ARIN1000 History and Theory of Informatics

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ARIN1000History and Theory of Informatics

• Week 3
• The Birth of the Computer

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Learning Outcomes

• By the end of this lecture you should have an
  understanding of
  
• The key conceptual and technological
  breakthroughs that lead to advances in computing
  technologies in the period up to and including
  WWII
• The key historical figures driving those
  conceptual and technological breakthroughs
  
• The social, economic and political forces driving
  the development of computing technologies
  
• The early impacts of computing technologies in
  the period up to and including WWII
  

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Focus Questions

• How did we store information before computers?
• How did we make calculations before computers?

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Focus Questions for video

• What is unique about the computer that makes it
  different from other machines?
  
• What were the social, economic and political
  forces driving the development of computing
  technologies?
  
• What were the key conceptual and technological
  breakthroughs that lead to advances in computing
  technologies?
  
• What new scientific fields were enabled by the
  development of new computing technologies?
  

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Video

• The Dream Machine video-recording Tape 1 -
  Giant Brains

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Focus Questions for video

• What fears and hopes accompanied the development
  of computing technologies?
  
• What were the contributions of the following
  people?
  
• Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace
• Konrad Zuse
• Alan Turing
• Ekert and Mauchly?

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computer - a giant braina universal machine

• Unlike other machines which are single-purpose,
  the computer is a universal or general purpose
  machine it can be programmed to do a wide
  variety of tasks
• 1830s - Charles Babbages design for the
  Analytical Machine never built was the
  conceptual forerunner of the computer.
  
• Designed to be programmed using punched cards
• Had a mill (like CPU) for performing arithmetical
  functions
  
• Had a store (memory)

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The computer - a universal machine

• Turings vision of the computer was as a
  universal machine that would not only do
  calculations but also write poems and play music

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Forces driving development of computing
technologies and impacts

• To relieve the human mental drudgery of
  mathematical calculations and data processing
  
• Bureaucratic - to aid in census calculations etc
  (1890 - Hollerith Machine) -- speeded up and
  improved accuracy of bureaucratic processes
  
• Economic impetus - aid to engineering
  calculations, aid trade, e.g. accurate
  navigation tables - improved accuracy and safety
  
• War - to assist in the production of firing
  tables and code breaking -- helped Allies win
  WWII, shortened the length of the war
  

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New scientific fields

• Radio astronomy
• Space exploration
• Others?
• Today
• Sequencing of the human genome
• Others?

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Conceptual and Technological Breakthroughs

• Binary system should replace decimal system
  (Leibniz, Zuse)This meant that electric circuits
  (on-off representing zero and one) could be used
  to make calculations
• Gears, cogs and shafts -- Electro-mechanical
  relay switching -- Vacuum tubes (no moving
  parts)
  
• Stored programsComputers could be a universal
  machine that could be programmed to perform
  multiple tasks (Babbage, Turing, Ekert and
  Mauchly, von Neumann)

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The modern computer

• 1946 - ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and
  Computer)- Ekert and Mauchly, Moore School of
  Computing, Penn. Govt. contract - first
  electronic, multi-purpose computer - used vacuum
  tubes - decimal system - punched cards used for
  progamming
• UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer - Ekert and
  Mauchly Remington Rand) - first US commercial
  computer - made for US census - used stored
  programs on magnetic tape - successfully
  predicted U.S. election results in 1952

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References

• ARIN 1000 Reader
• Time-Life Books, (1989) Building up to the
  Computer Revolution, The Power of the Binary
  Code, and A Wartime Burst of Progress, in
  Understanding Computers Computer Basics,
  Alexandria Virginia.
• In Fisher Special Reserve
• Floridi, L. (1999) The Digital Workshop, in
  Philosophy and Computing. London Routledge,.
  
• Kurzweil, R. (1990)Mechanical Roots and
  Electronic Roots, in The Age of Intelligent
  Machines, Cambridge MIT Press.
  
• Lubar, S. (1993) Information Software and
  Information Before Computers, in Infoculture,
  New York Houghton Mifflin.
  
• Williams, M. R. (1985), A History of Computing
  Technology, New Jersey Prentice Hall.