The Origins of Digital Computers
Selected Papers
2nd Edition
Published on 6. December 2012
458 pages
978-3-642-96242-4 (ISBN)
Description
My interest in the history of digital computers became an active one when I had the fortune to come across the almost entirely forgotten work of PERCY LUDGATE, who designed a mechanical program-controlled computer in Ireland in the early 1 'JOO's. I undertook an investigation of his life and work, during which I began to realise that a large number of early developments, which we can now see as culminating in the modern digital computer, had been most undeservedly forgotten. Hopefully, historians of science, some of whom are now taking up the subject of the development of the computer and accumulating valuable data, particularly about the more recent events from the people concerned, will before too long provide us with comprehensive analytical accounts of the invention of the computer. The present book merely aims to bring together some of the more important and interesting written source material for such a history of computers. (Where necessary, papers have been translated into English, but every attempt has been made to retain the flavour of the original, and to avoid possibly misleading use of modern computing terminology.
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Content
I Introduction.- II Analytical Engines.- 2.1. On the Mathematical Powers of the Calculating Engine.- 2.2. Report of the Committee. appointed to consider the advisability and to estimate the expense of constructing Mr. Babbage's Analytical Machine, and of printing tables by its means.- 2.3. Babbage's Analytical Engine.- 2.4. On a Proposed Analytical Machine.- 2.5. Essays on Automatics - Its Definition - Theoretical Extent of its Applications.- 2.6. Electromechanical Calculating Machine.- 2.7. Scheme of Assembly of a Machine Suitable for the Calculations of Celestial Mechanics.- III Tabulating Machines.- 3.1. An Electric Tabulating System.- 3.2. Calculating Machines: Their Principles and Evolution.- 3.3. The Automatic Calculator IPM.- IV Zuse and Schreyer.- 4.1. Method for Automatic Execution of Calculations with the aid of Computers.- 4.2. Technical Computing Machines.- 4.3. The Outline of a Computer Development from Mechanics to Electronics.- V Aiken and IBM.- 5.1. Proposed Automatic Calculating Machine.- 5.2. The Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.- 5.3. Electrons and Computation.- 5.4. The IBM Card-Programmed Electronic Calculator.- VI Bell Telephone Laboratories.- 6.1. Computer.- 6.2. The Relay Interpolator.- 6.3. The Ballistic Computer.- 6.4. A Bell Telephone Laboratories' Computing Machine.- VII The Advent of Electronic Computers.- 7.1. Binary Calculation.- 7.2. Computing Machine for the Solution of Large Systems of Linear Algebraic Equations.- 7.3. The Bletchley Machines.- 7.4. The Use of High Speed Vacuum Tube Devices for Calculating.- 7.5. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. (ENIAC).- VIII Stored Program Electronic Computers.- 8.1. First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC.- 8.2. Preparation of Problems for EDVAC-type Machines.- 8.3.Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument.- 8.4. Electronic Digital Computers.- 8.5. The EDSAC.- 8.6. The EDSAC Demonstration.- Index to Bibliography.
