A BRIEF HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

In today’s world, having access to a computer is something that most people, especially in the United States, take for granted. From the office, to the classroom, the public library, to at home, computers have become a part of our everyday life, and they come in all shapes and sizes, from desk tops with big screens, to lightweight portable laptops. Even our pocket sized cell phones have become more like mini computers than devices for communicating. In this paper, I will discuss how the computer has evolved from early mechanical calculating machines dating back to ancient times, to the personal computer we are all familiar with today. This will be a brief, but informative history of the computer.

The word “computer” by today’s standard can be defined as “an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.” However, this definition would not be suitable to describe the first computer, the reason being because the first computers, believe it or not were actually people. The term “computer” was actually a job title, for people who performed repetitive calculations day in and day out to make a living. These people, more often or not, were women whose task it was to compute things such as tide charts, or navigational tables. The fact that the first computers were human, is probably the most significant reason we actually have the computers we know today. As we all know, humans make mistakes, and because of that inventers were encouraged to come up with some form of mechanism to perform these tasks more consistently and accurately.

Probably the earliest tool used for mathematical computations is a device known as an abacus. To date, the earliest known use of the abacus, which has also been called a counting frame, goes all the way back to 300 B.C. by the Babylonians, and not surprisingly is still being used today, predominately in the Middle East and Africa by merchants. Generally, a modern abacus is made up of rings that slide over rods, but the more archaic forms of this device were simply pebbles or beads, which could be slid up or down in grooves on tablets made of metal, stone, wood, or even in the sand. A abacist, which is title of someone who operates an abacus, can calculate addition and subtraction problems with the same speed and precision of someone equipped with a calculator, assuming he is skilled enough.

Since the abacus could only be used to perform addition and subtraction, the need for a device to quickly and effectively calculate multiplication and division problems was great. In 1617 a man by the name of John Napier invented a device that solved half of that problem. His new device, known as the logarithm, was able to compute multiplication through addition. From this invention spawned yet another device, the slide rule, which was first created in England in 1632. Unlike logarithms, the slide rule was able to not only compute multiplication as well as division, but it could also be used for functions such as roots and trigonometry. This device was so effective in fact, that it was used in the 1960’s by NASA engineers in various programs that eventually landed men on the moon.

Nearly a decade after the invention of the slide rule, a new breakthrough in the evolution of computers was about to come to life. In the early 1640’s 19 year old Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline to aide his father who worked as a tax collector. Although it was not technically the first gear-driven calculating machine; that title belongs to Wilhelm Schickard’s calculating clock; and despite the fact that it was only able to calculate addition problems, as well as being frequently inaccurate, the invention of this mechanism is responsible for initiating the development of mechanical calculators all over the world. Another interesting fact about this device is that the odometer portion of a car’s speedometer used the same mechanism as the pascaline. That is up until dashboards went digital, thanks to more advanced computers.

As we continue down the time line of computer history, we come to the invention of the punch card, which was an element of Joseph Marie Jacquard’s power loom. These cards allowed Jacquards loom to permit colored threads to either pass through or stop according to the presence or absence of holes in the card. Later, Charles Babbage came to the conclusion that the holes in these cards could be used to represent a problem statement and the raw data required for that problem’s solution respectively. Because of this he was able to employ a version of these cards as a storage mechanism, which would hold computed numbers for future reference, and through this use of the cards he was able to program a device called the Analytic Engine, which he invented shortly after his previous computing endeavor, the Difference Engine, failed to be completed. Because the idea of the punch card had originated from the weaving industry, Babbage respectively deemed the two main components of his Analytic Engine the “store” and the “mill”. The store was responsible for the holding of numbers while the mill was responsible for “weaving” those numbers into new results. In today’s computers, those terms are referred to as the memory unit and the CPU, or central processing unit. The Analytic Engine possessed the ability to perform all four arithmetic operations; addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; and was equipped with a memory capable of storing 1,000 numbers of 50 decimal digits each. Apart from those abilities, the Analytic Engine was also equipped with a key function that set apart computers from calculators. This function is called the conditional statement. According to John Kopplin’s website, entitled “An Illustrated History of Computers”, a conditional statement is something that “ allows a program to achieve different results each time it is run. Based on the conditional statement, the path of the program can be determined based upon a condition or situation that is detected at the very moment the program is running.”

The next major break through in computing mechanisms came about as a result for the need of automation for the census of the United States of America, seeing as how the population had increased extensively between 1790 and 1880. A prize was offered by the census bureau to any inventor who could create such a device. Eventually that prize was won by Herman Hollerith for his invention of the Hollerith desk. The “desk” had successfully adopted not only the idea of punch cards from Jacquard’s invention, but featured a gear driven mechanism capable of counting, which was derived from the same mechanism Pascal used in his pascaline. Another main component of this device was a wall of dial indicators, which were responsible for displaying the result of the count. Probably one of the most significant innovations of this machine was the improvement made by Hollerith on the punch cards. In Jacquard’s design, the hole patterns on the cards were not determined until after a tapestry had been designed, and from that point on they were not changed. In today’s computer world, this could be compared to a “read-only” form of information storage. Holleriths version of the cards however, were comparable to read/write technology, in the sense that new cards could be punched based upon a reading of another, separate set of cards. As a result of this, analyses, which was too complicated to be accomplished during a single pass thru the cards, was able to be computed via multiple passes thru the cards by using newly printed cards to remember the intermediate results. This problem solution had actually been previously proposed by Babbage, but was never brought into action. This technique of punch card use in the Hollerith Desk allowed the census of 1890 to be completed within 3 years versus the 7.5 years it took to complete the previous one. It also saved the government a whopping 5 million dollars.

In 1896, thanks to the success of his invention, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company. That company eventually came to be known as one of the most familiar names in relation to computers to this day, International Business Machines, or IBM. As IBM flourished, so did the presence of punch cards. Their ubiquity was as much as today’s personal computers, and they played a part in people’s day to day lives in the form of election ballots, toll cards for highways, check out slips for library books, and government issued checks. They even came in the mail with bills! At this point, IBM’s primary focus was the development of calculators that could be distributed to businesses that needed help with accounting for their inventory and finances, both of which required little more than a machine with the ability to compute addition and subtraction. But as they say “necessity is the mother of invention”, and it was the necessity of a calculator optimized for more scientific computations by the U.S. military which ultimately led IBM down the road to the next stepping stone in computer history.

During World War II, physicists were capable and responsible for writing the equations to determine the trajectory of a shell launched from a battleship. However, capable as they may have been, the task of computing such formulas was, needless to say, a very strenuous one. The results of these equations were referred to as “firing tables”, and the military was constantly searching for math majors who could be employed to compute these tables, but there were never enough people to keep up with the need for new tables. As a result of this, the military was willing to invest in almost any idea that would make the computation of these equations faster and easier, and thus the Mark I was born.

This computer was built in 1944 as a joint effort between IBM and Harvard. Weighing in at an astonishing 5 tons, this computer, which was the first programmable digital one ever to have been made in the United States, was made up of switches, clutches, rotating shafts and relays. It was 8 feet tall, 51 feet long, possessed 500 miles of wire, and a 50 foot rotating shaft which was turned by a 5 horsepower electric motor. It also had four paper tape readers, paper tape being an improvement from a stack of punch cards. It was actually on one of these paper tapes that the first computer “bug” was found by a woman named Grace Hopper. Apparently, a moth had infiltrated the Mark I and its wings were blocking the holes in the paper tape so the machine could not compute the information. Hopper is now credited with the coining of the word “debugging” which is a term used to describe eliminating problems with a program.

In 1947, Howard Aiken, who was the principle designer of the Mark I, estimated that the computing needs of the entire U.S. could be satisfied with only six electronic digital computers. At this point in time, computers of this magnitude were built only by special arrangements, and realistically could only be afforded by the government and military, so IBM commissioned a study based on this estimate to determine whether or not they should invest time and money into developing this invention into a standard product. Unforeseen to Aiken was the micro-electronics revolution.

The micro-electronics revolution was probably one of the most significant events in all of computer history because it allowed the massive amounts of wiring involved in the production of a computer, which was done by hand, to be mass produced into what is called an integrated circuit, which is basically a sliver of silicon about the size of your thumbnail. These integrated circuits ultimately allowed the cost of computers to be reduced greatly due to the fact that they sped up the process of fabrication by allowing millions of tiny transistors to be created and interconnected in one mass production. With the reduced cost of computers, came the invention of the personal computer.

One of the earliest personal computers, was the Apple I, which was not only designed but hand built by a man by the name of Steve Wozniak. The computer is recognized as the very first Apple product and it was first demonstrated in 1976 in Palo Alto California at the Homebrew Computer Club. At that time, there was only one computer store chain, called the Byte Shop, and the owner of that chain, Paul Terell, was extremely impressed with Wozniak’s creation. Originally, the machine was nothing more than a bare circuit board that had been designed for hobbyists that would later add keyboards and displays, but when Terell offered to buy 50 fully assembled computers for $500 a piece, Wozniak, along with three of his friends were willing to take on the task. Despite the fact that they weren’t able to provide the “fully assembled” product in time, they were able to build all 50 of the motherboards by hand. Terell was satisfied with what they accomplished and he paid them in cash for their efforts, which was enough to pay off loans as well as make a profit. The Apple I was later sold by Apple, at a price of $666.66 and about 200 units were produced before being replaced by the Apple II.

Today, the thought of buying a computer that requires at home assembly is boarder line outrageous. The thought of a machine used for calculation big enough to occupy a whole room is almost unfathomable, when most of us have calculators built right into our cell phones, which can easily fit into the smallest of pockets. The evolution of the computer, from the archaic abacus, to the advanced and well-designed tools we use today for far more than calculating numbers, is indeed a long one. Its practically impossible to say for sure who can take credit for the first “real” computer that changed a job title into a functional machine, and to say that covering the entire history of this machine is a daunting task would be an understatement. Hopefully this essay, which highlights some of the more significant breakthroughs in computer technology, is one that is both informative and interesting to whom ever may read it and they can walk away with a greater appreciation and understanding for what it took to bring to us these tools we to often take for granted.

Bibliography
BOOKS

Rojas, Raul, ed. Encyclopedia of Computers and Computer History. Fitzroy Dearborn. 2001

Wurster, Christian. Computers : An Illustrated History. Taschen. 2001

Frauenfelder, Mark. The Computer. Carlton Books. 2005

Spencer, Donald D. The Timetable of Computers : A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Computers. Camelot Pub. Co. 1999

Ifrah, Georges. The Universal History of Computing : From the Abacus to the Quantum Computer. John Wiley, 2001

Campbell-Kelly, Martin. Computer : A History of the Information Machine. Basic Books. 1996

WEBSITES

An Illustrated History of Computers. John Kopplin.(no publisher given.) Copyright 2002. http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/History.html. Dec. 8, 2010.

Computer Hope: When was the first computer invented. Computer Hope. FeedBurner. Copyright 2010. http://www.computerhope.com/issues /ch000984.html. Dec. 8, 2010.

A Brief History of the Abacus. Georges Ifrah. Wiley Press. Copyright 2000. http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/history.html. Dec. 8, 2010.

Herman Hollerith. JJ O’Connor, E.F. Robertson. (No publisher given). Copyright 1999. http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Hollerith.html. Dec. 8, 2010.

Charles Babbage. (No author, publisher, or copyright date given). http://www. charlesbabbage.net/. Dec. 8, 2010

Apple I. (No author, publisher, or copyright date given). http://applemuseum. bott.org/sections/computers/a1.html. Dec. 8, 2010

ARTICLES

Abacus, in Mathematics. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition. Copyright 2010.Columbia University Press. Dec. 8, 2010.

Hollerith Machine. Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright 1981-2010. The Computer Language Company Inc. Dec. 8, 2010

Herman Hollerith. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition. Copyright 2010. Columbia University Press. Dec. 8, 2010.