The Origin of Computing

Great ad for Scientific American.

I have always heard the evolution of computers started with "punch-card" operated looms......

I've been called a Jacquard in my time.
Del

I've had my cards punched a few times, myself.

Usually I can see it looming and can weave out of the way. But other times I wake up on the rug.

I have read that Charles Babbage made just plans for such arithmetic device, but technology of time was not able to produce it. Just few years ago somebody really built machine according to original plans, and have found it working perfectly.

One other ancient computer, dated some 100 BC was found in a shipwreck remains near Greek island Antikytera. Scientists were studying that fragile lump of oxidized copper or brass, and reconstructed original mechanism. Most important discovery was differential gear, for which everybody was sure that it was invented much later. Some theories say it was able to calculate accurate position of planets, including Sun and Moon eclipses, and some think it was used for ocean navigation.

Be what it may, it was computing something.

But Chinese invented Abacus much before this, and it is also calculating device, is it not?

Perfectly environmentally friendly, too! :-))

Then, what is written stand for >>Commercial<< computers, while army had computers for cyphers breaking long before, and I would say that variety of mechanicall calculators existed long before 50's.. I have seen electric (in sense it provided power for turning gears) bookkeeping machines manufactured before WWII, like OLIVETI TETRACTYS, for instance....

But, programable computers are something entirely else, and if we look this way, then older mechanical calculators can be dismissed from list.......

Puh, really I am old, at least just year younger that first commercial computers........

Made in the 1950's but it was a computer to me.