Why and How Were Programming Languages Developed?

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Why and How WereProgramming Languages Developed?

• Software evolved with hardware
• Machine language
• 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
• Assembly languages
• ADD R1 R2, SUB R1 001
• Higher-level languages
• ForTran, Lisp, COBOL
• Graphical interfaces
• mouse, window systems, Mac, MS windows
• Specialized languages
• SQL, KQML,

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History of Computing Hardware and Software

• http//www.computerhistory.org/exhibits.html
• http//www.computerhistory.org/timeline/
• http//www.cbi.umn.edu/resources/vintage.html
• http//www.computinghistorymuseum.org/museum/index
  2.htm
• http//www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/

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Hardware Evolution

• Analog vs. digital
• Mechanical vs. electronic
• Switch, vacuum tube, transistor, integrated
  circuit, LSI, VLSI, VVLSI
• Precursors mechanical devices
• First generation vacuum tubes
• Second generation transistors
• Third generation integrated circuits

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First Mechanical Analog Devices

• slide rule an instrument consisting of a ruler
  with a central sliding piece, both being marked
  with logarithmic scales used in making rapid
  mathematical calculations. (Webster's, op. cit.)
• clock, n., ME clock, an instrument for the
  measurement of time by the motion of its parts,
  indicating hours, minutes, and often seconds, by
  hands which move upon a dial plate. It usually
  consists of a frame containing a train of toothed
  wheels operated by springs and weights and
  regulated by a pendulum or balance wheel. (ibid.)

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Abacus 7Earliest Forms Circa 3000 BC
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Slide Rule - Circa 1600
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Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834)

• Born in Lyons, France
• Son of silk weavers
• Father died and he inherited a small 1772 house
  and a hand loom, which he started improving.
• Existing technology
• M. Bouchon (1725) pierced paper
• M. Falcon (1728) chain of cards
• Jacques deVancason (1754) automaton

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Another revolution....

• Finished his "machine" 1804
• Invention? First person to obtain a practical
  arrangement which could be generally adapted to a
  wide range of problems
• Consiel de Prudhomes broke up his machines 1810
• sabotage 1. malicious injury to work, tools,
  machinery, etc. (sabot, Fr. wooden shoe)
• died, August 7, 1834 in Quillons at age 82
• 30,000 machines in use in Lyons alone!

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Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
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Babbages Analytical EngineA General Purpose
Machine

• Mechanical device
• NOT electrical
• user program control using punched cards
• operations cards
• variable cards
• number cards

• Separation of storage and calculation
• (V) store mill
• (A) are accumulators
• Control by microprogram
• (B) control barrels

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Difference Engine

• 1822 original design called for 6 decimal places
  with second-order difference
• 1830 redesigned difference engine with 20 decimal
  places and a sixth-order difference

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Science Museums Reconstruction

• Difference Engine Number 2 (1847 to 1849)
• Science Museum Recreation 1991 (Doron Swade,
  Curator, below)
• constructed according to Babbages original
  drawings (minor modifications)
• 1991 Bicentenary Celebration
• 7 feet high
• 11 feet long
• 18 inches deep
• 4,000 parts
• 500,000 pounds

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Its all a matter of perspective....

• Johann Meuller, Universal Calculator 1784
• Georg and Edvard Scheutz (after Lardner)
• Difference Engine 1 a prototype which 1843
  produced the first tables calculated and printed
  by machinery
• Difference Engine 2 sold to Dudley Observatory,
  Albany, NY (in Smithsonians Info. Age) 1853
• Difference Engine 3 was a copy of 2,1859
• sold to General Register Office in London used
  to produce the English Life Table, 1864

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Scheutz Difference Engine
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Ada Augusta Byron, 1815-1852

• Corresponded with Charles Babbage
• L. F. Menebrea, at (Italian) Office of Military
  Engineers wrote Sketch of the Analytical Engine
  invented by Charles Babbage, Esq.," in Taylors
  Scientific Memoirs, Vol. III"
• Ada translated paper into English
• Taylors "The editorial notes are by the
  translator, the Countess of Lovelace." Footnotes
  enhance the text and provide examples of how the
  Analytical Engine could be used, i.e., how it
  would be programmed to solve problems!
• Worlds first programmer?

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Importance of the Difference Engine

• First attempt to devise a computing machine that
  was automatic in action and well adapted, by its
  printing mechanism, to a mathematical task of
  considerable importance.
• An example of government subsidization of
  innovation and technology development
• Spin offs to the machine-tool "industry"

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Babbages Analytical EngineA General Purpose
Machine

• 1834 basic plans formulated for an improved
  device, capable of calculating any mathematical
  function!
• Basic problem how to feed the digits of the
  result wheels back into the calculation
• Portion of mill completed 1847
• Portion of printing mechanism
• 1834 to 1848 -- 30 sets of plans seems to have
  given up on construction due to the problems with
  the difference engine
• Returned to work on design 1858
• 1871 substantial trial model being developed

• an anticipating carry mechanism a system of rods
  for transfer of numbers to the printing mechanism
• Separation of storage and calculation
• (V) store mill
• (A) are accumulators
• Control by microprogram
• (B) control barrels
• user program control using punched cards
• operations cards
• variable cards
• number cards

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Analytical Engine
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Analytical Engine 1840
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Vacuum Tubes (Analog)
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Zuses Plankalkül - 1945

• Never implemented
• Advanced data structures
• floating point, arrays, records
• Invariants

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Pseudocode 1949-1953

• What was wrong with using machine code? 0100 1000
  1100 0101 1001
• Poor readability
• Poor modifiability - generality
• Expression coding was tedious poor writability
• Machine deficiencies -- no indexing or floating
  point
• Laning and Zierler System - 1953
• Implemented on the MIT Whirlwind computer
• First "algebraic" compiler system
• Subscripted variables, function calls, expression
  translation
• Never ported to any other machine

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1930s-1940s

• Atanasoff at Iowa State University, Ames
• J.V. Atanasoff, "Computing Machine for the
  Solution of large Systems of Linear Algebraic
  Equations," (August 1940) in Randell (Ed.), The
  Origins of Digital Computers, Selected Papers,
  Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1973
• J.V. Atanasoff, "Advent of Electronic Digital
  Computing," Annals, Vol..6, No.3 (July 1984)
• Eckert Mauchly at University of Pennsylvania
• http//www.seas.upenn.edu/museum/

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John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995)

• 1937 -1942, developed and built an automatic
  electronic digital computer for solving large
  systems of simultaneous equations.
• 1939, completed and reduced to practice his basic
  conceptions in an operating breadboard model of a
  computing machine.
• (1997-99) Reconstruction of Atanasoff Machine,
  below

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Electr(ical/onic) Analog Computers

• Flight Simulators, including Whirlwind at MIT
• Weapons analysis and operation
• Electrical engineering problems
• Telephone engineering problems

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John Mauchly (1907-1980)J. Presper Eckert
(1919-1995)

• Mauchley Physics instructor, Ursinus College
• Attends a wartime course on electronics at Moore
  School
• December 1940 Attends AAS meeting meets John V.
  Atanasoff
• Working on problems of weather prediction
• Visits Atanasoff in Iowa, June 1941

• Eckert - Met Mauchly while a graduate student
  supervising laboratory work for a war-time
  electronics class 1941
• Did wartime research on radar and delay line
  memories for radar devices
• Chief Engineer on ENIAC
• Contract signed when he was 24 years old
• First electronic digital engineer

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Ideas

• August 1942, John Mauchly writes The Use of
  High Speed Vacuum Tube Devices for Calculating
  which is ignored!
• 1943, Mauchly and Eckert prepare a proposal for
  the US Army to build an Electronic Numerical
  Integrator
• June 26, 1947 Eckert and Mauchly apply for patent
  on the ENIAC which "embodies our invention...."

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Electronic Numerical Integrator andComputer
(ENIAC)

• 1st large scale electronic digital computer
• Designed and constructed by Eckert and Mauchly
• Since 1920s, faculty had worked with Aberdeen
  Proving Grounds
• Ballistics Research Laboratory

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Vacuum Tubes in the ENIAC
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"Setting up the problem"

• ENIAC was NOT a "stored program" device
• For each problem, someone analyzed the arithmetic
  processing needed and prepared wiring diagrams to
  perform the calculations
• Process was time consuming and error prone
• Cleaning personnel knocked cables out and put
  them back somewhere else!