development of different components used in the Internet and the particular requirements of communication in the Cold War.
Unit 5, Lesson 2, Exercise D≤1.21
Part 2 The computer is arguably the most important piece of technology in modern society, but it actually has a very long history, in fact going back almost 5,000 years. It starts with the early Babylonians, who used simple arithmetic to count and keep a record of their goods. As their wealth grew and they had more and more goods to record, it follows that they would try to develop tools to make this work easier. A good example of one of these tools is the abacus, used as a basic calculator – in other words, a computer. What I mean is that, as in a computer, data is input by moving the beads. It is stored by the position of the beads and the output or answers can then be read off. Five beads per line are often used, just as there are five fingers on a hand. Anyway, moving ahead to the early 17th century, we find a different type of computer. While the abacus was developed to speed up addition, Napier’s Bones were created to speed up multiplication. The Bones were a series of numbers written on narrow strips of material, originally bone, which allowed large numbers to be multiplied or divided using simple arithmetic. While they worked well, they appear to have initially been developed for academic rather than commercial use.
Commercial requirements were the reason for
the development of one of the first mechanical calculators by Blaise Pascal, that’s P-A-S-C-A-L, in France, in 1645. Called the Pascaline, it was a hand-powered adding machine which could add numbers up to eight figures long. It used gears and cogs to transfer the results of one wheel to another, a very simple and clever principle, which incidentally is still used today in electricity and gas meters.
There were quite a few more calculators invented after that, which I won’t discuss here, because I want to look at another type of machine which was linked to the development of the computer. In 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, that’s J-A-C-Q-U-A-R-D, developed a very special type of weaving machine or loom, which was controlled by a set of cards with holes in them. Using these punch cards, the Jacquard Loom could produce fabrics with very intricate designs much more quickly and efficiently than by using
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traditional hand-weaving techniques. These cards introduced the principle of programmability, which meant changing the process by changing the input. This was very important to the development of modern computing and the punched card was to remain in use for well over 150 years.
By the early 19th century, more and more calculation was required to conduct government, commerce and engineering efficiently. Logarithmic tables, which allowed large numbers to be multiplied and divided using addition and subtraction, were increasingly used to speed up calculations. Charles Babbage, an English mathematician and philosopher, discovered many errors in existing tables and felt that the calculations should be carried out by machine for greater accuracy. He was given money by the British government to design such a machine. Unfortunately, the design for this machine, which was called the Difference Engine was very complex and the engineers making the parts were unable to manufacture them with enough precision to make it work. In addition, the government refused to continue providing the funds to allow him to overcome these barriers and as a result, his Difference Engine was never fully built as he designed it.
If the Difference Engine had been built as designed by Babbage, it would have worked perfectly. In 1991, a perfectly functioning Difference Engine was constructed from Babbage’s original plans. As a result of his design, Babbage has been credited with inventing the first machine recognized as a modern computer, and so he is called the father of the computer by some people. In addition to the Difference Engine, he also designed an Analytical Engine, a much more complicated type of mechanical computer which would use punched cards to input programs to the machine and which would be powered by steam. Despite the fact that the Analytical Engine was never built, it had programs written for it – by a woman called Ada Lovelace. She is currently recognized as the world’s first programmer and was honoured by having a programming language, Ada – that’s A-D-A, named after her in 1983.
Incidentally, in addition to his work with computers, Babbage was also a cryptographer who worked for the British government. He broke – or decoded – a number of codes which had been considered unbreakable up until then, giving the British government considerable advantages in
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