The History of the Computer
Computers have always been available although many people forget this fact. The very first computers were people and there were low paying jobs available hundreds of years for people who were willing and able to count numbers over and over.
One of the earliest versions of a mechanical computer is the abacus, but other people invented machines that could do computations. There several machines made during the 1600 including the Pascaline and the slide rule. Even da Vinci drew some wonderful drawings for a calculating machine that operated with gears but he never actually built one.
While you may not think it possible to do some amazing calculations without the benefit of your small, handy calculator or computer, scientists were sending astronauts into space and performing a larger number of their computations on slide rules.
Even punched cards that are used by many voting machines and early computers were used in 1801 when a Frenchman named Jacquard built a power loom that could read and make designs in fabrics by using these punched wooden pieces.
In 1822, an English mathematician was able to propose a calculating machine that was powered by steam. The device was expected to be as big as a large room and was given the name of the Difference Engine. The man who came up with this idea was Charles Babbage. The government wanted to build this computing giant to help them continue their dominance of the oceans but the project was too costly and difficult to complete. Babbage did however give us the foundation for constructing the modern day CPU by devising a new way to use Jacquards punch cards.
It was a young friend of Charles Babbage who became the first known computer programmer. This was the daughter of the famous English poet, Lord Byron. Lady Ada Byron became fascinated by the punch cards and abstract ideas that Babbage proposed. She was soon busy constructing the first tasks and subroutines for his new Analytic Engine.
One of the first modern computers was a joint project for Harvard and IBM in 1944 and was known as the Mark 1. This was an enormous machine that operated without stopping for 15 years. Grace Hopper, who was one of the main programmers for the Mark 1, also found the first ‘computer bug’. It was a real bug, a moth that had fallen into the machine and was blocking the Read ability. Ms Hopper coined the term “debugging” which is still used today.
Beginning in the mid 80s, the computer industry began to undergo tremendous changes with faster speeds and smaller, more affordable machines. The internet was linking the world and global communications gained amazing speed. Today there are laptops and desktop computers in a majority of homes, businesses, and schools. For many people it is difficult to imagine life without having a computer to rely upon for everyday use.
Today we use tiny telephones almost the size of a credit card to communicate instantly with people in countries around the globe. The communications industry is constantly updating, refining, and streamlining products and there are sure to be even smaller and faster communications available in the future.
This is an original news article © The Kids Window
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