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The evolution of the computer
• In 3000 B.C., the Chinese were using the abacus for their calculations.
In 1642, Blaise Pascal invented the pascaline
which was capable of making additions and
substractions. It used gears to do the
increments.
Later on Gottfried Wilhelm developed it to make
multiplications and division as well, and named it
the stepped reckoner.
The invention of the punched cards
During the beginning of the 19th century, Joseph
Mary Jacquard created a weaving machine which
created patterns using special punchedcards.
The pioneers of the modern computer
In 1820, an English mathematician
and scientist called Charles Babbage
invented the Difference engine,
which theoretically was capable of
doing calculation up to 20 decimalplaces. But it was not made due to
lack of technology at the time.
In 1834, Babbage designed the analytical
engine, which was capable of storing
results by using punched cards. This
design had the same fate as his earlier
design, and was never finished.
The speciality was that this system
introduced the basic input-process-outputsteps which the modern computers use.
He is considered as the father of the
computer.
A friend and an apprentice of Babbage, known as Ada
Augusta Lovelace (Ada Byron) wrote programs for the
Analytical engine, even though the machine never
came to life. She is considered as the first computer
programmer in the world.
The competition which was to make a
machine that would help the census in
America, in1890, was won by Herman
Hollerith, by his “Hollerith Desk”. He
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used the punched card system, which
was introduced by Jacquard in the early
19th century.
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The Computer in the 20th Century!
The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which was making the Hollerith
desks became the International Business Machines”or IBM in 1924.
A British mathematician called Allan Turing made the
Turing Machine which can be considered as a pioneeringdevice for the modern day digital computer.
During the 1930s, Howard Aiken, an American
mathematician, designed the Automatic
Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) which
was later named the Mark 1.
In 1939, John V. Atanasoff and Clifford
Berry Created and demonstrated the
Atanasoff-Berry Computer(ABC)
In 1941, a German called Konrad Zuse created the Z3,
which was a significant iteration of his earlier
developments. It was developed in secret, resulting in no
contribution at all for the development of the computer.
All the prototypes were destroyed by allied bombing.
In 1943, at Bletchley park, Britain, the Colossus was
designed in secret to decrypt German messages.