Wildor L.
Mata
Computer Hardware Services
Abacus
Its also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool used primarily in parts of Asia for
performing arithmetic processes. Today, abaci are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads
sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of
wood, stone, or metal. The abacus was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern
numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in Asia, Africa, and
elsewhere. The user of an abacus is called an abacist.
The Chinese abacus, known as the sunpn (, lit. "Counting tray"), is typically 20 cm
(8 in) tall and comes in various widths depending on the operator. It usually has more than seven
rods. There are two beads on each rod in the upper deck and five beads each in the bottom for both
decimal and hexadecimal computation. The beads are usually rounded and made of a hardwood. The
beads are counted by moving them up or down towards the beam. If you move them toward the
beam, you count their value. If you move away, you don't count their value.[16] The suanpan can be
reset to the starting position instantly by a quick jerk along the horizontal axis to spin all the beads
away from the horizontal beam at the center.
Suanpans can be used for functions other than counting. Unlike the simple counting board
used in elementary schools, very efficient suanpan techniques have been developed to do
multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, square root and cube root operations at high speed.
There are currently schools teaching students how to use it.
Napiers Bone
Napier's bones is an abacus created by John Napier for calculation of products and
quotients of numbers that was based on Arab mathematics and lattice multiplication used by
Matrakci Nasuh in the Umdet-ul Hisab[1] and Fibonacci writing in the Liber Abaci. Also called
Rabdology (from Greek o [r(h)abdos], "rod" and - [logia], "study"). Napier published his
version of rods in a work printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the end of 1617 entitled Rabdologi.
Using the multiplication tables embedded in the rods, multiplication can be reduced to addition
operations and division to subtractions. More advanced use of the rods can even extract square roots.
Note that Napier's bones are not the same as logarithms, with which Napier's name is also
associated.
The abacus consists of a board with a rim; the user places Napier's rods in the rim to conduct
multiplication or division. The board's left edge is divided into 9 squares, holding the numbers 1 to 9.
The Napier's rods consist of strips of wood, metal or heavy cardboard. Napier's bones are three
dimensional, square in cross section, with four different rods engraved on each one. A set of such
bones might be enclosed in a convenient carrying case.
A rod's surface comprises 9 squares, and each square, except for the top one, comprises two halves
divided by a diagonal line. The first square of each rod holds a single digit, and the other squares hold
this number's double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, and so on until the last square contains nine times
the number in the top square. The digits of each product are written one to each side of the diagonal;
numbers less than 10 occupy the lower triangle, with a zero in the top half.
A set consists of 10 rods corresponding to digits 0 to 9. The rod 0, although it may look
unnecessary, is obviously still needed for multipliers or multiplicands having 0 in them.
Slide rule
The slide rule, also known colloquially as a slipstick,[1] is a mechanical analog computer.
The slide rule is used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such as roots,
logarithms and trigonometry, but is not normally used for addition or subtraction.
Slide rules come in a diverse range of styles and generally appear in a linear or circular form with a
standardized set of markings (scales) essential to performing mathematical computations. Slide rules
manufactured for specialized fields such as aviation or finance typically feature additional scales that
aid in calculations common to that field.
William Oughtred and others developed the slide rule in the 17th century based on the
emerging work on logarithms by John Napier. Before the advent of the pocket calculator, it was the
most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering. The use of slide rules continued to
grow through the 1950s and 1960s even as digital computing devices were being gradually
introduced; but around 1974 the electronic scientific calculator made it largely obsolete[2][3][4][5]
and most suppliers left the business.
Pascal calculator
Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642.[1][2] He conceived it while trying
to help his father who had been assigned the task of reorganizing the tax revenues of the French
province of Haute-Normandie ; first called Arithmetic Machine, Pascal's Calculator and later
Pascaline, it could add and subtract directly and multiply and divide by repetition.
Pascal went through 50 prototypes before presenting his first machine to the public in 1645.
He dedicated it to Pierre Sguier, the chancellor of France at the time.[3] He built around twenty
more machines during the next decade, often improving on his original design. Nine machines have
survived the centuries,[4] most of them being on display in European museums. In 1649 a royal
privilege, signed by Louis XIV of France, gave him the exclusivity of the design and manufacturing of
calculating machines in France.
Its introduction launched the development of mechanical calculators in Europe first and then
all over the world, development which culminated, three centuries later, by the invention of the
microprocessor developed for a Busicom calculator in 1971.
The mechanical calculator industry owes a lot of its key machines and inventions to the
pascaline. First Gottfried Leibniz invented his Leibniz wheels after 1671 while trying to add an
automatic multiplication and division feature to the pascaline, then Thomas de Colmar drew his
inspiration from Pascal and Leibniz when he designed his arithmometer in 1820, and finally Dorr E.
Felt substituted the input wheels of the pascaline by columns of keys to invent his comptometer
around 1887. The pascaline was also constantly improved upon, especially with the machines of Dr.
Roth around 1840, and then with some portable machines until the creation of the first electronic
calculators.
Leibniz Calculator
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (sometimes von Leibniz) (German pronunciation: [tfit
vlhlm fn labnts][1] or [lapnts][2]) (July 1, 1646 November 14, 1716) was a German
philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin (~40%), French
(~30%) and German (~15%).
Leibniz occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of
philosophy. He developed the infinitesimal calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and Leibniz's
mathematical notation has been widely used ever since it was published. He became one of the most
prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. While working on adding automatic
multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in
1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical
calculator. He also refined the binary number system, which is at the foundation of virtually all digital
computers. In philosophy, Leibniz is mostly noted for his optimism, e.g., his conclusion that our
Universe is, in a restricted sense, the best possible one that God could have created. Leibniz, along
with Ren Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th century advocates of
rationalism. The work of Leibniz anticipated modern logic and analytic philosophy, but his
philosophy also looks back to the scholastic tradition, in which conclusions are produced by applying
reason to first principles or prior definitions rather than to empirical evidence. Leibniz made major
contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in biology,
medicine, geology, probability theory, psychology, linguistics, and information science. He wrote
works on politics, law, ethics, theology, history, philosophy, and philology. Leibniz's contributions to
this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters,
and in unpublished manuscripts. As of 2011, there is no complete gathering of the writings of
Leibniz.
Analytical Engine
The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by
English mathematician Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's
difference engine, a design for a mechanical calculator. The Analytical Engine incorporated an
arithmetical unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated
memory, making it the first Turing-complete design for a general-purpose computer.
Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts
with his chief engineer and inadequate funding.It was not until 100 years later, in the 1940s, that the
first general-purpose computers were actually built.
Jacquards Loom
Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, that
simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns such as brocade, damask and
matelasse. The loom is controlled by punched cards with punched holes, each row of which
corresponds to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many
cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together in order. It is based on earlier
inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean Baptiste Falcon (1728) and Jacques
Vaucanson (1740).
Holleriths card or punch card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that
contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions.
Now an obsolete recording medium, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century
for controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and early 20th century for operating fairground
organs and related instruments. They were used through the 20th century in unit record machines
for input, processing, and data storage. Early digital computers used punched cards, often prepared
using keypunch machines, as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data.
Some voting machines use punched cards.
Generation of Computer
First Generation (1941-1956)]
World War gave rise to numerous developments and started off the computer age. Electronic
Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was produced by a partnershp between University of
Pennsylvannia and the US government. It consisted of 18,000 vacuum tubes and 7000 resistors. It
was developed by John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly and was a general purpose computer.
"Von Neumann designed the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) in 1945 with
a memory to hold both a stored program as well as data." Von Neumann's computer allowed for all
the computer functions to be controlled by a single source.
Then in 1951 came the Universal Automatic Computer(UNIVAC I), designed by Remington
rand and collectively owned by US census bureau and General Electric. UNIVAC amazingly predicted
the winner of 1952, presidential elections, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In first generation computers, the operating instructions or programs were specifically built
for the task for which computer was manufactured. The Machine language was the only way to tell
these machines to perform the operations. There was great difficulty to program these computers
,and more when there were some malfunctions. First Generation computers used Vacuum tubes and
magnetic drums (for data storage).
Second Generation Computers (1956-1963)
The invention of Transistors marked the start of the second generation. These transistors
took place of the vacuum tubes used in the first generation computers. First large scale machines
were made using these technologies to meet the requirements of atomic energy laboratories. One of
the other benefits to the programming group was that the second generation replaced Machine
language with the assembly language. Even though complex in itself Assemly language was much
easier than the binary code.
Second generation computers also started showing the characteristics of modern day
computers with utilities such as printers, disk storage and operating systems. Many financial
information was processed using these computers.
In Second Generation computers, the instructions(program) could be stored inside the
computer's memory. High-level languages such as COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language)
and FORTRAN (Formula Translator) were used, and they are still used for some applications
nowdays.
Third Generation Computers (1964-1971)
Although transistors were great deal of improvement over the vacuum tubes, they generated
heat and damaged the sensitive areas of the computer. The Intergreated Circuit(IC) was invented in
1958 by Jack Kilby. It combined electronic components onto a small silicon disc, made from quartz.
More advancement made possible the fitings of even more components on a small chip or a semi
conductor. Also in third generation computers, the operating systems allowed the machines to run
many different applications. These applications were monitored and coordinated by the computer's
memory.
Fourth Generation (1971-Present)
Fourth Generation computers are the modern day computers. The Size started to go down
with the improvement in the integerated circuits. Very Large Scale(VLSI) and Ultra Large scale(ULSI)
ensured that millions of components could be fit into a small chip. It reduced the size and price of the
computers at the same time increasing power, efficiency and reliability. "The Intel 4004 chip,
developed in 1971, took the integrated circuit one step further by locating all the components of a
computer (central processing unit, memory, and input and output controls) on a minuscule chip."
Due to the reduction of cost and the availability of the computers power at a small place
allowed everyday user to benefit. First came the minicomputers, which offered users different
applications, most famous of these the word processors and spreadsheets, which could be used by
non-technical users. Video game systems like Atari 2600 generated the interest of general populace
in the computers.
In 1981, IBM introduced personal computers for home and office use. "The number of
personal computers in use more than doubled from 2 million in 1981 to 5.5 million in 1982. Ten
years later, 65 million PCs were being used." Computer size kept getting reduced during the years. It
went down from Desktop to laptops to Palmtops. Machintosh introduecd Graphic User Interface in
which the users didnt' have to type instructions but could use Mouse for the purpose.
The continued improvement allowed the networking of computers for the sharing of data.
Local Area Networks(LAN) and Wide Area Network(WAN), were potential benefits, in that they could
be implemented in corporations and everybody could share data over it. Soon the internet aand
World Wide Web appeared on the computer scene and formented the Hi-Tech revolution of 90's.
Fifth Generation (Present and Beyond)
Fifth generations computers are only in the minds of advance research scientiets and being
tested out in the laboratories. These computers will be under Artifical Intelligence(AI), They will be
able to take commands in a audio visual way and carry out instructions. Many of the operations
which requires low human intelligence will be perfomed by these computers.
Parallel Processing is coming and showing the possibiliy that the power of many CPU's can
be used side by side, and computers will be more powerful than thoes under central processing.
Advances in Super Conductor technology will greatly improve the speed of information traffic. Future
looks bright for the computers.
