. Starting in the 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers.
First computing device
A portion of Babbage's Difference engine.
Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a
programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer",[17] he conceptualized and invented
the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After working on his revolutionary difference
engine, designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general
design, an Analytical Engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to
the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as
the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The
machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The Engine
incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and
integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be
described in modern terms as Turing-complete.[18][19]
The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by
hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was
dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to
complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as
his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone
else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the
analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use
in computing tables in 1906.
Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest mechanical analog computer, according
to Derek J. de Solla Price.[7] It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in
1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and
has been dated to c. 100 BC. Devices of a level of complexity comparable to that of the Antikythera
mechanism would not reappear until a thousand years later.
Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and
navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in the early 11th
century.[8] The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries
BCDuring the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by
increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of
the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and generally
lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers. [20] The first modern analog computer
was a tide-predicting machine, invented by Sir William Thomson in 1872. The differential analyser, a
mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration using wheel-and-
disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in 1876 by James Thomson, the brother of the more famous
Lord Kelvin.[16]
The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer, built by H.
L. Hazen and Vannevar Bush at MIT starting in 1927. This built on the mechanical integrators
of James Thomson and the torque amplifiers invented by H. W. Nieman. A dozen of these devices
were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the 1950s, the success of digital electronic
computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers
remained in use during the 1950s in some specialized applications such as education (slide rule)
and aircraft (control systems).
, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as
logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Slide rules
with special scales are still used for quick performance of routine calculations, such as
the E6B circular slide rule used for time and distance calculations on light aircraft.
In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll (automaton) that
could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different
letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically
"programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the Musée
d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and still operates.[15]
In 1831–1835, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual Calendar machine,
which, though a system of pulleys and cylinders and over, could predict the perpetual calendar for
every year from AD 0 (that is, 1 BC) to AD 4000, keeping track of leap years and varying day length.
The tide-predicting machine invented by Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to
navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate
predicted tide levels fo
ccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the word "computer" was in 1613 in
a book called The Yong Mans Gleanings by English writer Richard Braithwait: "I haue [sic] read the
truest computer of Times, and the best Arithmetician that euer [sic] breathed, and he reduceth thy
dayes into a short number." This usage of the term referred to a human computer, a person who
carried out calculations or computations. The word continued with the same meaning until the middle
of the 20th century. During the latter part of this period women were often hired as computers
because they could be paid less than their male counterparts. [1] By 1943, most human computers
were women.[2]
The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of "computer" in the 1640s, meaning
"one who calculates"; this is an "agent noun from compute (v.)". The Online Etymology
Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean "'calculating machine' (of any type) is from 1897."
The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the "modern use" of the term, to mean
"programmable digital electronic computer" dates from "1945 under this name; [in a] theoretical
[sense] from 1937, as Turing machine".[3]
istakes. He thought of the many marvels generated by the Industrial Revolution. If creative and
hardworking inventors could develop the cotton gin and the steam locomotive, then why not a
machine to make calculations [source: Campbell-Kelly]?
Babbage returned to England and decided to build just such a machine. His first vision was
something he dubbed the Difference Engine, which worked on the principle of finite differences,
or making complex mathematical calculations by repeated addition without using multiplication
or division. He secured government funding in 1824 and spent eight years perfecting his idea. In
1832, he produced a functioning prototype of his table-making machine, only to find his funding
had run out.
Babbage's new invention existed almost entirely on paper. He kept voluminous notes and
sketches about his computers -- nearly 5,000 pages' worth -- and although he never built a
single production model of the Analytical Engine, he had a clear vision about how the machine
would look and work. Borrowing the same technology used by the Jacquard loom, a weaving
machine developed in 1804-05 that made it possible to create a variety of cloth patterns
automatically, data would be entered on punched cards. Up to 1,000 50-digit numbers could be
held in the computer's store. Punched cards would also carry the instructions, which the
machine could
Purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical
equivalents, at the same time that digital calculation replaced analog. The engineer Tommy Flowers,
working at the Post Office Research Station in London in the 1930s, began to explore the possible
use of electronics for the telephone exchange. Experimental equipment that he built in 1934 went
into operation five years later, converting a portion of the telephone exchange network into an
electronic data processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes.[20] In the US, John Vincent
Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry
Computer (ABC) in 1942,[28] the first "automatic electronic digital computer". [29] This design was also
all-electronic and used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating
drum for memory.[30]
Colossus, the first electronic digital programmable computing device, was used to break German ciphers
during World War II.
During World War II, the British at Bletchley Park achieved a number of successes at breaking
encrypted German military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma, was first
attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical bombes which were often run by women.[31][32] To
crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army
communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the Colossus.
[30]
He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building the first Colossus.
[33]
After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was
delivered on 18 January 1944[34] and attacked its first message on 5 February.[30]
