The History of Computers :: Computers Technology Essays

The news report of Computers Thousands of days ago calculations were done using peoples fingers and pebbles that were form just lying around. Technology has transformed so much that right a federal agency the most complicated computations are done within seconds. Human dependance on computers is increasing everyday. Just think how hard it would be to make out a week without a computer. We owe the advancements of computers and other such electronic devices to the intelligence of men of the past. The history of the computer dates back all the way to the prehistoric times. The first step towards the development of the computer, the abacus, was developed in Babylonia in 500 B.C. and functioned as a simple counting tool. It was non until thousands of years later that the first estimator was produced. In 1623, the first mechanical calculator was invented by Wilhelm Schikard, the Calculating Clock, as it was often referred to as, performed its operati ons by wheels, which worked similar to a cars odometer (Evolution, 1). Still, there had not yet been anything invented that could even be characterized as a computer. Finally, in 1625 the gliding rule was created becoming the first analog computer of the modern ages (Evolution, 1). iodin of the biggest breakthroughs came from by Blaise Pascal in 1642, who invented a mechanical calculator whose briny function was adding and subtracting numbers. Years later, Gottfried Leibnez improved Pascals model by allowing it to also perform such operations as multiplying, dividing, taking the full-strength root. Technology continued to prosper in the computer world into the nineteenth century. A major figure during this time is Charles Babbage, intentional the idea of the divergence Engine in the year 1820. It was a calculating machine designed to tabulate the results of mathematical functions (Evans, 38). Babbage, however, never completed this invention because he came up with a newer creation in which he named the Analytical Engine. This computer was expect to solve any mathematical problem (Triumph, 2). It relied on the punch mentality input. The machine was never actually finished by Babbage, and today Herman Hollerith has been impute with the fabrication of the punch card tabulating machine.