PRE-COMPUTER ERA

Read the following words and word combinations and use them for understanding and translation of the text:

to emerge – возникать, появляться

prehistory - совокупность сведений о доисторической эпохе

notch - насечка

aid – помощь

whole-number - целочисленный

gears and levers - шестеренки и рычаги

reliable – надежный

loom – ткацкий станок

to weave - ткать

to specify – точно определять, задавать

therefore – поэтому, следовательно

to implement – реализовывать

vision - замысел

to enable – давать возможность, позволять

a wide variety (of) – широкий выбор

to credit sb. with smth. – вменять что-л. в заслугу кому-л.

concept – понятие, идея

loop – цикл

to attribute – приписывать (авторство)

to propose – предлагать

proposition – предложение, утверждение

assertion – утверждение

value – (числовое) значение

to harness – использовать

census – перепись населения

vigorous – сильный, интенсивный

general-purpose - универсальный

principal means – основные способы

The idea of mechanical computation emerged in prehistory when early humans discovered that they could use physical objects such as piles of stones, notches, or marks as a counting aid. The ability to perform computation beyond simple counting extends back to the ancient world: for example, the abacus developed in ancient China could still beat the best mechanical calculators as late as the 1940s.

The mechanical calculator began in the West in the 17th century, most notably with the devices created by philosopher-scientist Blaise Pascal. He built and sold gear-driven mechanical machines, which performed whole-number addition and subtraction. Later in the seventeenth century, a German mathematician, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, built the first mechanical device designed to do all four whole-number operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Unfortunately, the state of mechanical gears and levers at that time was such that the Leibniz machine was not very reliable.

In the late 18th century, Joseph Jacquard developed what became known as Jacquard’s Loom, used for weaving cloth. The loom used a series of cards with holes punched in them to specify the use of specific colored thread and therefore dictate the design that was woven into the cloth. Though not a computing device, Jacquard’s Loom was the first to make use of an important form of input: the punched card.

It wasn’t until the 19th century that the next major step was taken, this time by a British mathematician. Charles Babbage designed what he called his analytical engine. His design was too complex for him to build with the technology of his day, so it was never implemented. His vision, however, included many of the important components of today’s computers. It would have incorporated punched cards for data input, a central calculating mechanism (the “mill”), a memory (“store”), and an output device (printer). The ability to input both program instructions and data would enable such a device to solve a wide variety of problems

Then Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, a most romantic figure in the history of computing and a skilled mathematician became interested in Babbage’s work on the analytical engine and extended his ideas (as well as correcting some of his errors). Ada is credited with being the first programmer. The concept of the loop - a series of instructions that repeat - is attributed to her. The programming language Ada, used largely by the United States Department of Defense, is named for her.

In 1847, British mathematician George Boole proposed a system of algebra that could be used to manipulate propositions, that is, assertions that could be either true or false. In his system, called propositional calculus or Boolean Algebra, propositions can be combined using the “and” and “or” operators (called Boolean operators), resulting in a new proposition that is also either true or false.

Note the correspondence between the two values of Boolean logic and the binary number system in which each digit can have only the values of 1 or 0. Electronic digital computers are possible because circuits can be designed to follow the rules of Boolean logic, and logical operations can be harnessed to perform arithmetic calculations.

Besides being essential to computer design, Boolean operations are also used to manipulate individual bits in memory, storing and extracting information needed for device control and other purposes.

Herman Hollerith invented the automatic tabulating machine, a device that could read the data on punched cards and display running totals. His invention would become the basis for the data tabulating and processing industry.

Aided by Hollerith’s machines, a census unit was able to process 7, 000 records a day for the 1890 census, about ten times the rate in the 1880 count.

Facing vigorous competition and in declining health, Hollerith sold his patent rights to the company that eventually evolved into IBM, the company that would come to dominate the market for tabulators, calculators, and other office machines. The punched card, often called the Hollerith card, would become a natural choice for computer designers and would remain the principal means of data and program input for mainframe computers until the 1970s.

Notes:

Jacquard’s loom (ткацкий станок, машина Жаккарда) was developed in 1804-05 by Joseph-Marie Jacquard of France, but it soon spread elsewhere. His system improved on the punched-card technology of Jacques de Vaucanson’s loom (1745). Jacquard’s loom utilized interchangeable punched cards that controlled the weaving of the cloth so that any desired pattern could be obtained.

Propositional calculus - логическое исчисление