don't have to pay any attention to computers. It's interesting anyway to entertain oneself with the idea that we've got something to learn about physical laws; and if I take a relaxed view here (after all I'm here and not at home) I'll admit that we don't understand everything. -
Flight Results of the Inflatesail Spacecraft and Future Applications of Dragsails
SSC18-XI-04 FLIGHT RESULTS OF THE INFLATESAIL SPACECRAFT AND FUTURE APPLICATIONS OF DRAGSAILS B Taylor, C. Underwood, A. Viquerat, S Fellowes, R. Duke, B. Stewart, G. Aglietti, C. Bridges Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey Guildford, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom, +44(0)1483 686278, [email protected] M. Schenk University of Bristol Bristol, Avon, BS8 1TH, United Kingdom, +44 (0)117 3315364, [email protected] C. Massimiani Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. 20 Stephenson Rd, Guildford GU2 7YE; United Kingdom, +44 (0)1483 803803, [email protected] D. Masutti, A. Denis Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, Waterloosesteenweg 72, B-1640 Sint-Genesius-Rode, Belgium, +32 2 359 96 11, [email protected] ABSTRACT The InflateSail CubeSat, designed and built at the Surrey Space Centre (SSC) at the University of Surrey, UK, for the Von Karman Institute (VKI), Belgium, is one of the technology demonstrators for the QB50 programme. The 3.2 kilogram InflateSail is “3U” in size and is equipped with a 1 metre long inflatable boom and a 10 square metre deployable drag sail. InflateSail's primary goal is to demonstrate the effectiveness of using a drag sail in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to dramatically increase the rate at which satellites lose altitude and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. InflateSail was launched on Friday 23rd June 2017 into a 505km Sun-synchronous orbit. Shortly after the satellite was inserted into its orbit, the satellite booted up and automatically started its successful deployment sequence and quickly started its decent. The spacecraft exhibited varying dynamic modes, capturing in-situ attitude data throughout the mission lifetime. -
Made in Space, We Propose an Entirely New Concept
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “Those who control the spice control the universe.” – Frank Herbert, Dune Many interesting ideas have been conceived for building space-based infrastructure in cislunar space. From O’Neill’s space colonies, to solar power satellite farms, and even prospecting retrieved near earth asteroids. In all the scenarios, one thing remained fixed - the need for space resources at the outpost. To satisfy this need, O’Neill suggested an electromagnetic railgun to deliver resources from the lunar surface, while NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission called for a solar electric tug to deliver asteroid materials from interplanetary space. At Made In Space, we propose an entirely new concept. One which is scalable, cost effective, and ensures that the abundant material wealth of the inner solar system becomes readily available to humankind in a nearly automated fashion. We propose the RAMA architecture, which turns asteroids into self-contained spacecraft capable of moving themselves back to cislunar space. The RAMA architecture is just as capable of transporting conventional sized asteroids on the 10m length scale as transporting asteroids 100m or larger, making it the most versatile asteroid retrieval architecture in terms of retrieved-mass capability. ii This report describes the results of the Phase I study funded by the NASA NIAC program for Made In Space to establish the concept feasibility of using space manufacturing to convert asteroids into autonomous, mechanical spacecraft. Project RAMA, Reconstituting Asteroids into Mechanical Automata, is designed to leverage the future advances of additive manufacturing (AM), in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and in-situ manufacturing (ISM) to realize enormous efficiencies in repeated asteroid redirect missions. -
Blaise Pascal's Mechanical Calculator
machines Article Blaise Pascal’s Mechanical Calculator: Geometric Modelling and Virtual Reconstruction José Ignacio Rojas-Sola 1,* , Gloria del Río-Cidoncha 2 , Arturo Fernández-de la Puente Sarriá 3 and Verónica Galiano-Delgado 4 1 Department of Engineering Graphics, Design and Projects, University of Jaén, 23071 Jaén, Spain 2 Department of Engineering Graphics, University of Seville, 41092 Seville, Spain; [email protected] 3 Department of Design Engineering, University of Seville, 41011 Seville, Spain; [email protected] 4 University of Seville, 41092 Seville, Spain; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +34-9-5321-2452 Abstract: This article shows the three-dimensional (3D) modelling and virtual reconstruction of the first mechanical calculating machine used for accounting purposes designed by Blaise Pascal in 1642. To obtain the 3D CAD (computer-aided design) model and the geometric documentation of said invention, CATIA V5 R20 software has been used. The starting materials for this research, mainly the plans of this arithmetic machine, are collected in the volumes Oeuvres de Blaise Pascal published in 1779. Sketches of said machine are found therein that lack scale, are not dimensioned and certain details are absent; that is, they were not drawn with precision in terms of their measurements and proportions, but they do provide qualitative information on the shape and mechanism of the machine. Thanks to the three-dimensional modelling carried out; it has been possible to explain in detail both its operation and the final assembly of the invention, made from the assemblies of its different Citation: Rojas-Sola, J.I.; del subsets. In this way, the reader of the manuscript is brought closer to the perfect understanding of Río-Cidoncha, G.; Fernández-de la the workings of a machine that constituted a major milestone in the technological development of Puente Sarriá, A.; Galiano-Delgado, V. -
Copyrighted Material
◆ INVENTORS AND INVENTIONS ◆ Eli Whitney THE COTTON GIN The first patent of major importance to be issued by the U.S. government after it was formed was Eli Whitney’s patent for the cotton gin (“gin” is short for “engine”), which was issued on March 14, 1794. The patent description is in longhand, for reasons I cannot explain. Upon graduating Yale as an engineer in 1792, Whitney, like many college graduates of today, found himself in debt and in need of a job. He left his home in Massachusetts and took a job as a teacher in South Carolina. That job fell through, and Katherine Greene, the war widow of General Nathanial Greene, invited Whitney to stay at her Georgia cotton plantation in early 1793. He noticed that long‐staple cotton, which was readily separated from its seed, could only be grown along the coast. The inland‐ grown variety of cotton had sticky green seeds that were difficult to cull from the fluffy white cotton bolls,COPYRIGHTED and thus was less profitable to MATERIALgrow and harvest. It took 10 hours of hand labor to sift out a single point of cotton lint from its seeds. Whitney, after observing the manual process being used for separating the sticky seeds from the cotton bolls, built his first machine, which did not work. The bulk cotton was pushed against a wire mesh screen, which held back the seeds while wooden Intellectual Property Law for Engineers, Scientists, and Entrepreneurs, Second Edition. Howard B. Rockman. © 2020 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. -
Mechanical Calculator (Edited from Wikipedia)
Mechanical Calculator (Edited from Wikipedia) SUMMARY A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, was a mechanical device used to automatically perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in size to small desktop computers and have been rendered obsolete by the advent of the electronic calculator. Surviving notes from Wilhelm Schickard in 1623 report that he designed and had built the earliest of the modern attempts at mechanizing calculation. His machine was composed of two sets of technologies: first an abacus made of Napier's bones, to simplify multiplications and divisions. And for the mechanical part, it had a dialed pedometer to perform additions and subtractions. A study of the surviving notes shows a machine that would have jammed after a few entries on the same dial, and that it could be damaged if a carry had to be propagated over a few digits (like adding 1 to 999). Schickard abandoned his project in 1624 and never mentioned it again until his death eleven years later in 1635. Two decades after Schickard's failed attempt, in 1642, Blaise Pascal decisively solved these particular problems with his invention of the mechanical calculator. Helping his father as tax collector in France, Pascal designed the calculator to help in the large amount of tedious arithmetic required.; it was called Pascal's Calculator or Pascaline. Thomas' arithmometer, the first commercially successful machine, was manufactured two hundred years later in 1851; it was the first mechanical calculator strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. For forty years the arithmometer was the only type of mechanical calculator available for sale. -
Session 2020-21 (PERIODIC TEST II PORTION) Subject: COMPUTER Class : V Chapter 1: EVOLUTION of COMPUTERS Students to Read the Fo
Session 2020-21 (PERIODIC TEST II PORTION) Subject: COMPUTER Class : V Chapter 1: EVOLUTION OF COMPUTERS DAY-1 Students to read the following topics thoroughly: Every aspect of our lives in this present era has been influenced by the most advanced machine known as computer. Initially computers were used only by scientists and engineers for complex calculations and were very expensive. Nowadays, computers can be afforded by individuals and small organizations. Computers are extensively used in banks, hospitals, media and entertainment, industries, schools, homes, space technology and research, railways, airports and so on. The term ‘Computer’ is derived from the word, ‘compute’ which means to calculate but a computer is not limited to perform only calculations. A computer is a versatile device that can handle different applications at the same time. Now, let us glance through the major milestones in the journey leading to the evolution of present day computer. ❖ HISTORY OF COMPUTERS: Right from abacus - the first counting device, many devices were invented, leading to the development of computers. ❖ COMPUTING DEVICES: 3000 BC ABACUS: ➢ Abacus was the first mechanical device for calculations, developed in China. ➢ It was made up of a wooden frame with rods, each having beads. ➢ The frame is divided into two parts – Heaven and Earth. ➢ Each rod in Heaven has 2 beads and each rod in Earth has 5 beads. ➢ This device was used for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. ASSIGNMENT: (To be written in computer notebook, both questions & answers) Q 1. In which country was Abacus developed? Ans: Q 2. Computer has been derived from which word? Ans: DAY-2 Students to read the following topics thoroughly: PASCAL ADDING MACHINE: ➢ Pascal adding machine was the first mechanical calculator invented by Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician at the age of 19. -
A Brief History of IT
IT Computer Technical Support Newsletter A Brief History of IT May 23, 2016 Vol.2, No.29 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction........................1 Pre-mechanical..................2 Mechanical.........................3 Electro-mechanical............4 Electronic...........................5 Age of Information.............6 Since the dawn of modern computers, the rapid digitization and growth in the amount of data created, shared, and consumed has transformed society greatly. In a world that is interconnected, change happens at a startling pace. Have you ever wondered how this connected world of ours got connected in the first place? The IT Computer Technical Support 1 Newsletter is complements of Pejman Kamkarian nformation technology has been around for a long, long time. Basically as Ilong as people have been around! Humans have always been quick to adapt technologies for better and faster communication. There are 4 main ages that divide up the history of information technology but only the latest age (electronic) and some of the electromechanical age really affects us today. 1. Pre-Mechanical The earliest age of technology. It can be defined as the time between 3000 B.C. and 1450 A.D. When humans first started communicating, they would try to use language to make simple pictures – petroglyphs to tell a story, map their terrain, or keep accounts such as how many animals one owned, etc. Petroglyph in Utah This trend continued with the advent of formal language and better media such as rags, papyrus, and eventually paper. The first ever calculator – the abacus was invented in this period after the development of numbering systems. 2 | IT Computer Technical Support Newsletter 2. -
Quantum-Mechanical Computers, If They Can Be Constructed, Will Do Things No Ordinary Computer Can Quantum-Mechanical Computers
Quantum-mechanical computers, if they can be constructed, will do things no ordinary computer can Quantum-Mechanical Computers by Seth Lloyd very two years for the past 50, computers have become twice as fast while their components have become half as big. Circuits now contain wires and transistors that measure only one hundredth of a human hair in width. Because of this ex- Eplosive progress, today’s machines are millions of times more powerful than their crude ancestors. But explosions do eventually dissipate, and integrated-circuit technology is running up against its limits. 1 Advanced lithographic techniques can yield parts /100 the size of what is currently avail- able. But at this scale—where bulk matter reveals itself as a crowd of individual atoms— integrated circuits barely function. A tenth the size again, the individuals assert their iden- tity, and a single defect can wreak havoc. So if computers are to become much smaller in the future, new technology must replace or supplement what we now have. HYDROGEN ATOMS could be used to store bits of information in a quantum computer. An atom in its ground state, with its electron in its lowest possible en- ergy level (blue), can represent a 0; the same atom in an excited state, with its electron at a higher energy level (green), can repre- sent a 1. The atom’s bit, 0 or 1, can be flipped to the opposite value using a pulse of laser light (yellow). If the photons in the pulse have the same amount of energy as the difference between the electron’s ground state and its excited state, the electron will jump from one state to the other. -
Mechanical Computing
Home For Librarians Help My SpringerReference Go Advanced Search Physics and Astronomy > Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science > Mechanical Computing: The Related Articles Computational Complexity of Physical Devices Unconventional Computing, Introduction to Cite | History | Comment | Print | References | Image Gallery | Hide Links Author This article represents the version submitted by the author. Dr. John H. Reif It is currently undergoing peer review prior to full publication. Dept. Comp. Sci., Duke Univ., Durham, USA and Adj. Fac. of Mechanical Computing: The Computational Complexity of Comp., KAU, Jeddah, SA, Durham, USA Physical Devices Editor Page Content [show] Dr. Robert A. Meyers RAMTECH LIMITED, Larkspur, USA Glossary Session History (max. 10) Mechanical Computing: The - Mechanism: A machine or part of a machine that performs a particular task computation: Computational Complexity of Physical the use of a computer for calculation. Devices - Computable: Capable of being worked out by calculation, especially using a computer. - Simulation: Used to denote both the modeling of a physical system by a computer as well as the modeling of the operation of a computer by a mechanical system; the difference will be clear from the context. Definition of the Subject Mechanical devices for computation appear to be largely displaced by the widespread use of microprocessor‐based computers that are pervading almost all aspects of our lives. Nevertheless, mechanical devices for computation are of interest for at least three reasons: (a) Historical: The use of mechanical devices for computation is of central importance in the historical study of technologies, with a history dating back thousands of years and with surprising applications even in relatively recent times. -
Regulatory Requirements to the Thermal-Hydraulic and Thermal-Mechanical Computer Codes Authors: M
Paper 4.1 Regulatory requirements to the thermal-hydraulic and thermal-mechanical computer codes Authors: M. Vitkova1, B. Kalchev2, S. Stefanova3 1 Nuclear Regulatory Agency 2 Institute of Energy 3 Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy – Bulgarian Academy of Science Abstract The paper presents an overview of the regulatory requirements to the thermal-hydraulic and thermal-mechanical computer codes, which are used for safety assessment of the fuel design and the fuel utilization. Some requirements to the model development, verification and validation of the codes and analysis of code uncertainties are also define. Questions concerning Quality Assurance during development and implementation of the codes as well as preparation of a detailed verification and validation plan are briefly discussed. 1. Introduction Commitment by utilities to safe, reliable and economical power production is the basis for nuclear energy progress. All these goals are only achievable if the utility is able to accomplish and maintain a successful operation. At the same time the operation of the nuclear power plants are not absolutely free of risk. This requires some principles, requirements and measures for radiological protection of the personnel, the public and the environment to be formulated and adequately implemented so as the risk from the plant operation can be minimized and the society’s needs for useful energy can be met. Logical relations between safety objectives and principles for protection should be established to guarantee that the nuclear power plants can be operated safely and reliably. At the other hand the design provisions should include a multibarrier system to protect humans and the environment in a wide range of abnormal conditions.