A Jacquard card
First, the machine uses wooden punched cards (pictured above) which can be considered as the descendants of the punched cards early computers usually use. These wooden cards then being read from the machine by a needle that will pass through the holes. If the machine detected a hole, the needle will pass through it. Else, it will not and continue on to the next one. Sooner or later, this became the basis for the binary system of which how early and modern classical computers base its operations. Second, this machine demonstrates the concepts of a programmable machine and do its tasks automated through the wooden punched cards. It accepts an input through the punched cards, operates through a process, and gives an output which is the resulting knitted patterns and whatnot. Lastly, this invention left such influence to [Charles Babbage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage) that he planned to create one of the most famous icons in early computing, the *analytical engine*. ### Legacy of Charles Babbage Before the iconic invention, he proposed plan of creating the difference engine, a calculating machine that is able to output logarithm tables. Then, he was able to have been officially backed by the government after seeing the importance of his invention and hoped it would fasten some calculations and correct several erroneous data of their navigation tables for their naval operations. Unfortunately, as the construction process begins, it showed that building what supposed to be the first computing machine to input-output data is quite difficult. It continued until it became the most expensive government funded project and abandoned soon after. Babbage was still determined and had another idea formed which is the famous analytical engine. This time, the said invention will be suited for a more broader purpose thus it will be programmable in nature. Fortunately, Babbage saw the potential in the punched cards from Jacquard's invention. He saw that the holes in the punched cards can be used to represent ideas and store data, containing references for future studies and an output for those data. With the potential he saw through it, he adapted the punched cards and planned for it to be as the input-output medium for his machine. Presumably as a reference to where the punched cards originated which is the weaving industry, he named the two main parts of the machine "store" and "mill". The "store" is where the data is stored and the "mill" is where the data is 'woven' or processed. In foresight, this two parts later developed into **memory unit** and the **central processing unit (CPU)** in the modern computing world. During the development of his machine, he befriended [Ada Lovelace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace) and made her truly amazed to the capability of his invention to the point that she is probably the only one who saw what the machine can do beyond to what Babbage himself envisions the capability of his own machine. She noted that the machine can solve a large range of problems beyond computations and number-crunching through representing numbers as non-mathematical units (i.e. letter, color, musical note), as evidenced by her notes: > [The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine...Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent. Furthermore, within those notes also contain a series of instructions for the unbuilt analytical engine to take in which will compute Bernoulli numbers. This particular part was considered by most to be the first computer program, although there's no programming language invented at the time. However, it cannot be denied that Lovelace's note contributed not only to the foundations of computer science but also to the advancement to the views of women in scientific fields. Back to Babbage's analytical engine, like what happened with the first mentioned invention, its construction remained incomplete due to inadequate funding and personal conflicts. Sadly, the punched card as storage technology was not covered widely until later. ### Rise of the Computing Industry As the population goes up, so does the data needed to be computed and automated. Herman Hollerith proposed a technology that can be used for computation which is now known as the *Hollerith desk*. These desks adapts Jacquard's punched cards as a form for data storage combined with the concept of representating data similar to what Babbage saw through the punched cards. This invention was able to save the United States government $5 million USD by processing the census for 3 years as opposed to their predicted timeframe of 13 years for the census. This pretty much sets on how much the country in subject needs for computing and with the success Hollerith got from his invention, he founded the *Tabulating Machine Company* which later became *International Business Machines* (IBM). IBM started to cater to those industries that needs heavy computing works such as accountancy as they saw the value of computing. Their devices were proved to be a success and later on, punched cards were used as primary form of data storage. Later on until 1944, IBM and Harvard created the *Harvard Mk I*, the first programmable general-purpose computer but not fully an electronic one as it is mostly composed of switches, relays, and others that totals up to 750,000 components. This computer is the size of a large cabinet that has to be accomponied by a wide room. It also ran for 15 years. One of the primary programmers of Mark I, Grace Hopper, found a literal bug on the computer which was a dead moth that is blocking the reading of data in the computer. From that point on, they refer erroneous part on the computation as a (computer) bug. In 1953, Hopper was also the first one to invent a high-level language which enables programming to be a little more digestible. This was the "Flow-matic" which later became a basis for "COBOL". This in turn, also made Hopper to make the world's first compiler for her invented computer language since a high-level language needs to be converted into machine code. As continuous demands for computing goes up, there's also the demands for keeping the computers to be effecient and faster in a long period of time since unlike in the modern era where in computers can calculate the four basic mathematical operations in less than a second, computers can take more than that to give those result. Multiplication might take 3 seconds and division usually takes more than 10 seconds to give the result. To address these concerns, alternative solutions were proposed and basically serves as an upgrade to those components. One of the more featured inventions are the vacuum tubes which serves as a replacement to relays. With a faster rate of switching 'on' and 'off' states which in turn with a better management of electricity flow, it was able to assist computers with a faster computation. It does have flaws like its fragility and burning out similar to light bulbs but it was a better solution than the previous way of managing electric flow which is a relay.
Sample of a vacuum tube
One of the more iconic machines associated with vacuum tubes is the *Electronic Numerical Intergrator And Calculator*, also known by its shortened form as ENIAC. This machine was noted because of its speed and featured to be the world's first general-purpose programmable electronic computer. It could thousands of arithmetic operations and was estimated to have done calculations more than up to what the entire human race have done at the time. History repeats itself as vacuum tube-based computers was reaching its limits so there was a huge need for a way to improve speed and reliability as well as cost and easier manufacturing. This is where transistors will enter and was able to garner huge improvement over the computing industry as it offers faster switching rates thus faster calculations and the potential to have concurrent operations. Transistors also gave way to intergrated circuits (IC) which is just a small silicon plate that offers a new way to interconnect computer components. With the size and less cost of creating the chips, this helped manufacturing computers immensely and reaching a new level of accessibility as this eventually cause the computers to be affordable to the general public market. Intel is considered as the first company to be able to compress an equivalent of a computer which was usually the size of a room into single chip. And then personal computers happened. Then Apple and IBM decided to join into the wide opportunities flying over at the computing industry and created a line of personal computers. Next, Bill Gates who was a freshman at Harvard at the time decided to drop out to focus creating computer programs and manage his business which is Microsoft which made its way to be one of the largest technological empire in the modern world. ## Conclusion And there you have it, the short(?) history of the computers. As most modern stuff, there is a story wrapped behind to the devices that we now always see and interact in almost every aspect. As a budding programmer, there is also something behind as to how computers usually represent data in a binary system, how does computers' speed measure things to be computed, and many more. If you are not yet trying your hands on programming, I suggest you may as well start. It will help you understand the meaning behind of the things I've talked about and it brings you closer to the computer more than ever before (🧀). And if you want to start but don't know where to, you can check out my [resource list](http://localhost:4000/posts/freebies/free-resource-list) to view of handful of them (now THAT is a shameless plug). ## (Re)Sources: - ~~['What's a Computer?' Commercial by *Apple* on *YouTube*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQB2NjhJHvY)~~ - [Computer History on *Computer Science Lab*](http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt2.htm) --- a rather detailed history on computers - [Crash Course on Early Computing on *YouTube* by *Crash Course*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5nskjZ_GoI) --- recommended if you want a clearer history lesson than this; also it is a 2-parter with the history on early modern to modern computing as the next - [Crash Course on Electronic Computing on *YouTube* by *Crash Course*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN0ucKNX0hc) --- the next part to the '*Crash Course on Early Computing*' video - [CS50 2017 Week 0 Lecture on *CS50 (YouTube Link)*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y62zj9ozPOM) - [Pre-Programming: Everything you need to know before you code by *Evan Kimbrell* on *Udemy*](https://www.udemy.com/pre-programming-everything-you-need-to-know-before-you-code) - [Primer on Computers on *Computer Hope*](https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/c/computer.htm) - [When was the first computer invented? on *Computer Hope*](https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm)