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Computer History

And Why Should You Care

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by Erik Talvi & Orion Lawlor

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Antikythera Mechanism 205 BC

  • Recovered in Shipwreck 1901
  • Designed 205 BC in Greece
  • At least 30 meshing bronze gears

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Antikythera Mechanism 205 BC

  • Analog Computer made with gears
    • Astronomical Positions
    • Eclipses
    • Olympiads
  • 2007 reproduction
  • Couldn’t have worked precisely

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Napier’s Bones 1617

  • 1617 published by John Napier
  • Technique is called: Rabdology

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William Schickard’s Machine 1623

  • First created a calculator
    • Before Pascal
    • Found in letters to Kepler
  • Add & Subtract
    • Overflow at 6 digits with Bell
  • Single tooth
    • Too much force with too many carry
  • Used Napier’s Bones for Multiplication
  • Pascal’s Was Better
    • Had actual influence on calculators

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Jacquard Loom 1801

  • Used punch cards to define loom patterns

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Babbage and Lovelace 1822

  • Babbage
    • Difference Engine
      • Polynomial Functions
    • Analytical Engine
    • Dendrochronology
  • Lovelace
    • First Programmer
    • Wrote Algorithm in Report �on Analytical Engine

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Analytical Engine 1871

  • General Purpose
  • Never Finished
  • Used Punch Cards
  • Intended to have:
    • Sequential Control
    • Branching
    • Looping
  • Would have been�Turing-complete

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1890 Census 1890

  • Herman Hollerith
  • Developed punch card�tabulator and keypunch�machines to process�census
  • Success for census
  • Became IBM

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Entscheidungsproblem 1928

  • Is mathematics decidable?
    • Is there a mechanical method that can be applied to any mathematical assertion and will eventually tell whether that assertion is true or not?
  • German mathematician David Hilbert asked this at the �International Congress of Mathematicians

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First Electronic Computer

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Alan Turing 1936

  • Solved the Entscheidungsproblem with Turing Machine
    • Mechanical method that cannot solve some problems
    • Halting Problem
  • Created COLOSSUS to decipher Enigma
  • Attempted to create first true digital computer
    • Automatic Computing Engine
    • Also wrote “Intelligent Machinery”
      • One of first to bring up Artificial Intelligence
      • And the Turing Test

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Atanasoff-Berry Computer 1939

  • Not Programmable
  • Not Turing-complete
  • Binary Arithmetic
  • Electronic switching

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Ballistic Firing Tables WWII

  • Battleships needed firing tables �so shells could hit targets
  • Not enough math majors
  • US Military Invested in Mark I

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Grace Hopper & Mark I 1939

  • Primary Programmer of Mark I
  • Found first bug in Mark I
  • Invented “Flow-matic”
    • Became COBOL
  • Also, First Compiler

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ENIAC 1946

  • Electronic Numerical�Integrator and Computer
  • Firing Tables and feasibility of thermonuclear weapons

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Konrad Zuse 1935

  • German civil engineer
  • Worked for Nazis
  • First Programmable Computer
  • First computer business
  • Accomplishments hidden by WWII
  • Isolated due to war

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EDVAC 1946

  • First stored-program �electronic computer
  • Stored binary numbers (not decimal)
  • Delay line memory, 1000 34-bit words
  • von Neumann wrote the “First Draft”

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More Modern Notable Events

  • Transistors
    • Bell Labs in 1948
  • IBM System/360
    • IBM in 1960s
  • ARPAnet in 1960s
  • Mouse in 1968
  • Microprocessor 1969
  • Unix
    • Bells labs in 1970s

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Why Should This Matter

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Everything Old Is New Again

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Why C++? Simula 1965

  • Developed in Norway
  • Introduced
    • Objects, Classes, Inheritance and subclasses
    • Virtual procedures, coroutines and discrete simulation
    • AND Garbage Collection
  • First Object-Oriented Language
  • BUT very slow

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Why C++? C with Classes 1979

  • Bjarne said “My initial aim for C++ was a language where I could write programs that were as elegant as Simula programs, yet as efficient as C programs.”
  • Cut things like GC for speed

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Apple Newton Failure vs iPad

  • Original Price: $700
  • Errors in Handwriting recognition
  • Original Price: $399
  • No handwriting recognition

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Sources