Nowadays, we often use computers for various purpose for maintaining the data of large companies, creating VFX effects and animation movies on the large scale as well for various personal use. It is often seen that computer are in the hand of everyone from the businessman to school going child in the form of smartphone, tab And smartwatch.They are in various field Medical , Engineering, Cosmology, Civil, Movie Making, Gaming, Research , Arts, and Robotics. The computers connect the world through the Internet.The Social Networking is the biggest example of internet that connect the commen people of every country every state and every city. But do we know that how and why the invention of computer took place in these section you will understand the evolution of COMPUTER(C - Commonly O - Operated M - Machine P - Particularly U- Used for T - Technical E - Education R - Research)
MECHANICAL COMPUTERS
The abacus c.3000 BCE
The abacus also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in Asia ,Africa , and elsewhere. Today, abaci are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal. The user of an abacus is called anabacist.
Napier’s Bones and Logarithms (1617)
John Napier of Merchiston ( 1550 – 4 April 1617) — also signed as Neper, Napier — named Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scottish landowner known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer.John Napier is best known as the discoverer of logarithms. He also invented the so-called “napier bones” and made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics.
Oughtred’s (1621) and Schickard‘s (1623) slide rule
The slide rule, also known colloquially in the United States as aslipstick, is a mechanical analog computer . The slide rule is used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such as roots, logarithms and trigonometry, but is not normally used for addition or subtraction. Though similar in name and appearance to a standard ruler, the slide rule is not ordinarily used for measuring length or drawing straight lines.Slide rules come in a diverse range of styles and generally appear in a linear or circular form with a standardized set of markings (scales) essential to performing mathematical computations. Slide rules manufactured for specialized fields such as aviation or finance typically feature additional scales that aid in calculations common to those fields.The Reverend William Oughtred and others developed the slide rule in the 17th century based on the emerging work on alogarithms by John Napier. Before the advent of the pocket calculator, it was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering
Blaise Pascal’s Pascaline (1645)
Blaise Pascal along with Wilhelm Schickard was one of two inventors of the
mechanical calculator in the early 17th century. Pascal made his invention in 1642. He was spurred to it when participating in the burden of arithmetical labor involved in his father's official work as supervisor of taxes at Rouen. First called the Arithmetic Machine, Pascal's Calculator and later Pascaline,his invention was primarily intended as an adding machine which could add and subtract two numbers directly, but its description could, with a bit of a stretch, be extended to a "mechanical calculator, in that at least in principle it was possible, admittedly rather laboriously, to multiply and divide by repetition."
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz’s Stepped Reckoner (1674)
The Step Reckoner (or Stepped Reckoner) was a digital mechanical calculator invented by German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1672 and completed in 1694.The name comes from the translation of the German term for its operating mechanism; staffelwalze meaning 'stepped drum'. It was the first calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard and his punched card controlled looms (1804)
The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard, first demonstrated in 1801, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelasse. The loom was controlled by a "chain of cards", a number of punched cards, laced together into a continuous sequence. Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one complete card corresponding to one row of the design. Several such paper cards, generally white in color, can be seen in the images below. Chains, like the much later paper tape, allowed sequences of any length to be constructed, not limited by the size of a card.
Till now there are mechanical computers but they can not consider as computer
then the person came known as the father of computer.
Charles Babbage (1791-1871) The Father of Computers
Charles Babbage, FRS ( 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage is best remembered for originating the concept of a programmable computer.
Considered a "father of the computer". Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century.
Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine
Babbage began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions. It was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of finite differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division.
Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine
The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by english mathematician Charles Babbage.It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's Difference engine, a design for a mechanical computer. The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.
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