A Brief History of Computers

History of Computers http://www.cs.uah.edu/~rcoleman/Common/History/History.html A Brief History of Computers Where did these beasties come from? Ancient Times Early Man relied on counting on his fingers and toes (which by the way, is the basis for our base 10 numbering system). He also used sticks and stones as markers. Later notched sticks and knotted cords were used for counting. Finally came symbols written on hides, parchment, and later paper. Man invents the concept of number, then invents devices to help keep up with the numbers of his possessions. Roman Empire The ancient Romans developed an Abacus, the first "machine" for calculating. While it predates the Chinese abacus we do not know if it was the ancestor of that Abacus. Counters in the lower groove are 1 x 10 n, those in the upper groove are 5 x 10 n Industrial Age - 1600 John Napier, a Scottish nobleman and politician devoted much of his leisure time to the study of mathematics. He was especially interested in devising ways to aid computations. His greatest contribution was the invention of logarithms. He inscribed logarithmic measurements on a set of 10 wooden rods and thus was able to do multiplication and division by matching up numbers on the rods. These became known as Napier’s Bones. 1621 - The Sliderule Napier invented logarithms, Edmund Gunter invented the logarithmic scales (lines etched on metal or wood), but it was William Oughtred, in England who invented the sliderule. Using the concept of Napier’s bones, he inscribed logarithms on strips of wood and invented the calculating "machine" which was used up until the mid-1970s when the first hand-held calculators and microcomputers appeared. 1642 - Blaise Pascal(1623-1662) Blaise Pascal, a French mathematical genius, at the age of 19 invented a machine, which he called the Pascaline that could do addition and subtraction to help his father, who was also a mathematician. Pascal’s machine consisted of a series of gears with 10 teeth each, representing the numbers 0 to 9. As each gear made one turn it would trip the next gear up to make 1/10 of a revolution. This principle remained the foundation of all mechanical adding machines for centuries after his death. The Pascal programming language was named in his honor. 1673 - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented differential and integral calculus independently of Sir Isaac Newton, who is usually given sole credit. He invented a calculating machine known as Leibniz’s Wheel or the Step Reckoner . It could add and subtract, like Pascal’s machine, but it could also multiply and divide. It did this by repeated additions or subtractions, the way mechanical adding machines of the mid to late 20th century did. Leibniz also invented something essential to modern computers — binary arithmetic . 1725 - The Bouchon Loom 1 of 6 11/10/2020, 1:19 PM History of Computers http://www.cs.uah.edu/~rcoleman/Common/History/History.html Basile Bouchon, the son of an organ maker, worked in the textile industry. At this time fabrics with very intricate patterns woven into them were very much in vogue. To weave a complex pattern, however involved somewhat complicated manipulations of the threads in a loom which frequently became tangled, broken, or out of place. Bouchon observed the paper rolls with punched holes that his father made to program his player organs and adapted the idea as a way of "programming" a loom. The paper passed over a section of the loom and where the holes appeared certain threads were lifted. As a result, the pattern could be woven repeatedly. This was the first punched paper, stored program. Unfortunately the paper tore and was hard to advance. So, Bouchon’s loom never really caught on and eventually ended up in the back room collecting dust. 1728 - Falçon Loom In 1728 Jean-Batist Falçon, substituted a deck of punched cardboard cards for the paper roll of Bouchon’s loom. This was much more durable, but the deck of cards tended to get shuffled and it was tedious to continuously switch cards. So, Falçon’s loom ended up collecting dust next to Bouchon’s loom. 1745 - Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) It took inventor Joseph M. Jacquard to bring together Bouchon’s idea of a continuous punched roll, and Falcon’s ides of durable punched cards to produce a really workable programmable loom. Weaving operations were controlled by punched cards tied together to form a long loop. And, you could add as many cards as you wanted. Each time a thread was woven in, the roll was clicked forward by one card. The results revolutionized the weaving industry and made a lot of money for Jacquard. This idea of punched data storage was later adapted for computer data input. 1822 – Charles Babbage (1791-1871) and Ada Augusta, The Countess of Lovelace Charles Babbage is known as the Father of the modern computer (even though none of his computers worked or were even constructed in their entirety). He first designed plans to build, what he called the Automatic Difference Engine . It was designed to help in the construction of mathematical tables for navigation. Unfortunately, engineering limitations of his time made it impossible for the computer to be built. His next project was much more ambitious. While a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University (where Stephen Hawkin is now), a position he never actually occupied, he proposed the construction of a machine he called the Analytic Engine . It was to have a punched card input, a memory unit (called the store ), an arithmetic unit (called the mill ), automatic printout, sequential program control, and 20-place decimal accuracy. He had actually worked out a plan for a computer 100 years ahead of its time. Unfortunately it was never completed. It had to wait for manufacturing technology to catch up to his ideas. During a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's Analytic Engine. With her translation she appended a set of notes which specified in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine. Historians now recognize this as the world's first computer program and honor her as the first programmer. Too bad she has such an ill-received programming language named after her. 1880s – Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) The computer trail next takes us to, of all places, the U.S. Bureau of Census. In 1880 taking the U.S. census proved to be a monumental task. By the time it was completed it was almost time to start over for the 1890 census. To try to overcome this problem the Census Bureau hired Dr. Herman Hollerith. In 1887, using Jacquard’s idea of the punched card data storage, Hollerith developed a punched card tabulating system, which allowed the census takers to record all the information needed on punched cards which were then placed in a special tabulating machine with a series of counters. When a lever was pulled a number of pins came down on the card. Where there was a hole the pin went through the card and made contact with a tiny pool of mercury below and tripped one of the counters by one. With Hollerith’s machine the 1890 census tabulation was completed in 1/8 the time. And they checked the count twice. After the census Hollerith turned to using his tabulating machines for business and in 1896 organized the Tabulating Machine Company which later merged with other companies to become IBM. His contribution to the computer then is the use of punched card data storage. BTW: The punched cards in computers were made the same size as those of Hollerith’s machine. And, Hollerith chose the size he did because that was the same size as the one dollar bill at that time and therefore he could find plenty of boxes just the right size to hold the cards. 1939-1942 Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff(1903-1995) and Clifford Berry (1918-1963) Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff and his graduate assistant, Clifford Barry, built the first truly electronic computer, called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer or ABC. Atanasoff said the idea came to him as he was sitting in a small roadside tavern in Illinois. This computer used a circuit with 45 vacuum tubes to perform the calculations, and capacitors for storage. This was also the first computer to use binary 2 of 6 11/10/2020, 1:19 PM History of Computers http://www.cs.uah.edu/~rcoleman/Common/History/History.html math. 1943 – Colossus I The first really successful electronic computer was built in Bletchley Park, England. It was capable of performing only one function, that of code breaking during World War II. It could not be re- programmed. 1944 – Mark I - Howard Aiken (1900-1973) and Grace Hopper (1906-1992) In 1944 Dr. Howard Aiken of Harvard finished the construction of the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, popularly known as the Mark I. It contained over 3000 mechanical relays and was the first electro-mechanical computer capable of making logical decisions, like if x==3 then do this not like If its raining outside I need to carry an umbrella. It could perform an addition in 3/10 of a second. Compare that with something on the order of a couple of nano-seconds (billionths of a second) today. The important contribution of this machine was that it was programmed by means of a punched paper tape, and the instructions could be altered.

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