Charles Babbage and the “First” Computer Game
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Analytical Engine, 1838 ALLAN G
Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, 1838 ALLAN G. BROMLEY Charles Babbage commenced work on the design of the Analytical Engine in 1834 following the collapse of the project to build the Difference Engine. His ideas evolved rapidly, and by 1838 most of the important concepts used in his later designs were established. This paper introduces the design of the Analytical Engine as it stood in early 1838, concentrating on the overall functional organization of the mill (or central processing portion) and the methods generally used for the basic arithmetic operations of multiplication, division, and signed addition. The paper describes the working of the mechanisms that Babbage devised for storing, transferring, and adding numbers and how they were organized together by the “microprogrammed” control system; the paper also introduces the facilities provided for user- level programming. The intention of the paper is to show that an automatic computing machine could be built using mechanical devices, and that Babbage’s designs provide both an effective set of basic mechanisms and a workable organization of a complete machine. Categories and Subject Descriptors: K.2 [History of Computing]- C. Babbage, hardware, software General Terms: Design Additional Key Words and Phrases: Analytical Engine 1. Introduction 1838. During this period Babbage appears to have made no attempt to construct the Analytical Engine, Charles Babbage commenced work on the design of but preferred the unfettered intellectual exploration of the Analytical Engine shortly after the collapse in 1833 the concepts he was evolving. of the lo-year project to build the Difference Engine. After 1849 Babbage ceased designing calculating He was at the time 42 years o1d.l devices. -
A Bibliography of Publications By, and About, Charles Babbage
A Bibliography of Publications by, and about, Charles Babbage Nelson H. F. Beebe University of Utah Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB 155 S 1400 E RM 233 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090 USA Tel: +1 801 581 5254 FAX: +1 801 581 4148 E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] (Internet) WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ 08 March 2021 Version 1.24 Abstract -analogs [And99b, And99a]. This bibliography records publications of 0 [Bar96, CK01b]. 0-201-50814-1 [Ano91c]. Charles Babbage. 0-262-01121-2 [Ano91c]. 0-262-12146-8 [Ano91c, Twe91]. 0-262-13278-8 [Twe93]. 0-262-14046-2 [Twe92]. 0-262-16123-0 [Ano91c]. 0-316-64847-7 [Cro04b, CK01b]. Title word cross-reference 0-571-17242-3 [Bar96]. 1 [Bab97, BRG+87, Mar25, Mar86, Rob87a, #3 [Her99]. Rob87b, Tur91]. 1-85196-005-8 [Twe89b]. 100th [Sen71]. 108-bit [Bar00]. 1784 0 [Tee94]. 1 [Bab27d, Bab31c, Bab15]. [MB89]. 1792/1871 [Ynt77]. 17th [Hun96]. 108 000 [Bab31c, Bab15]. 108000 [Bab27d]. 1800s [Mar08]. 1800s-Style [Mar08]. 1828 1791 + 200 = 1991 [Sti91]. $19.95 [Dis91]. [Bab29a]. 1835 [Van83]. 1851 $ $ $21.50 [Mad86]. 25 [O’H82]. 26.50 [Bab51a, CK89d, CK89i, She54, She60]. $ [Enr80a, Enr80b]. $27.95 [L.90]. 28 1852 [Bab69]. 1853 [She54, She60]. 1871 $ [Hun96]. $35.00 [Ano91c]. 37.50 [Ano91c]. [Ano71b, Ano91a]. 1873 [Dod00]. 18th $45.00 [Ano91c]. q [And99a, And99b]. 1 2 [Bab29a]. 1947 [Ano48]. 1961 Adam [O’B93]. Added [Bab16b, Byr38]. [Pan63, Wil64]. 1990 [CW91]. 1991 Addison [Ano91c]. Addison-Wesley [Ano90, GG92a]. 19th [Ano91c]. Addition [Bab43a]. Additions [Gre06, Gre01, GST01]. -
Ada Lovelace the first Computer Programmer 1815 - 1852
Ada Lovelace The first computer programmer 1815 - 1852 Biography Ada Lovelace Day I Born on December 10th, 1815 in London as Augusta Ada Byron Each second Tuesday in October is Ada Lovelace Day. A day to raise the I Parents separated when she was a baby profile of women in science, technology, engineering, and maths to create new role models for girls and women in these fields. During this day the I Father Lord Byron was a poet and died when she was 8 years old accomplishments of those women are celebrated. I Mother Lady Wentworth was a social reformer I Descended from a wealthy family I Early interest in mathematics and science, encouraged by her mother Portrait I Obtained private classes and got in touch with intellectuals, e.g. Mary Sommerville who tutored her and later introduced Lovelace to Charles Babbage at the age of 17 I Married in 1835 William King at the age of 19, shortly after becoming the Countess of Lovelace I By 1839, she had given birth to 3 children I Continued studying maths, supported among others by Augustus De Morgan, a math professor in London who taught her via correspondence I In 1843, she published a translation of an Italian academic paper about Babbage's Analytical Engine and added her famous note section (see Contributions) I Died on November 27th, 1852 at the age of 36 Contributions I First computer programmer, roughly a century before the electronic computer I A two decade lasting correspondence with Babbage about his idea of an Analytical Engine I Developed an algorithm that would enable the Analytical Engine to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, unfortunately, the machine was never built I First person to realize the power of computer programs: Not only used for calculations with numbers I Combined arts and logic, calling it poetical science Figure 3:Ada Lovelace I First reflections about artificial intelligence, but she rejected the idea Bernoulli Numbers Quotes I Play an important role in several domains of mathematics, e.g. -
William Gibson Fonds
William Gibson fonds Compiled by Christopher Hives (1993) University of British Columbia Archives Table of Contents Fonds Description o Title / Dates of Creation / Physical Description o Biographical Sketch o Scope and Content o Notes File List Catalogue entry (UBC Library catalogue) Fonds Description William Gibson fonds. - 1983-1993. 65 cm of textual materials Biographical Sketch William Gibson is generally recognized as the most important science fiction writer to emerge in the 1980s. His first novel, Neuromancer, is the first novel ever to win the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards. Neuromancer, which has been considered to be one of the influential science fiction novels written in the last twenty-five years, inspired a whole new genre in science fiction writing referred to as "cyberpunk". Gibson was born in 1948 in Conway, South Carolina. He moved to Toronto in the late 1960s and then to Vancouver in the early 1970s. Gibson studied English at the University of British Columbia. He began writing science fiction short stories while at UBC. In 1979 Gibson wrote "Johnny Mnemonic" which was published in Omni magazine. An editor at Ace books encouraged him to try writing a novel. This novel would become Neuromancer which was published in 1984. After Neuromancer, Gibson wrote Count Zero (1986), Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), and Virtual Light (1993). He collaborated with Bruce Sterling in writing The Difference Engine (1990). Gibson has also published numerous short stories, many of which appeared in a collection of his work, Burning Chrome (1986). Scope and Content Fonds consists of typescript manuscripts and copy-edited, galley or page proof versions of all five of Gibson's novels (to 1993) as well as several short stories. -
Science Fiction, Steampunk, Cyberpunk
SCIENCE FICTION: speculative but scientific plausability, write rationally, realistically about alternative possible worlds/futures, no hesitation, suspension of disbelief estrangement+cognition: seek rational understanding of NOVUM (D. Suvin—cognitive estrangement) continuum bw real-world empiricism & supernatural transcendentalism make the incredible plausible BUT alienation/defamiliarization effect (giant bug) Literature of human being encountering CHANGE (techn innovat, sci.disc, nat. events, soc shifts) origins: speculative wonder stories, antiquity’s fabulous voyages, utopia, medieval ISLAND story, scientifiction & Campbell: Hero with a 1000 Faces & Jules Verne, HG Wells (Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr Moreau), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Swift Gulliver’s Travels Imaginative, Speculative content: • TIME: futurism, alternative timeline, diff hist. past, time travel (Wells, 2001. A Space Odyssey) • SPACE: outer space, extra-terrestrial adventures, subterranean regions, deep oceans, terra incognita, parallel universe, lost world stories • CHARACTERS: alien life forms, UFO, AI, GMO, transhuman (Invisible Man), mad scientist • THEMES: *new scientific principles, *futuristic technology, (ray guns, teleportation, humanoid computers), *new political systems (post-apocalyptic dystopia), *PARANORMAL abilities (mindcontrol, telekinesis, telepathy) Parallel universe: alternative reality: speculative fiction –scientific methods to explore world Philosophical ideas question limits & prerequisites of humanity (AI) challenge -
Mirrorshade Women: Feminism and Cyberpunk
Mirrorshade Women: Feminism and Cyberpunk at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century Carlen Lavigne McGill University, Montréal Department of Art History and Communication Studies February 2008 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Studies © Carlen Lavigne 2008 2 Abstract This study analyzes works of cyberpunk literature written between 1981 and 2005, and positions women’s cyberpunk as part of a larger cultural discussion of feminist issues. It traces the origins of the genre, reviews critical reactions, and subsequently outlines the ways in which women’s cyberpunk altered genre conventions in order to advance specifically feminist points of view. Novels are examined within their historical contexts; their content is compared to broader trends and controversies within contemporary feminism, and their themes are revealed to be visible reflections of feminist discourse at the end of the twentieth century. The study will ultimately make a case for the treatment of feminist cyberpunk as a unique vehicle for the examination of contemporary women’s issues, and for the analysis of feminist science fiction as a complex source of political ideas. Cette étude fait l’analyse d’ouvrages de littérature cyberpunk écrits entre 1981 et 2005, et situe la littérature féminine cyberpunk dans le contexte d’une discussion culturelle plus vaste des questions féministes. Elle établit les origines du genre, analyse les réactions culturelles et, par la suite, donne un aperçu des différentes manières dont la littérature féminine cyberpunk a transformé les usages du genre afin de promouvoir en particulier le point de vue féministe. -
AI from a Game Player Perspective Eleonora Giunchiglia Why?
AI from a game player perspective Eleonora Giunchiglia Why? David Churchill, professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland: ``From a scientific point of view, the properties of StarCraft are very much like the properties of real life. [. .] We’re making a test bed for technologies we can use in the real world.’’ This concept can be extended to every game and justifies the research of AI in games. Connections with MAS A multiagent system is one composed of multiple interacting software components known as agents, which are typically capable of cooperating to solve problems that are beyond the abilities of any individual member. This represents by far a more complex setting than the traditional 1vs1 games à only in recent years they were able to study games with multiple agents. In this project we traced the path that led from AI applied to 1vs1 games to many vs. many games. The very first attempts The very first attempts were done even before the concept of Artificial intelligence was born: 1890: Leonardo Torres y Quevedo developed an electro-mechanical device, El Ajedrecista, to checkmate a human opponent’s king using only its own king and rook. 1948: Alan Turing wrote the algorithm TurboChamp. He never managed to run it on a real computer. The very first attempts 1950: Claude Shannon proposes the Minimax algorithm. Shannon proposed two different ways of deciding the next move: 1. doing brute-force tree search on the complete tree, and take the optimal move, or 2. looking at a small subset of next moves at each layer during tree search, and take the “likely optimal” move. -
Analytical Engine: the Orig- Inal Computer
Chapter 2 Analytical Engine: The Orig- inal Computer As we learned in the fourth grade science course, back in 1801, a French man, Joseph Marie Jacquard, invented a power loom that could weave textiles, which had been done for a long time by hand. More interestingly, this machine can weave tex- tiles with patterns such as brocade, damask, and matelasse by controlling the operation with punched wooden cards, held together in a long row by rope. 1 How do these cards work? Each wooden card comes with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design. In each position, if the needle needs to go through, there is a hole; other- wise, there is no hole. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and all the cards that compose the design of the textile are hooked together in order. 2 What do we get? With the control of such cards, needs go back and forth, moving from left to the right, row by row, and come up with something like the following: Although the punched card concept was based on some even earlier invention by Basile Bou- chon around 1725, “the Jacquard loom was the first machine to use punch cards to con- trol a sequence of operations”. Let’s check out a little demo as how Jacquard’s machine worked. 3 Why do we talk about a loom? With Jacquard loom, if you want to switch to a different pattern, you simply change the punched cards. By the same token, with a modern computer, if you want it to run a different application, you simply load it with a different program, which used to keep on a deck of paper based punched cards. -
Ada and the First Computer
Ada and the First Computer The collaboration between Ada, countess of Lovelace, and computer pioneer Charles Babbage resulted in a landmark publication that described how to program the world’s first computer by Eugene Eric Kim and Betty Alexandra Toole eople called Augusta Ada King’s father “mad and bad” for his wild ways, but he was better known as Lord Byron, the poet. Ada inherited her famous father’s P way with words and his zest for life. She was a beautiful, flirtatious woman who hobnobbed with England’s elite and who died at the youthful age of 36, the same age at which her father died. And like Byron, Ada is best known for something she wrote. In 1843 she published an influential set of notes that described Charles Babbage’s An- alytical Engine, the first automatic, general-purpose computing machine ever designed. Although the Analytical Engine was never built—largely because Babbage could not raise the funds for its construction—Ada’s notes included a program for using it to com- pute a series of figures called Bernoulli numbers [see box on page 78]. Ada’s notes established her importance in computer science, but her fascinating life and lineage—and her role as a female pioneer in a field in which women have always been notoriously underrepresented—have lately turned her into an icon. In addition to numerous biographies, she has inspired plays and novels written by the likes of such lu- minaries as Tom Stoppard and Arthur C. Clarke. Conceiving Ada, a movie loosely based on her life, was released by Fox Lorber in February. -
A Short History of Computing
A Short History of Computing 01/15/15 1 Jacques de Vaucanson 1709-1782 • Gifted French artist and inventor • Son of a glove-maker, aspired to be a clock- maker • 1727-1743 – Created a series of mechanical automations that simulated life. • Best remembered is the “Digesting Duck”, which had over 400 parts. • Also worked to automate looms, creating the first automated loom in 1745. 01/15/15 2 1805 - Jacquard Loom • First fully automated and programmable loom • Used punch cards to “program” the pattern to be woven into cloth 01/15/15 3 Charles Babbage 1791-1871 • English mathematician, engineer, philosopher and inventor. • Originated the concept of the programmable computer, and designed one. • Could also be a Jerk. 01/15/15 4 1822 – Difference Engine Numerical tables were constructed by hand using large numbers of human “computers” (one who computes). Annoyed by the many human errors this produced, Charles Babbage designed a “difference engine” that could calculate values of polynomial functions. It was never completed, although much work was done and money spent. Book Recommendation: The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer by Doron Swade 01/15/15 5 1837 – Analytical Engine Charles Babbage first described a general purpose analytical engine in 1837, but worked on the design until his death in 1871. It was never built due to lack of manufacturing precision. As designed, it would have been programmed using punch-cards and would have included features such as sequential control, loops, conditionals and branching. If constructed, it would have been the first “computer” as we think of them today. -
The Non-Native Language of Cyberpunk: from Retro-Diction to Pre-Diction and Back Again
Knowledge Cultures 6(1), 2018 pp. 131–146, ISSN 2327-5731, eISSN 2375-6527 doi:10.22381/KC61201810 THE NON-NATIVE LANGUAGE OF CYBERPUNK: FROM RETRO-DICTION TO PRE-DICTION AND BACK AGAIN. AN INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE STERLING PETAR JANDRIĆ [email protected] Zagreb University of Applied Sciences ABSTRACT. Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, and critic, was born in 1954. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne. During 2005, he was the Visionary in Residence at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. In 2008 he was the Guest Curator for the Share Festival of Digital Art and Culture in Torino, Italy, and the Visionary in Residence at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2011 he returned to Art Center as Visionary in Residence to run a special project on Augmented Reality. In 2013, he was the Visionary in Residence at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. In 2015 he was the Curator of the Casa Jasmina project at the Torino Fab Lab. In 2016 he was Visionary in Residence at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Bruce’s nonfiction works include The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (1992), Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (2003), Shaping Things (2005), and The Epic Struggle Of The Internet Of Things (2014). Bruce’s novels include Involution Ocean (1977), Islands in the Net (1988), The Difference Engine (1991) (with William Gibson), Holy Fire (1996), The Zenith Angle (2004), and Pirate Utopia (2016). -
Intro to Computers Where Did They Come From? Part 1 - Pre-1940S Define Computer
Intro to Computers Where did they come from? Part 1 - Pre-1940s Define Computer Man vs. Machine Define Computer 1600’s Definition: -Someone who makes calculations. Late 1800’s Definition: -A machine that makes calculations. Modern Definition: -An electronic device used for storing and processing data Lets go back to the beginning! Computers exist because of math. One of the earliest “calculators” is called the Abacus. -Been around for 1000s of years Online Abacus https://www.online-calculator.com/full-screen-abacus/ The Next Big Step! Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz invented the Stepped Reckoner in 1672. Stepped Reckoner -Made calculations using a gear mechanism called the Leibniz Wheel. -The first machine that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide Leibniz Wheel -or stepped drum is a cylinder with a set of teeth of incremental lengths -Was used for over 200 years in calculating Machines. -Even into the 1970s And then came this guy... Charles Babbage -Babbage saw a better way of crunching numbers -In 1823 he began construction on the Difference Engine -A machine able to do complex calculations and output tables of numbers. Difference Engine -Babbage used a loan from the British government to make the Difference Engine -Due to the inability to make precise metal parts for cheap, Babbage never fully constructed the Difference Engine and the project was abandoned. -In 2000, a Difference Engine was fully built to celebrate Babbage’s 200th birthday. The machine actually worked! This settled the debate on whether his idea would really operate. Difference Engine Analytical Engine -While attempting to construct the Difference Engine, Babbage designed an even more complex machine called the Analytical Engine -This machine was never built, but was the first design of a machine that had memory and could be programmed, thus, making it the first computer as we think of them today.