1822 AD |
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| The first device that might be considered to be a computer in the modern sense of the word was conceived in 1822 by the eccentric British mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage. | ||
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| In Babbage's time, mathematical tables, such as logarithmic and trigonometric functions, were generated by teams of mathematicians working day and night on primitive calculators. Due to the fact that these people performed computations they were referred to as "computers." In fact the term "computer" was used as a job description (rather than referring to the machines themselves) well into the 1940s, but over the course of time this term became associated with machines that could perform the computations on their own. |
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| In 1822, Babbage proposed building a machine called the Difference Engine to automatically calculate these tables. The Difference Engine was only partially completed when Babbage conceived the idea of another, more sophisticated machine called an Analytical Engine. | ||
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| Interestingly enough, more than one hundred and fifty years after its conception, one of Babbage's earlier Difference Engines was eventually constructed from original drawings by a team at London's Science Museum. The final machine, which was constructed from cast iron, bronze and steel, consisted of 4,000 components, weighed three tons, and was 10 feet wide and 6½ feet tall. | The device performed its first sequence of calculations in the early 1990's and returned results to 31 digits of accuracy, which is far more accurate than the standard pocket calculator. However, each calculation requires the user to turn a crank hundreds, sometimes thousands of times, so anyone employing it for anything more than the most rudimentary calculations is destined to become one of the fittest computer operators on the face of the planet! | |
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| These notes are abstracted from the book Bebop BYTES Back (An Unconventional Guide to Computers) Copyright Information |
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