The History of Computers

TheHistory of Computers Click here for inventors • Presented to you by : • CEO-Josh R. • Technical Advisor & Editor-Shan P. • Artistic Director-Jeremiah M. • And researchers-Mike D., Allen N., Nathan A., Chris Z., and TC S..

Blaise Pascal His inventions Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected. Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont on June 19, 1623, and died at Paris on Aug. 19, 1662.

Pascaline calculator picture • Pascaline was invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642. The device is able to add two decimal numbers. Using ten's complement it is also possible to subtract. Example: 65 - 27 can be computed as 65 + 73 without carry, where 73 is the complement of 27. • Pascal has started production of his calculator (about 50 machines were produced), but there was no interest, so he had to stop. The world had to wait another 300 years until electronics made the calculating machine a real success

Pascaline calculator Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage Picture of Augusta Ada & Augusta Ada In 1833 Ada met Babbage and was fascinated with both him and his Engines. Later Ada became a competent student of mathematics, which was most unusual for a woman at the time. She translated a paper on Babbage's Engines by General Menabrea, later to be prime minister of the newly united Italy. Under Babbage's careful supervision Ada added extensive notes which constitute the best contemporary description of the Engines, and the best account we have of Babbage's views on the general powers of the Engines.

Their Inventions

Analytic engine picture It was to be capable of carrying out any mathematical operation. Instructions would tell it what operation to perform and in what order. It would have a memory with a capacity of one-thousand 50-digit numbers, it would draw on auxiliary functions such as logarithm tables (of which it would possess its own library) and subroutines, it would compare numbers and act upon its judgments, thus proceeding along lines not uniquely specified in advance by the instructions.

Analytic engine Next invention

Difference engine picture In the 1990’s the Difference Engine made its first string of calculations, and its results were within 31 digits of accuracy which was far more accurate than the pocket calculator, but the difference engine required hundreds sometimes thousands of turns from a crank just to get results.

Difference engine Joseph Jacquard

Joseph Jacquard picture In 1801 he constructed a loom that used a series of punched cards to control the pattern of longitudinal warp threads depressed before each sideways passage of the shuttle. Jacquard later developed a machine where the punched cards were joined to form an endless loop that represented the program for the repeating pattern used for cloth and carpet designs.

Joseph Jacquard His Invention

Jacquard loom picture It was an automated loom that transformed the 19th century textile industry and became the inspiration for future calculating and tabulating machines. It was developed by the French silk-weaver, Joseph Jacquard, and it used punched cards to control its operation. Although punched cards were used in earlier looms and music boxes, Jacquard's loom was a vast improvement and allowed complex patterns to be created swiftly. The loom was inspiration to Charles Babbage and, later, to Herman Hollerith.

Jacquard loom Herman Hollerith

Herman Hollerith picture A young mathematician inventor combined old technology of punching cards with new electrical technology to produce a sorting and tabulating machine. His machine helped speed up the 1886 census; the census was completed in six weeks. He founded the TMC (Tabulating Machine Company) to produce and sell his machines, and his company prospered. His fledging venture is known today as IBM.

Herman Hollerith His Inventions

Tabulating machine Picture The 1890 tabulator was capable only of counting. Subsequent models, developed by Hollerith himself, were also able to add, thus broadening their scope to accounting, warehousing, and shipping applications. Between 1902 and 1905, Hollerith also developed an automatic card feed and a method for reading cards in motion and settled on a standard card format. In 1928, IBM produced its first tabulator (the Type IV) with both addition and subtraction capability.

Tabulating machine Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush picture During World War II, Bush worked on radar antenna profiles and the calculation of artillery firing tables. The mathematics involved was complicated and repetitive. Bush proposed the development of an analogue computer; this became the Rockefeller Differential Analyser. Unfortunately, his research was rendered obsolete by 1950 with the invention of the digital computer. It is ironic that one of the heroes of today's computer researchers was defeated in his work by the predecessor of those selfsame computers.

Vannevar Bush His Inventions

Differential analyzer picture Vannevar Bush started the most important pre-war effort in the 1920s. It culminated in 1942 with the dedication of his huge Rockefeller Differential Analyzer at MIT -- a one-hundred-ton machine with 2000 vacuum tubes and 150 motors. Bush's Analyzer was an analog computer, which carries out an analogy of a real physical process -- in this case, a mixed electrical-mechanical analogy. A digital computer is quite different. It breaks all computations down into sequences of additions and subtractions and solves equations by doing a lot of simple arithmetic.

Differential analyzer John V. Atanasoff

John V. Atanasoff picture He is recognized as the "father of the electronic digital computer". In 1937 Atanasoff came up with the concepts that would help him design a computer that would utilize "regenerative memory" and "logic circuits." Atanasoff's machine was the world's first electronic digital computer, and it was designed to find solutions for simultaneous algebraic equations with up to 30 unknowns. Atanasoff's achievement made it obvious that the electronic computer would be useful in hundreds of ways.

John V. Atanasoff His Inventions

Atanasoff-Berry computer picture The Atanasoff-Berry Computer would be electronic, it would use binary arithmetic and it would store numbers in capacitors. For simplicity's sake, the machine would be a serial device, even so, it contained 300 valves. Back at the university, he successfully applied for a grant for his new project and hired an engineering student, Clifford Berry (1918-1963) to assist. Together they worked on the computer until 1941. The ABC was the first electronic computer, but it was not fully automatic and it required an operator to operate switches to control the course of a calculation. Also it was never quite finished. Both Atanasoff and Berry had to leave the project and move on to war related duties. Later, when Atanasoff returned to Iowa, he found that the computer had been dismantled. Today, the capacitor drum is the only surviving relic of this historic device.

Atanasoff-Berry computer Konrad Zuse

Konrad Zuse picture German inventor of pre-war electromechanical binary computer designated Z1, which was destroyed without trace by wartime bombing; developed two more machines before the end of the war, but was unable to convince the Nazi government to support his work; fled with the remains of Z3 to Zurich where he developed the Z4, which was successfully used at ETH. He developed a basic programming system known as "Plankalkül" with which he designed a chess-playing program.

His Inventions Konrad Zuse

Z1,Z2,and Z3 computers picture Unsatisfied with the reliability of the binary switching metal sheets used in the Z1, Konrad Zuse next constructed the Z2 computer. The Z2 used the same type of mechanical memory as the Z1, but he used 800 old relays from phone companies to construct the arithmetic and control units. The Z2’s arithmetic unit consisted of a 16-bit fixed-point engine, because he wanted to test the reliability of relays for arithmetic calculations. Unfortunately, photos and plans of the Z2 were destroyed by allied air raids during the war. However, the Z2 served its purpose, because it convinced Zuse that relays were indeed reliable, and he subsequently built his Z3 computer completely out of relays (600 for the arithmetic unit and 1,800 for the memory and control units).

Z1,Z2,and Z3 computers Howard Aiken Z2 Z1 Z3

Howard Aiken picture While he was a graduate student and an instructor in the Department of Physics at Harvard Aiken began to make plans to build a large computer. These plans were made for a very specific purpose, for Aiken's research had led to a system of differential equations which had no exact solution and which could only be solved using numerical techniques. However, the amount of hand calculation involved would have been almost prohibitive, so Aiken's idea was to use an adaptation of the punched card machines, which had been developed by Hollerith.

Howard Aiken Alan Turing

The History of Computers