Hi
As a month ago I wrote a post on the Internet and it's inventor the great Tim Berners-Lee, this post is going to be a follow on. With the invention that goes hand in hand with the internet. The Computer.
Love them or loath them Computers are hear to stay and, are as far as I am aware one of the fastest evolving inventions on the planet. But there history is a long and varied one. From there routes in Victorian England, to the military code breakers of WW2. And finally to the present day with the laptop on your desk that can give you at will pretty much anything you want. So here is admittedly a condensed history of the computer.
In the Hey day of the British empire the Victorian superpower ran not on tea but on calculations. Calculations determined everything from the course of ships bound for America, to the quantities needed for factories. So to solve this mountain of calculations computers were brought in. Although they weren't computers as in a calculator, but were in fact men with pencils who would labour ceaselessly to get all these crucial calculations done. However as with everything done by humans there were mistakes, these mistakes meant ships missed port or incorrect quantities were sent to factories. So a more accurate solution was required.
Enter another Brit (I'm not patriotic) called Charles Babbage. Babbage was a well respected mathematician and philosopher, who in his prime rubbed shoulders with the gliteratie of Victorian society. Among other things Babbage worked on the probability of biblical miracles, calculating the probability of being raised from the dead. Don't ask why. He also requested to be lowered into mount Vesuvius as he wanted to know how hot lava was. In essence Babbage was the definition of a Victorian genius and polymath.
In 1882 Babbage turned his attention to the problem of the computer (Men with pencil) and, decided that a mechanical system would yield the correct answer to any equation. And unlike a human thought could not be twisted or misinterpreted. Babbage named his new mechanical computer the not especially brilliant Difference engine and set to work. Although Babbage did not have the resources to build the complete difference engine he could build a small section of it, even incomplete many of the engineers of the Victorian powerhouse could see it's potential, subsequently Babbage received a grant of the government to get to work on the full sized version.
Sadly Babbage never completed his difference engine the money dried up and so did the support. Even those who had previously supported him began to heckle the chancellor of the time said “If the difference engine was ever completed, it should be made to calculate it's own usefulness.” Babbage died in October 1871, so unpopular was he at the time that nobody went to his funeral!
The difference engine was shelved and forgotten about, until to mark the bi cen
tenary of his death, the difference engine was finally completed by the British science museum. And guess what it did work just as Babbage predicted. To right is a image of the completed difference engine. Although compared with modern computers the difference engine is no more than a pocket calculator (although much larger). This machine can do the calculations that the men with pencils spent there lives doing, with barely any exertion what so ever. Which leads me to think that if the difference engine had of been completed in the 1880's the world today would be very different.
So I am going to leave this section of the computer's history there with the great Charles Babbage. In the next part I intend to go from the WW2 code breakers to the present day.
Love them or loath them Computers are hear to stay and, are as far as I am aware one of the fastest evolving inventions on the planet. But there history is a long and varied one. From there routes in Victorian England, to the military code breakers of WW2. And finally to the present day with the laptop on your desk that can give you at will pretty much anything you want. So here is admittedly a condensed history of the computer.
In the Hey day of the British empire the Victorian superpower ran not on tea but on calculations. Calculations determined everything from the course of ships bound for America, to the quantities needed for factories. So to solve this mountain of calculations computers were brought in. Although they weren't computers as in a calculator, but were in fact men with pencils who would labour ceaselessly to get all these crucial calculations done. However as with everything done by humans there were mistakes, these mistakes meant ships missed port or incorrect quantities were sent to factories. So a more accurate solution was required.
Enter another Brit (I'm not patriotic) called Charles Babbage. Babbage was a well respected mathematician and philosopher, who in his prime rubbed shoulders with the gliteratie of Victorian society. Among other things Babbage worked on the probability of biblical miracles, calculating the probability of being raised from the dead. Don't ask why. He also requested to be lowered into mount Vesuvius as he wanted to know how hot lava was. In essence Babbage was the definition of a Victorian genius and polymath.
In 1882 Babbage turned his attention to the problem of the computer (Men with pencil) and, decided that a mechanical system would yield the correct answer to any equation. And unlike a human thought could not be twisted or misinterpreted. Babbage named his new mechanical computer the not especially brilliant Difference engine and set to work. Although Babbage did not have the resources to build the complete difference engine he could build a small section of it, even incomplete many of the engineers of the Victorian powerhouse could see it's potential, subsequently Babbage received a grant of the government to get to work on the full sized version.
Sadly Babbage never completed his difference engine the money dried up and so did the support. Even those who had previously supported him began to heckle the chancellor of the time said “If the difference engine was ever completed, it should be made to calculate it's own usefulness.” Babbage died in October 1871, so unpopular was he at the time that nobody went to his funeral!
The difference engine was shelved and forgotten about, until to mark the bi cen
tenary of his death, the difference engine was finally completed by the British science museum. And guess what it did work just as Babbage predicted. To right is a image of the completed difference engine. Although compared with modern computers the difference engine is no more than a pocket calculator (although much larger). This machine can do the calculations that the men with pencils spent there lives doing, with barely any exertion what so ever. Which leads me to think that if the difference engine had of been completed in the 1880's the world today would be very different.So I am going to leave this section of the computer's history there with the great Charles Babbage. In the next part I intend to go from the WW2 code breakers to the present day.
Thanks for reading
Kyle
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