History of Computing and Computers
Abacus
Abacus is the mechanical device that can be used as the device the performing mathematical. It is believed to have been started from Babylonia and China between 100BC to 500BC. The first abacus was believed to be made with flat stone covered with sand and dust. It is divided into two parts heaven and earth, each based in heaven is equivalent to 5 and each based on earth is equivalent to 1.
Napier’s Bone
Napier’s bone was invented by John Napier (1550 to 1617), Scottish mathematicians and scientists. John Napier’s also remembers as the inventor and logarithm. Napier’s bone can perform multiplication any number 2 to 9. Napier’s bones were created using 10 bone’s (0 to 9) and special eleventh bone that is used to represent the multiplier. It is the second invention to the history of computing and computers.
Slide rule (1620)
Based on the Napier’s bone, William Oughterd and English mathematicians invented a slide rule in 1620. It has two rules integrated with numbers and people could use it for faster multiplication and divided. It was invented from the principle of bones and logarithm.
Pascaline (1642)
As a way out in the difficulty in tax collection. blasé pascal invented masculine pascaline in 1642 which made his father work easier. it is only used for addition. it is of two types they are as follows.
● 6 digit(cheap)
● 8 digit (expensive)
Jacquard’s Loom
Jacquard’s Loom is a device which could base it’s weave upon a pattern automatically read from punch wooden cards, by selecting particular cards from jacquard’s loom which defined the woven pattern.
Difference Engine
It is a steam-driven calculating device which was the size of the room. It is invented by Charles Babbage in 1822. It was the biggest project which was funded by the government of England for ocean navigation.
Analytic Engine
It was also invented by Charles Babbage soon after the failure of a difference engine in 1832. It was as large as a house and powered by 6 steam engine. It was programmable and used punch cards. Babbage used jacquard loom in this analytic engine called “store and mill” as both terms are used in the weaving industry. It is now called a central processing unit (CPU) OR memory.
Ada Byron
Ada Byron is the first lady programmer who was fascinated by Babbage ideas when she was 19. Ada invented the subroutine and was the first person to recognize the importance of looping. She began fashioning programs for the analytic engine but still remained unbuilt.
Hollerith Desk
It consisted of a card reader which sensed holes in the card’s a gear-driven mechanism which could count and a large wall of dial indicators. It was especially used for census later on Hollerith built a company called “IBM” ( International Business Machine ). This was the first type of reading and writing technology (store and write ).
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