Fifth-Gen Computing : Are We at it? (Part-2)

.............Continued from Part-1

Yesterday, we examined what was there before computers and two popular manual calculating devices. Today, we'll look at semi-automatic calculating devices and a new group of electromechanical devices.

Semi-Automatic Calculating Devices:-

Pascaline

Staffelwalze

1. Pascaline (Pascal's adding machine) (1642):- It was developed by Blaise Pascal and consisted of a brass rectangular box with eight movable dials to add sums up to eight digits long.
2. Staffelwalze (the step reckoner) (1671):- German Mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibnitz developed it, which was an improvement over Pascaline. It was also called Leibnitz machine. It allowed users to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It worked using a mechanism of a series of 10 slides.
3. Jaquard's loom (1801):- Joseph Jaquard devised a mechanical loom called Jaquard's loom and also developed a punched card as means of controlling the loom, which made weaving complex patterns a lot more easier. This device used instructions stored on a punched card to control the movement of threads.
4. Difference engine (1822):- English Mathematician Charles Babbage, Often called 'father of modern computer' , proposed a machine called difference engine to compile mathematical tables. It ran using steam and computed polynomials using difference method. It was't completed because of mechanical difficulties.



Jaquard's Loom


5. Analytical Engine (1832):- Charles Babbage also proposed another machine, analytical engine which had basic elements of a modern computer. It was operated using input,process and output method.

Punched Card Used In
Jaquard's Loom

Difference Engine

Electromechanical Calculating Devices (A link between mechanical and electronic devices):-

Harvard Mark I and Tabulating Machine are examples of these. We'll explore them next day.

...........................To be continued on March 27th 2016 (Due to technical reasons)