PC Authority takes a stroll through 2,500 years of computing history. Next month, we look at the future.
Whether you work directly in IT, or even just about anywhere in todays soci
PC Authority takes a stroll through 2,500 years of computing history. Next month, we look at the future.
Whether you work directly in IT, or even just about anywhere in todays society, chances are that you will be interacting with a computer at some point in your day, at home or at the office. Terms such as email, spreadsheet, SMS and the Internet are now part of our daily vernacular. Given this, it is easy for us to forget that it hasnt always been so, especially for the younger generation who have grown up with computers the same way many of us did with matchbox cars and Barbie dolls. In fact, even for venerable computer users, it is sometimes surprising to remember that the personal computer is but 20 years old.
Back on 12 August 1981, IBM released its first mainstream desktop computer, for the astounding price of $US1,565. It came with a CPU from the fledgling Intel, the classic 8088, running at a spritely 4.77MHz, and had 16KB of RAM. The operating system was known as DOS, a little package put together (not entirely of his own hand) by a certain William Henry Gates. With this, IBM had brought together three of the key players in computing, and the rest, as they say, is history.
And that is exactly what this feature is all about. History. It isnt easy. If you were to consider all the major stepping stones that have brought computers and computing to where it is today, you could easily fill not one, but several volumes. We have taken a more conservative approach, however, and only compiled what we consider to be the most interesting milestones, dates, people and inventions, dating back to 500 BC all the way to the present day.
Following on from this, next month we will be taking a look at the future of computing. What do the next five years have in store for us? How about the next 50 years? Or 500 years? How will things like seamless wireless communications affect computing? Or artificial intelligence? Or quantum computing? So if you want to know whether Star Trek is on the cards, or whether it will be more like Neuromancer, be sure to watch this space next month.
For now, though, sit back, relax and read on. We are certain that there will be a few surprises in these pages, and perhaps even a few lessons for everyone.
Tim Dean
2nd century-1666 AD
Binary numbers
The earliest known use of a binary numbering system dates back to the 2nd century AD in Southern India. Pingalas Chhandahshastra used binary numbers to classify musical meters. Pingala formed a matrix in order to give a unique value to each meter, but wrote from left to right, instead of right to left, as binary is written today. He also started with one rather than zero.
Binary was first discussed in the West by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German mathematician and philosopher looking for a way to represent all logical thought through a universal mathematical language. Binary numbers represented opposites for Leibniz, such as black versus white, or yes versus no. He introduced the idea in De Arte Combinatoria (On the Art of Combination) in 1666. Leibniz believed that binary numbers represented Creation. The number one portrayed God, and zero depicted the Void.
1801
The punch card
One of the fundamentals of computing was developed during the Industrial Revolution by a French man named Joseph Jacquard. He perfected the first punch card machine - a loom capable of weaving pictures into cloth to match a set of commands on the cards.
When Jacquard introduced his machine, he faced a suspicious public and was physically attacked in Lyon, where his machine was destroyed. With his punched cards, Jacquard had effectively found a way of communicating with machines. The language was limited to two commands: hole and no hole, but this binary system is universal in all modern machines today.
Later, the system launched technology in the US and saw the birth of International Business Machines (IBM). Herman Hollerith devised a system of encoding data on cards using a series of punched holes. Holleriths machine - used in the 1890 US census - read the cards by passing them through electrical contacts. Closed circuits indicating hole positions could then be selected and counted. Holleriths Tabulating Machine Company of 1896 was a predecessor to IBM.
The system was so useful for mundane, repetitive jobs that it was widely accepted and spread to Europe, where IBM marked its darkest moment by supplying Hitler with a method of tracking the progress of his genocide.
1823
Babbages Difference Engine
and Analytical Engine
In the early 19th century, the process of generating mathematical tables, such as logarithms, was handed to large teams of people performing calculations manually - a process that took a very long time. Due to the fact that these people were employed solely to compute tables, they became known as computers, a term that remained a job description until the 1940s.
To speed up this computational process, British mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage proposed that a machine, called The Difference Engine, be created to specifically perform these tasks. This essentially led to the design of a mechanical computer that used a series of gears, instead of transistors, to calculate numbers using the mathematical method of differences.
Babbage later revised his plans in a design covering an incredible 1,000 square feet of paper, but despite the intricacy of planning, the government decided against building it.
While the Difference Engine was considered a breakthrough in the development of automatic computing devices, Babbages next idea, the Analytical Engine, was far more influential. This new device was more comparable to the computers of today. The premise was to use punched cards to control the calculations, with the Analytical Engine able to make decisions based on the results. Babbage then worked with a brilliant mathematician named Augusta Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron, who created a program for the Engine and is now credited as being the first ever computer programmer.
1854
Boolean logic
It wasnt until the 19th century that binary numbering was fully realised in a mathematical system by George Boole, a British mathematician. His groundbreaking paper of 1854, An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities, introduced the idea of Boolean logic.
In 1940, American mathematician and electrical engineer Claude Shannon used Boolean logic to analyse and optimise relay-switching circuits in his Masters thesis for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits. This is widely viewed as one of the original works of American computer science.
1856
Undersea cabling
Still essential to the way we communicate, undersea cabling dates back to the age of steam. Work on the first cross-pond cable began in 1856, but the first attempt at connecting the two ends in the middle saw them sink without trace. Whoops! Further attempts followed (and failed), but in 1866 a cable successfully connected Newfoundland to the Irish coast. The cable lasted for nearly four weeks before being blown by an operator using too high a voltage.
Not an auspicious start, but the lessons were learned and within 20 years several thousand miles of undersea cable linked the world, forming the backbone of the communications network. All intercontinental telegraphic communications data used this method, speeding up the transfer of news from weeks to seconds.
The telegraph brought changes that surpassed those of the telephone or those of the present Internet revoluti