Contributions of Scientist and Mathematicians To the Evolution of Computers

Nearly 5,000 years ago the Abacus emerged in Asia Minor.  The abacus may be considered the first computer. This device allowed its users to make computations using a system of sliding beads arranged on a rack. Early shopkeepers used the abacus to keep up with transactions. The use of pencil and paper spread, the abacus lost its importance. Nearly twelve centuries past before the next important advance in computing devices emerged

500BC

a)    The ABACUS is the oldest and perhaps the most important computing instrument. When the beads on the wire are manipulated, ordinary and large nos. can be performed.

1500

a)    The first mechanical calculator may have been conceived by Leonardo da Vinci almost one hundred and fifty years earlier than Pascal's machine.

1614

a)    John Napier-Baron of Merchiston, Scotland, invented a tool called Napier’s bones in 1614. These were multiplication tables inscribed on strips of wood or bone. Logs allowed multiplication and division produced.

1621

a)    William Oughtred invented the Modern Slide Rule.

b)    It was a precursor to the electronic calculator, and it was commonly used well into the 1970's.

c)    Really the first analog computer

1623

a)    German professor Wilhelm Schickard invented the first gear-driven calculating machine known as Calculating Clock.

1644

a)    Blaise Pascal- invented the PASCALINE

b)    AUTOMATIC ADDING MACHINE was the first significant calculating machine.

c)    The numbers to be added together are dialed in via the row of numbered wheels at the bottom, and the result shows at the top. The machine was also capable of subtraction. It has the capacity for eight digits, but has trouble carrying and its gears tend to jam. 

1679

a)    Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz- invented the Leibnitz Calculator

b)    In 1670s, German baron called Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or sometimes called Leibnitz) took mechanical calculation a step further. Leibniz improved Pascal’s ideas and, in 1671, introduced The Step Reckoner, a device that could multiply and device besides performing addition and subtraction. It could also evaluate square roots by series or stepped additions.

1801

a)    Joseph Marie Jacquard- invented The Punch Card.One of the fundamentals of computing.

b)    Jacquard perfected the first punch card machine – a loom capable of weaving pictures into cloth to match a set of commands on the cards. With his punched cards, the Frenchman had effectively found a way of communicating with machines.  The language was limited to two commands: hole and no hole, but the binary system is universal in all modern day machines.

c)    Later, the system launched technology in the US and saw the birth of International Business Machines (IBM).

1830

a)    Charles Babbage- Difference Engine

b)    Its purpose was to compute polynomials and mathematical tables, such as logarithms using a numerical method called the differences method .With a design of a mechanical 'Computer', which used a series of gears to calculate numbers using the mathematical method of differences.

1834

a)    Charles Babbage- Analytical Engine

b)    Though never completed, this had input devices based on punched cards, as per Jacquard's design, an arithmetic processor that calculated numbers, a control unit that determined that the correct task was carried out, an output mechanism and a memory where numbers could be stored while waiting their turn to be processed.

c)    A fully program-controlled and automatic mechanical computer. It was this device that was the world's first computer.

1843

a.     Ada Lovelave-The first programmer, she wrote a series of instructions for Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical computer that would calculate Bernoulli numbers. 

1890

a.     Herman Hollerith- Hollerith's machine

b.     He devised a system of encoding data on cards through a series of punched holes. Hollerith's machine - used in the 1890 US census - read the cards by passing them through electrical contacts. Closed circuits indicating whole positions could then be selected and counted.His Tabulating Machine Company of 1896 was a predecessor to IBM