Computer History
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
The history of computers
2000 years ago, was the birth of the abacus, a wooden rack holding two horizontal wires with beads on them. When these beads are moved around, according to programming rules memorized by the user, all regular arithmetic problems can be done. Another important invention around the same time was the Astrolabe, used for navigation.
Blaise Pascal is usually credited for building the first digital computer in 1642. It added numbers entered with dials and was made to help his father, a tax collector. In 1671, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a computer that was built in 1694. It could add, and after some adjustments multiplying was possible to. Leibniz invented a special stepped gear mechanism for introducing the addend digits, and it is still being used.
The prototypes made by Pascal and Leibniz were not used in many places, and considered weird until a little more than a century later, when Thomas of Colmar) created the first successful mechanical calculator that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. A lot of improved desktop calculators by many inventors followed, so that by about 1890, the range of improvements included:
Accumulation of partial results
memory function)
Printing of the results
Each of the improvements needed manual installation...