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Is A Prosperous, Mainly Residential Area in The South-West of Edinburgh, Scotland

The document summarizes the history of early computing devices, beginning with ancient counting tools like stones and bones. It describes the abacus, believed to be the first computer, invented by the Chinese around 4000 years ago. It discusses several other ancient and medieval calculating devices, as well as early mechanical computers from the 17th-19th centuries like Napier's Bones, the Pascaline, and the Difference Engine. Finally, it covers some of the first modern electronic computers of the 1930s-1940s such as the Differential Analyzer, Mark I, and ENIAC.

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Bushra Mohsin
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100 views

Is A Prosperous, Mainly Residential Area in The South-West of Edinburgh, Scotland

The document summarizes the history of early computing devices, beginning with ancient counting tools like stones and bones. It describes the abacus, believed to be the first computer, invented by the Chinese around 4000 years ago. It discusses several other ancient and medieval calculating devices, as well as early mechanical computers from the 17th-19th centuries like Napier's Bones, the Pascaline, and the Difference Engine. Finally, it covers some of the first modern electronic computers of the 1930s-1940s such as the Differential Analyzer, Mark I, and ENIAC.

Uploaded by

Bushra Mohsin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter 1 History of Computers

The first counting device was used by the primitive people. They used sticks, stones and
bones as counting tools. As human mind and technology improved with time more computing
devices were developed. Some of the popular computing devices starting with the first to
recent ones are described below;
Abacus
The history of computer begins with the birth of abacus which is believed to be the first
computer. It is said that Chinese invented Abacus around 4,000 years ago.
It was a wooden rack which has metal rods with beads mounted on them. The beads were
moved by the abacus operator according to some rules to perform arithmetic calculations.
Abacus is still used in some countries like China, Russia and Japan.
The bead frame abacus as we know it today was probably invented by the Chinese sometime
around the second century AD.
Chinese abacus
It is usually made of a wooden frame with 13 vertical wires and 7 beads on each wire. The
Japanese adopted and modified the Chinese abacus around the 17th century, reducing the
number of beads on each wire to six and later on to five. A third form of the abacus is the
Russian abacus which was probably brought to Russia from China and was modified for
counting in rubles.
Other ancient cultures, such as the ancient Egyptians and the Aztecs also used similar
calculating devices. Without being influenced by the Chinese, the Aztec abacus evolved into
a very similar device: it had exactly the same number of ‘beads’ and ‘wires’ – in this case, the
beads were kernels of corn and the wires were strings.
The first counting devices were very simple. Neither a counting board nor an abacus
performed any numerical operations on its own. The calculations were performed mentally
by the person using the abacus, and both of these devices were only used for recording
separate steps and keeping track of figures. The abacus may seem obsolete in the world of
modern computers, but in fact it is still in use in many countries around the world.
Napier's Bones
It was a manually-operated calculating device which was invented by John Napier (1550-
1617) of Merchiston.
Merchiston is a prosperous, mainly residential area in the south-west of Edinburgh, Scotland.

In this calculating tool, he used 9 different ivory strips or bones marked with numbers to
multiply and divide. - Numbers 0 to 9 were marked on a set of ivory sticks in such a way that
the product of any number can be found by placing the sticks side by side. So, the tool
became known as "Napier's Bones. It was also the first machine to use the decimal point.
Pascaline
Pascaline is also known as Arithmetic Machine or Adding Machine. It was invented between
1642 and 1644 by a French mathematician-philosopher Biaise Pascal. It is believed that it
was the first mechanical and automatic calculator.
Unlike the passive abacus, performed mathematical operations in an active manner. This
calculator, called the ‘Pascaline’, could add and subtract numbers with up to eight digits, but
was never used much because of its high cost and unreliability
It was a wooden box with a series of gears and wheels. When a wheel is rotated one
revolution, it rotates the neighboring wheel. A series of windows is given on the top of the
wheels to read the totals.
Stepped Reckoner or Leibnitz wheel
It was developed by a German mathematician-philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz in
1673.
Gottfried studied the Pascaline, and by means of an innovative gear system added a third
function: multiplication, which was performed as a sequence of additions.
Difference Engine
In the early 1820s, it was designed by Charles Babbage who is known as "Father of Modern
Computer". It was a mechanical computer which could perform simple calculations. It was a
steam driven calculating machine designed to solve tables of numbers like logarithm tables.
Analytical Engine
This calculating machine was also developed by Charles Babbage in 1830. It was a
mechanical computer that used punch-cards as input. It was capable of solving any
mathematical problem and storing information as a permanent memory.
Sadly, Babbage never completed the machine, largely due to poor machining techniques of

the time.
Tabulating Machine
It was invented in 1890, by Herman Hollerith, an American statistician. It was a mechanical
tabulator based on punch cards. It could tabulate statistics and record or sort data or
information. This machine was used in the 1890 U.S. Census. Hollerith also started the
Hollerith?s Tabulating Machine Company which later became International Business
Machine (IBM) in 1924.
Differential Analyzer
It was the first electronic computer introduced in the United States in 1930. It was an analog
device invented by Vannevar Bush. This machine has vacuum tubes to switch electrical
signals to perform calculations. It could do 25 calculations in few minutes.
There are three machines which have claimed the title of being the first electronic computer
ever. Instead of using electromechanical relays, they used fully electronic switches: vacuum
tubes. These had one important advantage – they were about a thousand times faster than
mechanical switches. They also had one disadvantage: vacuum tube computers were gigantic.
This is the most important reason they were replaced by smaller transistors in the 1950s.
Mark I
The next major changes in the history of computer began in 1937 when Howard Aiken
planned to develop a machine that could perform calculations involving large numbers. In
1944, Mark I computer was built as a partnership between IBM and Harvard. It was the first
programmable digital computer.

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