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The document discusses the history of mechanical calculating machines from 1642 to 1945, including early devices invented by Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz. It describes Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and his later design for the Analytical Engine, and how Ada, Countess of Lovelace wrote what is considered the first computer program for the Analytical Engine. The document also discusses Joseph Jacquard's programmable loom and Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine used for the 1890 US census.

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CleofeMarie Amedo
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22 views2 pages

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The document discusses the history of mechanical calculating machines from 1642 to 1945, including early devices invented by Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz. It describes Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and his later design for the Analytical Engine, and how Ada, Countess of Lovelace wrote what is considered the first computer program for the Analytical Engine. The document also discusses Joseph Jacquard's programmable loom and Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine used for the 1890 US census.

Uploaded by

CleofeMarie Amedo
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Generation Zero: Mechanical Calculating Machines (1642–1945)

o Prior to the 1500s, a typical European businessperson used an abacus for calculations and
recorded the result of his ciphering in Roman numerals. After the decimal numbering system
finally replaced Roman numerals, a number of people invented devices to make decimal
calculations even faster and more accurate.

o Wilhelm Schickard (1592–1635) has been credited with the invention of the first mechanical
calculator, the Calculating Clock (exact date unknown). This device was able to add and subtract
numbers containing as many as six digits.

o In 1642, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) developed a mechanical calculator called the Pascaline to
help his father with his tax work. The Pascaline could do addition with carry and subtraction. It was
probably the first mechanical adding device actually used for a practical purpose. In fact, the
Pascaline was so well conceived that its basic design was still being used at the beginning of the
twentieth century, as evidenced by the Lightning Portable Adder in 1908 and the Addometer in
1920. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716), a noted mathematician, invented a calculator
known as the Stepped Reckoner that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. None of these
devices could be programmed or had memory. They required manual intervention throughout
each step of their calculations.

o Difference Engine by Charles Babbage (1791–1871). Some people refer to Babbage as “the
father of computing.” By all accounts, he was an eccentric genius who brought us, among other
things, the skeleton key and the “cow catcher,” a device intended to push cows and other movable
obstructions out of the way of locomotives. Babbage built his Difference Engine in 1822. The
Difference Engine got its name because it used a calculating technique called the method of
differences. The machine was designed to mechanize the solution of polynomial functions and
was actually a calculator, not a computer. Babbage also designed a general-purpose machine
in 1833 called the Analytical Engine. Although Babbage died before he could build it, the
Analytical Engine was designed to be more versatile than his earlier Difference Engine. The
Analytical Engine would have been capable of performing any mathematical operation. The
Analytical Engine included many of the components associated with modern computers: an
arithmetic processing unit to perform calculations (Babbage referred to this as the mill), a memory
(the store), and input and output devices. Babbage also included a conditional branching
operation where the next instruction to be performed was determined by the result of the previous
operation.
o
o Ada, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of poet Lord Byron, suggested that Babbage write a
plan for how the machine would calculate numbers. This is regarded as the first computer
program, and Ada is considered to be the first computer programmer. It is also rumored that she
suggested the use of the binary number system rather than the decimal number system to store
data.

o Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752–1834). In 1801, Jacquard invented a programmable weaving


loom that could produce intricate patterns in cloth. Jacquard gave Babbage a tapestry that had
been woven on this loom using more than 10,000 punched cards. To Babbage, it seemed only
natural that if a loom could be controlled by cards, then his Analytical Engine could be as well. Ada
expressed her delight with this idea, writing, “[T]he Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns
just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.”

o The most important of the late-nineteenth-century tabulating machines was the one invented
by Herman Hollerith (1860–1929). Hollerith’s machine was used for encoding and compiling
1890 census data. This census was completed in record time, thus boosting Hollerith’s finances
and the reputation of his invention. Hollerith later founded the company that would become IBM.
His 80-column punched card, the Hollerith card, was a staple of automated data processing for
more than 50 years.

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