The History of Computers and The Digital Age

2858 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The history of the development of computers

The History of Computers and The Digital Age The history of computers starts out about two thousand years ago, at the birth of the abacus. The abacus is a wooden rack holding two horizontal wires with beads strung on them. When these beads are moved around, according to "programming" rules memorized by the user, all regular arithmetic problems can be done. Blaise Pascal is usually credited for building the first digital computer in 1642. It added numbers entered with dials and was made to help his father, a tax collector. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a computer that was built in 1694. It could add, and multiply, after changing some of the parts around. Leibniz invented a special stepped gear mechanism for introducing the addend digits, and this is still being used. The prototypes made by Pascal and Leibniz were not used in many places. They were even considered a little weird until, a little more than a century later, Charles Xavier Thomas created the first successful mechanical calculator. Thomas' calculator could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Many improved versions of the desktop calculator followed. By about 1890, the range of improvements on the calculator included accumulation of partial results, storage and automatic reentry of past results (memory functions), and a printing of the results. These improvements were mainly made for commercial users, and not for the needs of science. While Thomas was developing the desktop calculator, a series of very interesting developments in computers started in Cambridge, England. In 1812, Charles Babbage, a mathematics professor, realized that many long calculations, especially those needed to make mathematical tables, were really a series of predictable actions that were constantly repeated. From this he suspected that it should be possible to perform these actions automatically. Babbage began to design his automatic mechanical calculating machine, which he called a Difference Engine.

Show More
Related

  • Charles Babbage Is The Inventor Of The Difference Engine And The Analytical Engine

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    Try to imagine life without calculators and how difficult it would be to solve a mathematical problem. However, Charles Babbage is the person to thank and be grateful that we do. Charles Babbage is the inventor of the Difference Engine as well as the Analytical Engine. These inventions were made to calculate different math problems with accuracy and prevent human beings from making errors when solving a math problem. In the following paragraphs you will learn about Charles Babbage early life, educational background, and how his inventions are relevant to today.

    Read More

  • History of Computer Programming

    1261 Words  | 3 Pages

    In previous years, the first computers were mechanical, not electronic. One of the first computers ever made was the Difference Engine, designed by Charles Babbage. (Babbage, C, n.d.). The Difference Engine was able to calculate polynomials using the differences method. After the Difference Engine, Babbage began his work on an improved calculating engine, the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine used punch cards to operate, just like the Jacquard Loom. The Jacquard Loom used punch cards to control weaving that created interesting patterns in textiles. The punch cards were used in the Analytical Engine to define the input and the calculations to carry-out. The Analytical Engine had two major parts. The first part was the mill, which is similar to a modern day computer processing unit, or a CPU. The CPU is the brain of a modern day computer; it is what carries out modern day instructions inside a computer. The mill would execute what it received from the store. The second part was the store, which was the memory of the computer. “It was the world’s first general-purpose computer.” (Babbage, C, n.d.)....

    Read More

  • The History Of Computers

    649 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1886 Dorr D. Felt (1862 - 1930) invented the "comptometer". This was the first calculator where the operands are entered by just pressing keys. In 1889 in also invents the first printing desk calculator.

    Read More

  • Computer Inventions

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first mechanical calculator was built in 1623 by Wilhelm Schickard. It worked with six digits and carried these digits across columns. Though it worked, it never made it past the prototype stage. Another mechanical calculator, this time one with eight digits, was built by Blaise Pascal in 1642. This calculator was, however, prone to error and jamming (PBS).

    Read More

  • Paper On Leonhard Euler

    1050 Words  | 3 Pages

    A world relying so heavily on technology was not something that anyone hundreds of years ago could have predicted. In today’s modern society, computers can be seen practically everywhere. Computers can be programmed to do an unimaginable list of things, making them one of the most useful technologies. However, the people that use them seem to forget that the backbone of computers and technology is math. Mathematics is one of the core subjects that are associated with computing, and it goes as far back as the 1700s. Leonhard Euler, born on April 15, 1707, was a mathematician that made an incredible amount of contributions to mathematics back in the day. Euler’s work helped advance many different fields of mathematics by the

    Read More

  • International Business Machines (IBM)

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mark I. It was actually a electromechanical calculation. It is said that this was the first potentially computers. In 1951 Remington Rand’s came out with the UNIVAC it began

    Read More

  • Social And Ethical Impact Of Artificial Intelligence

    1374 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many encyclopaedias and other reference works state that the first large-scale automatic digital computer was the Harvard Mark 1, which was developed by Howard H. Aiken (and team) in America between 1939 and 1944. However, in the aftermath of World War II it was discovered that a program controlled computer called the Z3 had been completed in Germany in 1941, which means that the Z3 pre-dated the Harvard Mark I. Prof. Hurst Zuse (http://www.epemag.com/zuse/)

    Read More

  • Blaise Pascal

    501 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1642, Pascal began to create a machine that would be similar to an everyday calculator to help his father with his accounting job. His first attempts were failures and Pascal was discouraged from working on the project for many years. He returned to it in 1644 because of the encouragement of many people. He finished the final model in 1645 after going through more than 50 incarnations of the design, he finished the final model in 1645, Pascal himself did the selling with a few associates but because of it’s high price of and limited uses, sales were probably modest. He did present one to Queen Christina of Sweden and he was allowed a monopoly over it by royal decree.

    Read More

  • Computer Engineer

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    Computer engineering started about 5,000 years ago in China when they invented the abacus. The abacus is a manual calculator in which you move beads back and forth on rods to add or subtract. Other inventors of simple computers include Blaise Pascal who came up with the arithmetic machine for his father’s work. Also Charles Babbage produced the Analytical Engine, which combined math calculations from one problem and applied it to solve other complex problems. The Analytical Engine is similar to today’s computers.

    Read More

  • Major Developments in Hardware and Software

    2729 Words  | 6 Pages

    There per 1947, when the transistor was invented, and when Jaquard (1804) designed a loom that performed predefined tasks through feeding punched cards into a reading contraption; nobody imagined how quickly that it would take to get the nowadays supercomputers. Resources http://www.thocp.net/software/software_reference/introduction_to_software_history.htm http://www.softwarehistory.org/index.html http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.htm http://www.libredebate.com/doc/doc199911070002.html http://www.elrinconcito.com/articulos/cibernetica/cibernetica.htm http://www.salon.com/tech/special/opensource/ http://www.ciberperiodismo.net/gorka/noticias/63/notiimpr

    Read More

  • Essay On Ada Lovelace

    756 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ada Lovelace was the daughter of famous poet at the time, Lord George Gordon Byron, and mother Anne Isabelle Milbanke, known as “the princess of parallelograms,” a mathematician. A few weeks after Ada Lovelace was born, her parents split. Her father left England and never returned. Women received inferior education that that of a man, but Isabelle Milbanke was more than able to give her daughter a superior education where she focused more on mathematics and science (Bellis). When Ada was 17, she was introduced to Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician who’s party she heard Charles Babbage’s idea of the Analytic Engine, a new calculating engine (Toole). Charles Babbage, known as the father of computer invented the different calculators. Babbage became a mentor to Ada and helped her study advance math along with Augustus de Morgan, who was a professor at the University of London (Ada Lovelace Biography Mathematician, Computer Programmer (1815–1852)). In 1842, Charles Babbage presented in a seminar in Turin, his new developments on a new engine. Menabrea, an Italian, wrote a summary article of Babbage’s developments and published the article i...

    Read More

  • The Computer Evolution

    2687 Words  | 6 Pages

    The fist computer, known as the abacus, was made of wood and parallel wires on which beads were strung. Arithmetic operations were performed when the beads were moved along the wire according to “programming” rules that had to be memorized by the user (Soma, 14). The second earliest computer, invented by Blaise Pascal in 1694, was a “digital calculating machine.” Pascal designed this first known digital computer to help his father, who was a tax collector. Pascal’s computer could only add numbers, and they had to be entered by turning dials (Soma, 32). It required a manual process like its ancestor, the abacus. Automation was introduced in the early 1800’s by a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage. He created an automatic calculation machine that was steam powered and stored up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Unlike its two earliest ancestors, Babbage’s invention was able to perform various operations. It relied on cards with holes punched in them, which are called “punch cards.” These cards carried out the programming and storing operations for the machine. Unluckily, Babbage’s creation flopped due to the lack of mechanical precision and the lack of demand for the product (Soma, 46). The machine could not operate efficiently because technology was t adequate to make the machine operate efficiently Computer interest dwindled for many years, and it wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that people became interested in them once again.

    Read More

  • Desktop Computer vs. Laptop Computers

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    The history of computers is an amazing story filled with interesting statistics. “The first computer was invented by a man named Konrad Zuse. He was a German construction engineer, and he used the machine mainly for mathematic calculations and repetition” (Bellis, Inventors of Modern Computer). The invention shocked the world; it inspired people to start the development of computers. Soon after,

    Read More

  • The History of Computers

    836 Words  | 2 Pages

    The history of the computer dates back all the way to the prehistoric times. The first step towards the development of the computer, the abacus, was developed in Babylonia in 500 B.C. and functioned as a simple counting tool. It was not until thousands of years later that the first calculator was produced. In 1623, the first mechanical calculator was invented by Wilhelm Schikard, the “Calculating Clock,” as it was often referred to as, “performed it’s operations by wheels, which worked similar to a car’s odometer” (Evolution, 1). Still, there had not yet been anything invented that could even be characterized as a computer. Finally, in 1625 the slide rule was created becoming “the first analog computer of the modern ages” (Evolution, 1). One of the biggest breakthroughs came from by Blaise Pascal in 1642, who invented a mechanical calculator whose main function was adding and subtracting numbers. Years later, Gottfried Leibnez improved Pascal’s model by allowing it to also perform such operations as multiplying, dividing, taking the square root.

    Read More

  • Charles Babbage

    796 Words  | 2 Pages

    Known as the “father of computing”, Charles Babbage has inspired many scientists and engineers with his wonderful inventions. His goal was to create a machine that would reduce the possibility of human error in making mathematical calculations. In addition to inventing an early form of the calculator, Babbage also invented the cowcatcher and the first speedometer for trains. Babbage said, “At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labor becomes abridged.” This could possibly mean that he was on his quest for knowledge to help reduce the amount of human labor needed in daily processes. Babbage could only have achieved those great feats because of the fine education he received during his childhood.

    Read More

More about The History of Computers and The Digital Age

Open Document