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Historical Development of Computer

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24 views7 pages

Historical Development of Computer

Uploaded by

Godwin Asikpata
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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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HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTERS

Electro-mechanical counting devices:


(a) Definition and description of electro-mechanical counting devices
(b) Examples of electro-mechanical counting devices

ELECTRO-MECHANICAL COUNTING DEVICES


These are counting devices that could be operated both electrically and mechanically.
Electro-mechanical devices include the following:

I. Speeding Clock
II. Blaise Pascal machine
III. Gottfried Leibniz Machine

SPEEDING CLOCK OR CALCULATING CLOCK


In 1623 and 1624, reported his design and construction of what he referred to as an
arithmetical instrument that he has invented but which would later be described as a
(calculating clock). The machine was designed to assist in all the four basic functions
of arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). Amongst its uses,
Schickard suggested it would help in the laborious task of calculating astronomical
tables. The machine could add and subtract six-digit numbers, and indicated an
overflow of this capacity by ringing a bell. The adding machine in the base was
primarily provided to assist in the difficult task of adding or multiplying two multi-digit
numbers. To this end an ingenious arrangement of rotatable Napier's bones were
mounted on it. It even had an additional "memory register" to record intermediate
calculations. Schickard’s machine was not programmable.

BLAISE PASCAL’S CALCULATING MACHINE (Pascaline)


Blaise Pascal was a French man who invented the first true adding machine in 1642.
He was a mathematician as well as a philosopher. In 1642, he began working on
calculating machines and after 3 years invented the mechanical calculator called
Pascaline.
Blaise Pascal was born in France in 1623 and died in Paris in 1662. His machine was
based on Abacus principle. The machine was built to assist his father to perform
tedious tax accounting (auditing of government tax accounts). The machine was
invented when he was 19 years old. He designed the Pascaline to add and subtract
two numbers directly and to perform multiplication and division through repeated
addition and subtraction.

ELECTRO-MECHANICAL COUNTING DEVICES


STEPPED RECKONER: This machine was invented by Gottfried William Von Leibnitz.
he carried out further development on the work of Blaise Pascal so that multiplication
and division could be possible directly. He invented a machine called “THE STEPPED
RECKONER” in 1694. The machine is a mechanical calculator which can do
multiplication, division and calculate square roots. The process of multiplication
involved repeated addition. It was the first calculator that could perform all four
arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division).
-MECHANICAL COUNTING DEVICES
JOSEPH JACQUARD’S LOOM
The Jacquard machine is a device fitted to a power loom that simplifies the process
of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and
matelassé. It was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804. The loom was
controlled by a chain of cards, a number of punched cards, laced together into a
continuous sequence. Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one
complete card corresponding to one row of the design. The Jacquard loom was the
first machine to use punch cards to control a sequence of operations.

CHARLES BABBAGE’S MACHINES

Charles Babbage (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English


polymath, a mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer. Babbage
originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is credited with
inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex
electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be
found in Babbage's analytical engine. His varied work in other fields has led him to be
described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century.

He was the first person to design a computer that is different from a calculator.
Charles Babbage is referred to as the father of modern day computers because all his
ideas are contained in modern computers.

1. DIFFERENCE MACHINE

In 1822, Charles Babbage developed the difference machine that could perform
intricate calculations correctly and rapidly on the principle that anticipated the
modern electronic computer. A difference engine is an automatic mechanical
calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. The name derives from the
method of divided differences, a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a
small set of polynomial coefficients. Most mathematical functions commonly used
by engineers, scientists and navigators, including logarithmic and trigonometric
functions, can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute
many useful tables of numbers.

2. ANALYTICAL ENGINE

In 1837, the Analytical Engine was developed and it could be programmed. That
means it can receive instructions and solve problems given to it. The Analytical
Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by
English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first
described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, a design for a
mechanical computer. The Analytical 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. In other words, the logical
structure of the Analytical Engine was essentially the same as that which has
dominated computer design in the electronic era

The Analytical Engine had the following parts:


1. A mill for calculation
2. A store for holding instructions, intermediate and final results
3. An operator (or system) for carrying out instruction
4. A device for ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ data on punched card

HOLLERITH CENSUS MACHINE: Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17,
1929) was an American statistician and inventor who developed a
mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from
millions of pieces of data. He was the founder of the Tabulating Machine
Company that later merged to become IBM. Hollerith is widely regarded as the father
of modern automatic computation. The machine was used to process the information
obtained in the census of the population carried out in the united state in 1890. With
this machine, he was able to achieve in three years what would take seven years to
do manually.

PHILIP EMEAGWALI
Dr. Philip Emeagwali, who had been called the Bill Gates of Africa, was born in Akure,
Nigeria on 23 August 1954, invented one of the world’s fastest computers. He
dropped out of school in 1967 because of the Nigerian-Biafran war.
Dr. Philip Emeagwali first entered the limelight in 1989 when he won the prestigious
Gordon Bell Prize for his work with massively parallel computers. He programmed the
connection machine to compute a world record 3.1 billion calculations per second
using 65,536 processors to simulate oil reservoirs. With over 41 inventions, Philip
Emeagwali is making big waves in the super computer industry.

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