HIDDEN COMPUTER HISTORY.

By Kelvin Paul

From the first lecture of Computer Introduction I said the word Computer comes from the term compute which means calculate, and I said then the computers originated from the concept of calculating devices. And of course Computers work with data and information in the form of numbers. People from the beginning of time, and throughout the years, have invented and continue to invent things that help them count.  These tools have a very looong way back history beyond 4000 years ago when they only called them counting tools.  Let’s talk about counting tools a little bit then we can have a stepping stone on a story of the History of computers.

ABACUS

Before 4000 years, man kind used easily available tools to count like fingers and toys. Now you flash back your life and remember when you started studing counting you used fingers, then numbers got biger you mixed with your toies….and then…you found not enough for larger numbers so you learnt to use other means, on my side I was using match sticks my late brother Method G. Mgaya used to buy them for me and he was teaching me counting before I started school. So you may experience a lot to cover counting as the basic beginning for mathematics, ancients used even knots on ropes and bones, But Approximately 4,000 years ago, the Chinese invented the Abacus. It was the first machine used for counting and calculating.

Abacus was made of a wooden frame, metal rods, and wooden beads. It takes a great deal of time and practice to learn how to master the use of an abacus. It’s not easy as you might think; Abacus was not a toy for kids to start studying counting it was a professional tool used even in banks. Today, the abacus is still used widely in China and other Asian countries to count and calculate, just as we use calculators.

 Napier's Bones

After the abacus invention people worked so much harder to take counting to another level, and in the early 17th century, John Napier, a Scottish mathematician, invented another calculating tool. It used marked strips of wood or bone, side by side, to multiply and divide. This tool became known as "Napier's Bones."

The Pascaline

I love the story of Biaise Pascal and his automatic calculator, it is very impressive. It was In 1642, at the age of 19, when this French mathematician invented the Pascaline. He invented the Pascaline to help make his father's job as a tax accountant easier. The machine is sometimes called the La Pascaline or Pascal's machine. But I don’t know if I can say it is sad or not that the Pascaline never became popular. You know why?? May be these are the reasons, First of all, the machine broke often and its inventor was the only person who could fix it. Second, it was slow. Third, clerks would not use it: Guess what!! They were afraid it might replace them at their jobs. But whatever the drawbacks he got, the guy was the first mathematician to make that Gear-Driven Machine for calculating work. And that is what is so important, at least he did something for his father and something to talk about today when we refer the legendaries who changed counting mechanisms. Generally the Pascaline is known as the first mechanical and automatic calculator

The Stepped Reckoner / Liebniz's Calculator

It was in 1673, when the extraordinary German inventor Gottfried Liebniz brought out his Liebniz Calculator. Liebniz was not that normal brained guy ofcause, he entered a university at fifteen years of age and received his bachelor's degree at seventeen. His machine is sometimes called The Stepped Reckoner. The Liebniz was also a calculating machine, but much superior to that of the Pascaline. It could do more than just add and subtract. The Liebniz Calculator could also multiply, divide, and find square roots of numbers. It too was mechanical and worked by hand. A crank was added to speed up the work of this calculator. It was used by mathematicians and bookkeepers. 

Mr. Liebniz believed that it did not make sense for men to spend hours and hours doing mathematical calculations when he could invent a machine that would work much faster.

The Jacquard's Loom

Now we are getting close to our time somehow… this story contains sad part, but to this tough guy it was just a backward force for an arrow before being released and go even much further. In 1801, Jacquard invented the Jacquard loom. It was a weaving machine, he used the punched cards to control it. While the loom was being pumped, cards with holes in them were attached together in a pattern through which strings of thread were automatically fed. These cards would feed the right pieces of thread into the loom to make a beautiful cloth.

The sad part now, Jacquard’s invention scared other weavers because it made cloth faster and better than they could by hand. As a result, Jacquard's house and loom were burned down.

This violent act did not discourage Jacquard, for he built another loom. That is what a guy with ambitions and visions acts, he was not a coward for he had vision where he wanted to take a weaving industry to, which others saw it as a challenge and not an opportunity. But what is funny and a happ ending ofcause is that, Weavers still use the Jacquard Loom until today.

And if that is not enough, in the years to follow, variations on jacquard's punched cards would find a variety of uses, including representing the music to be played by automated pianos and the storing of programs for computers.

Charles Babbage & his Engines

Now, the great Mathematician himself…

The computer as we know it today had its beginning with a 19th century English mathematics professor name Charles Babbage. In the early 1820s, an English mathematician by the name Charles Babbage, designed a computing machine called the Difference Engine. This machine was to be used in the calculating and printing of simple math tables. In the 1830s, he designed a second computing machine called the Analytical Engine. This machine was to be used in calculating complicated problems by following a set of instructions.

The Analytical Engine was a mechanical computer that can solve any mathematical problem. It uses punch-cards similar to those used by the Jacquard loom and can perform simple conditional operations.

 However, neither of these machines were ever finished because the technology at the time was not advanced enough, and both of his projects lacked financial funding. The computing machines made in the 1900s, and even those today are based on the designs of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. This is why Charles Babbage is known as the "Father of Computers."

I can’t go on talking about how babbage inventions changes the world we live today before sharing you this story, of a super woman in the world of Programming.

Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace 

Much of what we know about Babbage and his machine comes from the papers of Augusta Ada Byron, countess of Lovelace and daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Lady Lovelace was a genius in math. curious about Babbage's work, she translated an article about the analytical engine from French to English. She added some important notes of her own about how the machine should work. She outlines the fundamentals of computer programming, including data analysis, looping and memory addressing.

Lady Lovelace also helped Babbage with programs for the Analytical Engine. Many of her ideas are like those used in today's computer programs. Sadly, like Babbage, lady Lovelace never lived to see her ideas used. She died at age 36 while Babbage was still working on the Analytical Engine. Her work has long outlived her, however. She is now called "the first programmer," and a programming language used chiefly by the U.S. government was named Ada in her honor.

Much respect to all ladies coding out there, Lucina Richard, Sarah, Sporah, and Brigta keep the hard work.

Now let’s get into the real mess took the world to another shell, Oh, something cool about computers, You may not know this but Before Babbage came along, a "computer" was a person, someone who literally sat around all day, adding and subtracting numbers and entering the results into tables. The tables then appeared in books, so other people could use them to complete tasks, such as launching artillery shells accurately or calculating taxes.

                                                                                                  

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