History of computing

The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing
technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or
without the aid of tables.

Contents
Concrete devices
Numbers
Early computation
Digital electronic computers
Personal computers
Supercomputers
Navigation and astronomy
Weather prediction
Symbolic computations
Important women and their contributions
See also
References
External links
British history links

Concrete devices
Digital computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers.[1] But long before abstractions like the
number arose, there were mathematical concepts to serve the purposes of civilization. These concepts are
implicit in concrete practices such as:

One-to-one correspondence,[2] a rule to count how many items, e.g. on a tally stick, eventually
abstracted into numbers.
Comparison to a standard,[3] a method for assuming reproducibility in a measurement, for
example, the number of coins.
The 3-4-5 right triangle was a device for assuring a right angle, using ropes with 12 evenly
spaced knots, for example.[4]

Numbers
Eventually, the concept of numbers became concrete and familiar enough for counting to arise, at times with
sing-song mnemonics to teach sequences to others. All known human languages, except the Piraha language,
have words for at least "one" and "two", and even some animals like the blackbird can distinguish a surprising
number of items.[5]

Advances in the numeral system and mathematical notation eventually led to the discovery of mathematical
operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, squaring, square root, and so forth.
Eventually the operations were formalized, and concepts about the operations became understood well enough
to be stated formally, and even proven. See, for example, Euclid's algorithm for finding the greatest common
divisor of two numbers.

By the High Middle Ages, the positional Hindu–Arabic numeral system had reached Europe, which allowed
for systematic computation of numbers. During this period, the representation of a calculation on paper
actually allowed calculation of mathematical expressions, and the tabulation of mathematical functions such as
the square root and the common logarithm (for use in multiplication and division) and the trigonometric
functions. By the time of Isaac Newton's research, paper or vellum was an important computing resource, and
even in our present time, researchers like Enrico Fermi would cover random scraps of paper with calculation,
to satisfy their curiosity about an equation.[6] Even into the period of programmable calculators, Richard
Feynman would unhesitatingly compute any steps which overflowed the memory of the calculators, by hand,
just to learn the answer; by 1976 Feynman had purchased an HP-25 calculator with a 49 program-step
capacity; if a differential equation required more than 49 steps to solve, he could just continue his computation
by hand.[7]

Early computation
Mathematical statements need not be abstract only; when a statement can be illustrated with actual numbers,
the numbers can be communicated and a community can arise. This allows the repeatable, verifiable
statements which are the hallmark of mathematics and science. These kinds of statements have existed for
thousands of years, and across multiple civilizations, as shown below:

The earliest known tool for use in computation is the Sumerian abacus, and it was thought to have been
invented in Babylon c. 2700–2300 BC. Its original style of usage was by lines drawn in sand with pebbles.
Abaci, of a more modern design, are still used as calculation tools today. This was the first known calculator
and most advanced system of calculation known to date - preceding Archimedes by 2,000 years.

In c. 1050–771 BC, the south-pointing chariot was invented in ancient China. It was the first known geared
mechanism to use a differential gear, which was later used in analog computers. The Chinese also invented a
more sophisticated abacus from around the 2nd century BC known as the Chinese abacus.[8]

In the 5th century BC in ancient India, the grammarian Pāṇini formulated the grammar of Sanskrit in 3959
rules known as the Ashtadhyayi which was highly systematized and technical. Panini used metarules,
transformations and recursions.[9]

In the 3rd century BC, Archimedes used the mechanical principle of balance (see Archimedes
Palimpsest#Mathematical content) to calculate mathematical problems, such as the number of grains of sand in
the universe (The sand reckoner), which also required a recursive notation for numbers (e.g., the myriad
myriad).

The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer.[10] 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 circa 100 BC.

Mechanical analog computer devices appeared again a thousand years later in the medieval Islamic world and
were developed by Muslim astronomers, such as the mechanical geared astrolabe by Abū Rayhān al-
Bīrūnī,[11] and the torquetum by Jabir ibn Aflah.[12] According to Simon Singh, Muslim mathematicians also
made important advances in cryptography, such as the development of cryptanalysis and frequency analysis by
Alkindus.[13][14] Programmable machines were also invented by Muslim engineers, such as the automatic flute
player by the Banū Mūsā brothers,[15] and Al-Jazari's humanoid robots and castle clock, which is considered
to be the first programmable analog computer.[16]

During the Middle Ages, several European philosophers made attempts to produce analog computer devices.
Influenced by the Arabs and Scholasticism, Majorcan philosopher Ramon Llull (1232–1315) devoted a great
part of his life to defining and designing several logical machines that, by combining simple and undeniable
philosophical truths, could produce all possible knowledge. These machines were never actually built, as they
were more of a thought experiment to produce new knowledge in systematic ways; although they could make
simple logical operations, they still needed a human being for the interpretation of results. Moreover, they
lacked a versatile architecture, each machine serving only very concrete purposes. In spite of this, Llull's work
had a strong influence on Gottfried Leibniz (early 18th century), who developed his ideas further, and built
several calculating tools using them.

Indeed, when John Napier discovered logarithms for computational purposes in the early 17th century, there
followed a period of considerable progress by inventors and scientists in making calculating tools. The apex of
this early era of formal computing can be seen in the difference engine and its successor the analytical engine
(which was never completely constructed but was designed in detail), both by Charles Babbage. The
analytical engine combined concepts from his work and that of others to create a device that if constructed as
designed would have possessed many properties of a modern electronic computer. These properties include
features such as an internal "scratch memory" equivalent to RAM, multiple forms of output including a bell, a
graph-plotter, and simple printer, and a programmable input-output "hard" memory of punch cards which it
could modify as well as read. The key advancement which Babbage's devices possessed beyond those created
before his was that each component of the device was independent of the rest of the machine, much like the
components of a modern electronic computer. This was a fundamental shift in thought; previous computational
devices served only a single purpose, but had to be at best disassembled and reconfigured to solve a new
problem. Babbage's devices could be reprogramed to solve new problems by the entry of new data, and act
upon previous calculations within the same series of instructions. Ada Lovelace took this concept one step
further, by creating a program for the analytical engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, a complex calculation
requiring a recursive algorithm. This is considered to be the first example of a true computer program, a series
of instructions that act upon data not known in full until the program is run. Following Babbage, although
unaware of his earlier work, Percy Ludgate in 1909 published the 2nd of the only two designs for mechanical
analytical engines in history.[17]

Several examples of analog computation survived into recent times. A planimeter is a device which does
integrals, using distance as the analog quantity. Until the 1980s, HVAC systems used air both as the analog
quantity and the controlling element. Unlike modern digital computers, analog computers are not very flexible,
and need to be reconfigured (i.e., reprogrammed) manually to switch them from working on one problem to
another. Analog computers had an advantage over early digital computers in that they could be used to solve
complex problems using behavioral analogues while the earliest attempts at digital computers were quite
limited.

Since computers were rare in this era, the solutions were often hard-coded into paper forms such as
nomograms,[18] which could then produce analog solutions to these problems, such as the distribution of
pressures and temperatures in a heating system.

Digital electronic computers

 The “brain” [computer] may one day come down to our
level [of the common people] and help with our income-
tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation
and there is no sign of it so far.

— British newspaper The Star in a June 1949 news

article about the EDSAC computer, long before the
era of the personal computers.[19]

None of the early computational devices were really computers in the

modern sense, and it took considerable advancement in mathematics
and theory before the first modern computers could be designed.

In an 1886 letter, Charles Sanders Peirce described how logical

operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits.[20] A Smith Chart is a well-known
During 1880-81 he showed that NOR gates alone (or alternatively nomogram.
NAND gates alone) can be used to reproduce the functions of all the
other logic gates, but this work on it was unpublished until 1933.[21]
The first published proof was by Henry M. Sheffer in 1913, so the NAND logical operation is sometimes
called Sheffer stroke; the logical NOR is sometimes called Peirce's arrow.[22] Consequently, these gates are
sometimes called universal logic gates.[23]

Eventually, vacuum tubes replaced relays for logic operations. Lee De Forest's modification, in 1907, of the
Fleming valve can be used as a logic gate. Ludwig Wittgenstein introduced a version of the 16-row truth table
as proposition 5.101 of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). Walther Bothe, inventor of the coincidence
circuit, got part of the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics, for the first modern electronic AND gate in 1924. Konrad
Zuse designed and built electromechanical logic gates for his computer Z1 (from 1935–38).

The first recorded idea of using digital electronics for computing was the 1931 paper "The Use of Thyratrons
for High Speed Automatic Counting of Physical Phenomena" by C. E. Wynn-Williams.[24] From 1934 to
1936, NEC engineer Akira Nakashima published a series of papers introducing switching circuit theory, using
digital electronics for Boolean algebraic operations,[25][26][27] influencing Claude Shannon's seminal 1938
paper "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits".[28]

In 1935 Alan Turing wrote his seminal paper On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the
Entscheidungsproblem[29] in which he modeled computation in terms of a one-dimensional storage tape,
leading to the idea of the Universal Turing machine and Turing-complete systems.

The first digital electronic computer was developed in the period April 1936 - June 1939, in the IBM Patent
Department, Endicott, New York by Arthur Halsey Dickinson.[30][31][32] In this computer IBM introduced for
the first time, a calculating device with keyboard, processor and electronic output (display). Competitor to IBM
was the digital electronic computer NCR3566, developed in NCR, Dayton, Ohio by Joseph Desch and Robert
Mumma in the period April 1939 - August 1939.[33][34] The IBM and NCR machines were decimal,
executing addition and subtraction in binary position code.

In December 1939 John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry completed their experimental model to prove the
concept of the Atanasoff–Berry computer.[35] This experimental model is binary, executed addition and
subtraction in octal binary code and is the first binary digital electronic computing device. The Atanasoff–
Berry computer was intended to solve systems of linear equations, though it was not programmable and it was
never completed.[36] The Z3 computer, built by German inventor Konrad Zuse in 1941, was the first
programmable, fully automatic computing machine, but it was not electronic.
During World War II, ballistics computing was done by women, who were hired as "computers." The term
computer remained one that referred to mostly women (now seen as "operator") until 1945, after which it took
on the modern definition of machinery it presently holds.[37]

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose
computer, announced to the public in 1946. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being
reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. Women implemented the programming for
machines like the ENIAC, and men created the hardware.[37]

The Manchester Baby was the first electronic stored-program computer. It was built at the Victoria University
of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June
1948.[38]

William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs invented the first working transistor, the
point-contact transistor, in 1947, followed by the bipolar junction transistor in 1948.[39][40] At the University
of Manchester in 1953, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built the first transistorized
computer, called the Transistor Computer, a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of
valves.[41] The first stored-program transistor computer was the ETL Mark III, developed by Japan's
Electrotechnical Laboratory[42][43][44] from 1954[45] to 1956.[43] However, early junction transistors were
relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a
number of specialised applications.[46]

In 1954, 95% of computers in service were being used for engineering and scientific purposes.[47]

Personal computers

The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by
Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959.[48][49] It was the first truly compact transistor that
could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses.[46] The MOSFET made it possible to build
high-density integrated circuit chips.[50][51] The MOSFET later led to the microcomputer revolution,[52] and
became the driving force behind the computer revolution.[53][54] The MOSFET is the most widely used
transistor in computers,[55][56] and is the fundamental building block of digital electronics.[57]

The MOS integrated circuit, first proposed by Mohamed Atalla in 1960,[46] led to the invention of the
microprocessor.[58][59] The silicon-gate MOS integrated circuit was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild
Semiconductor in 1968.[60] This led to the development of the first single-chip microprocessor, the Intel
4004.[58] It began with the "Busicom Project"[61] as Masatoshi Shima's three-chip CPU design in
1968,[62][61] before Sharp's Tadashi Sasaki conceived of a single-chip CPU design, which he discussed with
Busicom and Intel in 1968.[63] The Intel 4004 was then developed as a single-chip microprocessor from 1969
to 1970, led by Intel's Federico Faggin, Marcian Hoff, and Stanley Mazor, and Busicom's Masatoshi
Shima.[61] The chip was mainly designed and realized by Faggin, with his silicon-gate MOS technology.[58]
The microprocessor led to the microcomputer revolution, with the development of the microcomputer, which
would later be called the personal computer (PC).

Most early microprocessors, such as the Intel 8008 and Intel 8080, were 8-bit. Texas Instruments released the
first fully 16-bit microprocessor, the TMS9900 processor, in June 1976.[64] They used the microprocessor in
the TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A computers.

The 1980s brought about significant advances with microprocessor that greatly impacted the fields of
engineering and other sciences. The Motorola 68000 microprocessor had a processing speed that was far
superior to the other microprocessors being used at the time. Because of this, having a newer, faster
microprocessor allowed for the newer microcomputers that came along after to be more efficient in the amount
of computing they were able to do. This was evident in the 1983 release of the Apple Lisa. The Lisa was the
first personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) that was sold commercially. It ran on the
Motorola 68000 CPU and used both dual floppy disk drives and a 5 MB hard drive for storage. The machine
also had 1MB of RAM used for running software from disk without rereading the disk persistently.[65] After
the failure of the Lisa in terms of sales, Apple released its first Macintosh computer, still running on the
Motorola 68000 microprocessor, but with only 128KB of RAM, one floppy drive, and no hard drive in order
to lower the price.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, we see more advancements with computers becoming more useful for actual
computational purposes. In 1989, Apple released the Macintosh Portable, it weighed 7.3 kg (16 lb) and was
extremely expensive, costing US$7,300. At launch it was one of the most powerful laptops available, but due
to the price and weight, it was not met with great success, and was discontinued only two years later. That
same year Intel introduced the Touchstone Delta supercomputer, which had 512 microprocessors. This
technological advancement was very significant, as it was used as a model for some of the fastest multi-
processor systems in the world. It was even used as a prototype for Caltech researchers, who used the model
for projects like real time processing of satellite images and simulating molecular models for various fields of
research.

Supercomputers

In terms of supercomputing, the first widely acknowledged supercomputer was the Control Data Corporation
(CDC) 6600[66] built in 1964 by Seymour Cray. Its maximum speed was 40MHz or 3 million floating point
operations per second (FLOPS). The CDC 6600 was replaced by the CDC 7600 in 1969;[67] although its
normal clock speed was not faster than the 6600, the 7600 was still faster due to its peak clock speed, which
was approximately 30 times faster than that of the 6600. Although CDC was a leader in supercomputers, their
relationship with Seymour Cray (which had already been deteriorating) completely collapsed. in 1972, Cray
left CDC and began his own company, Cray Research Inc.[68] With support from investors in Wall Street, an
industry fueled by the Cold War, and without the restrictions he had within CDC, he created the Cray-1
supercomputer. With a clock speed of 80 MHz or 136 megaFLOPS, Cray developed a name for himself in the
computing world. By 1982, Cray Research produced the Cray X-MP equipped with multiprocessing and in
1985 released the Cray-2, which continued with the trend of multiprocessing and clocked at 1.9 gigaFLOPS.
Cray Research developed the Cray Y-MP in 1988, however afterwards struggled to continue to produce
supercomputers. This was largely due to the fact that the Cold War had ended, and the demand for cutting
edge computing by colleges and the government declined drastically and the demand for micro processing
units increased.

Today, supercomputers are still used by the governments of the world and educational institutions for
computations such as simulations of natural disasters, genetic variant searches within a population relating to
disease, and more. As of November 2020, the fastest supercomputer is Fugaku.

Navigation and astronomy

Starting with known special cases, the calculation of logarithms and trigonometric functions can be performed
by looking up numbers in a mathematical table, and interpolating between known cases. For small enough
differences, this linear operation was accurate enough for use in navigation and astronomy in the Age of
Exploration. The uses of interpolation have thrived in the past 500 years: by the twentieth century Leslie
Comrie and W.J. Eckert systematized the use of interpolation in tables of numbers for punch card calculation.

Weather prediction
The numerical solution of differential equations, notably the Navier-Stokes equations was an important
stimulus to computing, with Lewis Fry Richardson's numerical approach to solving differential equations. The
first computerised weather forecast was performed in 1950 by a team composed of American meteorologists
Jule Charney, Philip Thompson, Larry Gates, and Norwegian meteorologist Ragnar Fjørtoft, applied
mathematician John von Neumann, and ENIAC programmer Klara Dan von Neumann.[69][70][71] To this day,
some of the most powerful computer systems on Earth are used for weather forecasts.

Symbolic computations
By the late 1960s, computer systems could perform symbolic algebraic manipulations well enough to pass
college-level calculus courses.

Important women and their contributions

Women are often underrepresented in STEM fields when compared to their male counterparts.[72] In the
modern era prior to the 1960s, computing was widely seen as "women's work," since it was associated with
the operation of tabulating machines and other mechanical office work.[73][74] The accuracy of this association
varied from place to place. In America, Margaret Hamilton recalled an environment dominated by men,[75]
while Elsie Shutt recalled surprise at seeing even half of the computer operators at Raytheon were men.[76]
Machine operators in Britain were mostly women into the early 1970s.[77] As these perceptions changed and
computing became a high-status career, the field became more dominated by men.[78][79][80] Professor Janet
Abbate, in her book Recoding Gender, writes:

Yet women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing. They made up the
majority of the first computer programmers during World War II; they held positions of
responsibility and influence in the early computer industry; and they were employed in numbers
that, while a small minority of the total, compared favorably with women's representation in many
other areas of science and engineering. Some female programmers of the 1950s and 1960s would
have scoffed at the notion that programming would ever be considered a masculine occupation,
yet these women’s experiences and contributions were forgotten all too quickly.[81]

Some notable examples of women in the history of computing are:

Ada Lovelace: wrote the addendum to Babbage's Analytical Machine. Detailing, in poetic style,
the first computer algorithm; a description of exactly how The Analytical Machine should have
worked based on its design.
Grace Murray Hopper: a pioneer of computing. She worked alongside Howard H. Aiken on the
IBM's Mark I. Hopper also came up with the term "debugging."
Hedy Lamarr: invented a "frequency hopping" technology that was used by the Navy during
World War II to control torpedoes via radio signals. This same technology is also used today in
creating Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals.
Frances Elizabeth "Betty" Holberton: invented "breakpoints" which are mini pauses put into
lines of computer code to help programmers easily detect, troubleshoot, and solve problems.
The women who originally programmed the ENIAC: Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Marlyn
Meltzer, Fran Bilas, Ruth Lichterman, and Betty Holberton (see above.)
Jean E. Sammet: co-designed COBOL, a widely used programming language.
Frances Allen: computer scientist and pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers, first woman
to win the Turing Award.
 Karen Spärck Jones: responsible for "inverse document frequency" - a concept that is most
commonly used by search engines.
Dana Angluin: made fundamental contributions to computational learning theory.
Margaret Hamilton: the director of the Software Engineering Division at MIT, which developed
on-board flight software for the Apollo's Missions to Space.
Barbara Liskov: developed the "Liskov substitution principle."
Radia Perlman: invented the "Spanning Tree Protocol," a key network protocol used in
Ethernet networks.
Stephanie "Steve" Shirley: started F International, a highly successful freelance software
company.
Sophie Wilson: helped design ARM processor architecture widely used in many products such
as smartphones and video games.
Ann Hardy: pioneered computer time-sharing systems.
Lynn Conway: revolutionised microchip design and production by co-introducing structured
VLSI design among other inventions.
The women at Bletchley Park: around 8,000 women who worked in numerous capacities with
British cryptanalysis during World War II. Many came from the Women's Royal Naval Service
(who were called "wrens") as well as the Women's Auxiliary Air Force ("WAAFs.") They were
instrumental in cracking the "Enigma" cipher and helping the Allies win the war.

See also
Algorithm
Moore's law
Timeline of computing hardware costs
Charles Babbage Institute - research center for history of computing at University of Minnesota
Computing timelines category
History of computing in the Soviet Union
History of computing in Poland
History of software
IT History Society
List of mathematicians
List of pioneers in computer science
Timeline of quantum computing
Timeline of computing 2020–2029

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External links
The History of Computing (http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/) by J.A.N. Lee
"Things that Count: the rise and fall of calculators" (http://things-that-count.net/)
The History of Computing Project (http://www.thocp.net/)
SIG on Computers, Information and Society of the Society for the History of Technology (http://w
ww.sigcis.org)
The Modern History of Computing (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computing-history/)
A Chronology of Digital Computing Machines (to 1952) (http://www.davros.org/misc/chronology.
html) by Mark Brader
Bitsavers (http://www.bitsavers.org/), an effort to capture, salvage, and archive historical
computer software and manuals from minicomputers and mainframes of the 1950s, 60s, 70s,
and 80s
"All-Magnetic Logic Computer" (http://www.sri.com/work/timeline-innovation/timeline.php?timeli
ne=computing-digital#&innovation=all-magnetic-logic-computer). Timeline of Innovations. SRI
International. Developed at SRI International in 1961
Stephen White's excellent computer history site (https://trillian.randomstuff.org.uk/~stephen/hist
ory/) (the above article is a modified version of his work, used with Permission)
Soviet Digital Electronics Museum (http://www.leningrad.su/museum/main.php) - a big
collection of Soviet calculators, computers, computer mice and other devices
Logarithmic timeline of greatest breakthroughs since start of computing era in 1623 (http://www.
idsia.ch/~juergen/computerhistory.html) by Jürgen Schmidhuber, from "The New AI: General &
Sound & Relevant for Physics, In B. Goertzel and C. Pennachin, eds.: Artificial General
Intelligence, p. 175-198, 2006."
IEEE computer history timeline (https://www.computer.org/cms/Publications/timeline.pdf)
Computer History (https://web.archive.org/web/20090405054226/http://www.trailing-edge.com/
~bobbemer/HISTORY.HTM) - a collection of articles by Bob Bemer
 A visual timeline of the development of computers since COLOSSUS' inception in 1943 (http://
www.akita.co.uk/computing-history/)
Computer Histories (http://www.computerhistories.org/) - An introductory course on the history
of computing

British history links

Resurrection (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res_home.htm) Bulletin of the Computer
Conservation Society (UK) 1990–2006
The story of the Manchester Mark I (http://www.computer50.org/) (archive (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20120504133240/http://www.computer50.org/)), 50th Anniversary website at the
University of Manchester
Richmond Arabian History of Computing Group (https://web.archive.org/web/20170519075946/
http://rahoc.com/) Linking the Gulf and Europe
History of Computing Collection (https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/search-resources/specia
l-collections/guide-to-special-collections/a-to-z/collection/?match=History+of+Computing+Colle
ction); University of Manchester Library

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