Discussing computing History,
we'll be discussing the
evolution of computing - more specifically,
the evolution of the technologies that
have brought upon the modern computing
era. we can appreciate how fast technology is
evolving and the people who have brought us
to this point! Many inventions have taken
several centuries to develop into their
modern forms and modern inventions are
rarely the product of a single inventors
efforts. The computer is no different, the
bits and pieces of the computer, both
hardware and software, have come together
over many centuries, with many people and
groups each adding a small contribution.
We start as early as 3000 BC with the
Chinese abacus, how is this related to
computing you ask? The abacus was one of
the first machines humans had ever
created to be used for counting and
calculating. Fast forward to 1642 and the
abacus evolves into the first mechanical
adding machine, built by mathematician
and scientist, Blaise Pascal.
This first mechanical calculator, the Pascaline, is
also where we see the first signs of
technophobia emerging, with
mathematicians fearing the loss of their
jobs due to progress. Also in the 1600s,
from the 1660s to the early 1700s, we
meet Gottfried Leibniz. A pioneer in many
fields, most notably known for his
contributions to mathematics and
considered by many the first computer
scientist. Inspired by Pascal he created
his own calculating machine, able to
perform all four arithmetic operations.
He was also the first to lay down the
concepts of binary arithmetic, how all
technology now days communicates and
even envisioned a machine that used
binary arithmetic. From birth we are
taught how to do arithmetic in base 10
and for most people that's all they're
concerned with, the numbers 0 to 9.
However, there are an infinite number of
ways to represent information, such as
octal as base 8, hexadecimal as base 16
used represent colors, base 256 which is
used for encoding, the list can go on.
Binary is base 2, represented by the
numbers 0 & 1,
we'll explore later in this video, why
binary is essential for modern computing.
Back on topic, progressing to the 1800s
we are met with Charles Babbage. Babbage is
known as the father of the computer, with
the design of his mechanical calculating
engines. In 1820, Babbage noticed that many
computations consisted of operations
that were regularly repeated and
theorized that these operations could be
done automatically.
This led to his first design, the
difference engine, it would have a fixed
instruction set, be fully automatic
through the use of steam power and print
its results into a table. In 1830,
Babbage stopped work on his difference
engine to pursue his second idea, the
analytical engine. Elaborating on the
difference engine this machine would be
able to execute operations in
non-numeric orders through the addition
of conditional control, store memory and
read instructions from punch cards,
essentially making it a programmable
mechanical computer. Unfortunately due to
lack of funding his designs never came
to reality, but if they had would have
sped up the invention of the computer by
nearly 100 years. Also worth mentioning
is Ada Lovelace, who worked very closely
with Babbage. She is considered the
world's first programmer and came up
with an algorithm that would calculate
Bernoulli numbers that was designed to
work with Babbage's machine.
She also outlined many fundamentals of
programming such as, data analysis,
looping and memory addressing. 10 years
prior to the turn of the century, with
inspiration from Babbage, American
inventor Herman Hollerith designed one
of the first successful
electromechanical machines, referred to
as the census tabulator. This machine would
read U.S. census data from punched cards,
up to 65 at a time, and tally up the
results. Hollerith's tabulator became so
successful he went on to found his own
firm to market the device, this company
eventually became IBM. To briefly explain
how punched cards work, essentially once
fed into the machine an electrical
connection is attempted to be made.
Depending on where the holes in the card
are will determine your input based on
what connections are completed. To input
data to the punched card you could use a
key punch machine aka the first
iteration of a keyboard! The
1800s were a period where the theory
of computing began to evolve and
machines started to be used for
calculations, but the 1900s is where we
begin to see the pieces of this nearly
5,000 year puzzle coming together,
especially between 1930 to 1950. In 1936,
Alan Turing proposed the concept of a
universal machine, later to be dubbed the
Turing machine, capable of computing
anything that is computable. Up to this
point, machines were only able to do
certain tasks that the hardware was
designed for. The concept of the modern
computer is lar....
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