History of computers 2
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The document discusses the early history of computers from the 17th century onwards. It describes Gottfried Leibniz's stepped reckoner, the first four-function mechanical calculator. It also discusses Joseph Marie Jacquard's punched card loom from 1801 that was an early precursor to stored program computers. Finally, it outlines Charles Babbage's analytical engine from 1833, the first general purpose programmable computer, and Herman Hollerith's punched card census machines from the 1880s.
![A few Hollerith desks still exist today
[photo courtesy The Computer Museum]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/chap2-110809125559-phpapp01/85/History-of-computers-2-19-320.jpg)
History of computers 2
- 2. Stepped Reckoner • Just a few years after Pascal, the German Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (co-inventor with Newton of calculus) managed to build a four- function (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) calculator that he called the stepped reckoner because, instead of gears, it employed fluted drums having ten flutes arranged around their circumference in a stair-step fashion.
- 3. Stepped Reckoner • Although the stepped reckoner employed the decimal number system (each drum had 10 flutes), Leibniz was the first to advocate use of the binary number system which is fundamental to the operation of modern computers. Leibniz is considered one of the greatest of the philosophers but he died poor and alone.
- 5. p • In 1801 the Frenchman Joseph u Marie Jacquard invented a power n loom that could base its weave c (and hence the design on the h fabric) upon a pattern automatically read from punched e wooden cards, held together in a d c long row by rope. Descendents of a these punched cards have been in r use ever since (remember the d "hanging chad" from the Florida s presidential ballots of the year 2000?).
- 6. History of Computers - 19th Century • first stored program - metal cards • first computer manufacturing • still in use today!
- 7. Jacquard's Loom showing the threads and the punched cards
- 8. By selecting particular cards for Jacquard's loom you defined the woven pattern
- 9. A close-up of a Jacquard card
- 10. • Jacquard's technology was a real boon to mill owners, but put many loom operators out of work. Angry mobs smashed Jacquard looms and once attacked Jacquard himself. History is full of examples of labor unrest following technological innovation yet most studies show that, overall, technology has actually increased the number of jobs.
- 11. Charles Babbage - 1792-1871 • Difference Engine c.1822 • Analytical Engine 1833 – could store numbers – calculating “mill” used punched metal cards for instructions – powered by steam! – accurate to six decimal places
- 12. Difference Engine. • By 1822 the English mathematician Charles Babbage was proposing a steam driven calculating machine the size of a room, which he called the Difference Engine. This machine would be able to compute tables of numbers, such as logarithm tables. He obtained government funding for this project due to the importance of numeric tables in ocean navigation. By promoting their commercial and military navies,
- 13. Difference Engine. • the British government had managed to become the earth's greatest empire. But in that time frame the British government was publishing a seven volume set of navigation tables which came with a companion volume of corrections which showed that the set had over 1000 numerical errors. It was hoped that Babbage's machine could eliminate errors in these types of tables.
- 14. Difference Engine. • But construction of Babbage's Difference Engine proved exceedingly difficult and the project soon became the most expensive government funded project up to that point in English history. Ten years later the device was still nowhere near complete, acrimony abounded between all involved, and funding dried up. The device was never finished.
- 15. A small section of the type of mechanism employed in Babbage's Difference Engine
- 16. Hollerith desk • Hollerith's invention, known as the Hollerith desk, consisted of a card reader which sensed the holes in the cards, a gear driven mechanism which could count (using Pascal's mechanism which we still see in car odometers), and a large wall of dial indicators (a car speedometer is a dial indicator) to display the results of the count.
- 17. An operator working at a Hollerith Desk like the one below
- 18. Preparation of punched cards for the U.S. census
- 19. A few Hollerith desks still exist today [photo courtesy The Computer Museum]
- 20. Two types of computer punch cards
- 21. Incidentally, the Hollerith census machine was the first machine to ever be featured on a magazine cover.