Computing: From Abacus to Modern Impact

• Computers are explored as a discipline and technology, moving beyond just programming.
• Computers are extremely impactful on modern society.
• Modern society is in the "Electronic Age" because of computing.
• Computers can be simple machines that carry out complex tasks using abstraction.
• The understanding of computing will be built upon in this series, beginning with basic elements and advancing to complex systems. Each episode is designed to be understandable on its own.
• Computing's impact of daily life and society will be analyzed in the series.

Computing's Origins

• The abacus is the earliest computing device, from Mesopotamia around 2500 BCE.
• The abacus is a manual calculator that is useful for addition and subtraction, and stores computational states.
• The creation of the abacus addressed the need to manage calculations beyond individual mental capacity.
• The abacus is advantageous for managing large numbers by storing the total.
• Over the millennia, computing tools were developed, including the astrolabe and slide rule.
• These tools sped up difficult calculations, amplifying human mental capabilities.
• Charles Babbage observed that knowledge advancement and new tools can reduce human labor.

The Term "Computer"

• The first known use of "computer" was in 1613, but it referred to a job title rather than a machine.
• From the 17th to 19th centuries, a computer was a person who performed calculations, sometimes using machines.
• Gottfried Leibniz created the Step Reckoner in 1694 as an early computing device.
• Leibniz thought that machines would remove the need for experts to spend time on calculations.
• The Step Reckoner used gears to represent digits, performing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
• The Step Reckoner's design was used for the next three centuries of calculator design.
• Real-world problems typically need many steps of computation; results could take hours or days to calculate.
• Before the 20th century, pre-computed tables produced by human computers were commonly used.

Military Applications and Babbage's Engines

• Militaries were some of the first to use computing for complex problems because of the speed and accuracy that it provided.
• When a cannon or shell design changed, it was time-consuming and prone to errors to create range tables.
• Charles Babbage suggested the Difference Engine in 1822; it was a mechanical device used to approximate polynomials.
• After waiting for two decades, construction of the Difference Engine was abandoned but a completed version from Babbage's designs proved functional in 1991.
• Babbage also conceived the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computer that could perform various computations, store memory, and print.
• Ada Lovelace wrote hypothetical programs for the Analytical Engine and is regarded as the world’s first programmer.
• Babbage's Analytical Engine greatly influenced subsequent computer scientists and earned him the title of "father of computing".

Electromechanical Computing

• By the late 19th century, computing devices were primarily for specialized tasks in science and engineering, but were not frequently used in business and government.
• The US government had difficulty processing the 1890 census because of population growth.
• It took seven years to compile the 1880 census and the 1890 census was predicted to take 13 years.
• Herman Hollerith addressed the issue of the census by building a tabulating machine to speed up the process.
• Hollerith's machine used electromechanical systems and punch cards to represent data.
• Hollerith's machine was about 10x faster than manual tabulation, saving the census office millions of dollars.
• Hollerith founded The Tabulating Machine Company, which later became IBM.
• Electromechanical business machines transformed commerce and government, setting the stage for digital computers.