When was the first computing machine invented? How did she look? Tue history

Invention electronic computer - one of the greatest technical achievements of the second half of the twentieth century, which served as the beginning of the scientific and technological revolution. Mankind has been going to this grandiose event since ancient times. In ancient times, the simplest means of calculation were fingers and phalanges of fingers and toes. As technical devices, there were wooden sticks with notches applied to them, belts and laces with knotted knots. The development of the simplest forms of trade contributed to the invention of various accounts, one of the oldest is the abacus. This invention originated in China and was a board covered with gunpowder. Notes were made on the board that could be easily erased. If the serif wand was used once, then the board could be used multiple times. One of the varieties of the abacus was a board with indentations, into which pebbles were inserted, if necessary.

Progress does not stand still. Discoveries in one area of \u200b\u200bhuman activity very often lead to major discoveries in other areas. Thus, research in the field of astronomy contributed to the emergence of new, more complex computing devices. With the invention of the logarithm by John Napier (1614), the slide rule appeared in 1620, allowing you to quickly multiply and divide numbers. Astronomer Wilhelm Schickard (1623) and the famous French scientist Blaise Pascal (1642) were among the first inventors of the mechanical computing machine. Pascal's computing machine allows today to perform operations of addition and subtraction of multidigit numbers without the slightest error. In 1694, the famous 12-digit adding machine of the German mathematician Leibniz appeared, capable of multiplying and dividing multidigit numbers.

From 1820 to 1856, the English mathematician, mechanical engineer, inventor Charles Babbage worked on the creation of a universal analytical computer capable of performing the necessary actions on the provided data and solving arithmetic problems of varying complexity. Working on a project that was far ahead of its time, the scientist failed to achieve the goal. But created C. Babbage other computing devices, for a long time were used by the English tax services. Babbage's creation of the Difference Engine has already put him in the forefront of the creators of computing. And the basic ideas of the device and operation of the machine (the mechanism of introduction - inference, data, arithmetic device and memory, conditional transfer of control, depending on the result obtained) were so carefully developed that the first computer, which appeared 100 years later, in many ways resembled Babbage's analytical machine. He is considered the inventor of the mechanical computer.

The end of the 19th century was marked by the emergence of electrical computers. In 1875-1880. American G. Hollerith a tabulator machine was invented, designed to process information placed on punched cards. Later G. Hollerith founded a company for the production of tabulators, on its basis at the beginning of the twentieth century, the world-famous IBM company appeared. The Hollerith tabulator was the first to use electromechanical elements. Further invention and improvement of computing technology is directly related to the widest use of electricity. The creator of the automatic computing machine is considered to be the German inventor Konrad Zuse. In 1938 he created a relay electronic computing machine Z1 based on telephone relays, however, the recording device was still mechanical, a year later an improved Z2 model appeared. Two years later, Zuse presented the world's first programmed computer using binary system... Similar relay computers were created in the USA (G. Aiken). In 1944, the Mark-1 machine was transferred to Harvard University. The machines were used for calculations when creating an atomic bomb and calculating the trajectories of missiles. The first computer was created by Professor J. Ataiasov and his assistant K. Beri during the Second World War. True, the car was not yet universal. In 1946, the first universal computer (ENIAC) appeared in the USA. It was designed under the direction of J. Eckert and J. Mauchly. From that moment on, the era of computers began. In 1949 the Englishman M. Wilkes created the EDSAK machine, in the memory of which the program was saved. In 1951, the UNIAC computer was put into serial production in America. The first computer in the USSR was created in Ukraine in 1951 - "MEVM", in 1952 "BEC" was built under the leadership of academician S. Lebedev. The creation of a computer is the best invention of the 20th century.

The prototype calculator, the adding machine, has existed for over 300 years. Nowadays, you can make complex mathematical calculations with ease by silently pressing the keys of the same calculator or computer, mobile phone, smartphone (on which the corresponding applications are installed). Previously, this procedure was time consuming and inconvenient. But nevertheless, the appearance of the first calculating device made it possible to save on the costs of mental labor, and also pushed to further progress. Therefore, it is interesting to know who invented the adding machine and when it happened.

The advent of the adding machine

Who invented the adding machine first? This person was the German scientist Gottfried Leibniz. The great philosopher and mathematician designed a device that consisted of a movable carriage and a stepped roller. G. Leibniz presented to the world in 1673.

His ideas were adopted by the French engineer Thomas Xavier. He invented a calculating machine for performing the four steps of arithmetic. The setting of the numbers was carried out by moving the gear along the axis until the desired numbers appeared in the slot, with each step roller corresponding to one digit of numbers. The device was powered by rotating a hand lever, which in turn moved the gears and pinions to produce the desired result. It was the first adding machine to mass production.

Device modifications

The Englishman J. Edmondson was the one who invented the adding machine with a circular mechanism (the carriage performs an action in a circle). This device was created in 1889 based on the apparatus of Thomas Xavier. However, there were no special changes in the design of the device, and this device turned out to be as bulky and inconvenient as its predecessors. The subsequent analogs of the device also sinned the same.

It is well known who invented the adding machine with numeric keypad... It was the American F. Baldwin. In 1911, he introduced a counting device, in which a set of numbers was made in vertical digits containing 9 digits.

The production of such calculating devices in Europe was established by the engineer Karl Lindström, who created a device that was more compact in size and original in design. Here, the stepped rollers were already positioned vertically, not horizontally, and, in addition, these elements were arranged in a checkerboard pattern.

On the territory of the Soviet Union, the first adding machine was created at the Schetmash plant named after Dzerzhinsky in Moscow in 1935. It was called a keyboard (KSM). Their production continued until 1961 and then resumed in the form of new models of semi-automatic machines.

In the same years, automatic devices were created, such as "VMM-2" and "Zoemtron-214", which were used in various fields, while the work was characterized by great noise and inconvenience, but this was the only device at that time that helped to cope with a large volume of calculations.

Now these devices are considered a rarity, they can be found only as a museum exhibit or in the collection of lovers of old technology. We have considered the question of who invented the adding machine, and also provided information about the history of the technical development of this device and we hope that this information will be useful to readers.

The German astronomer Johannes Kepler often faced in his research with great problems, the solution of which required a lot of work and time. Fortunately, he had a colleague who figured out how to help grief: Wilhelm Schickard, a professor of mathematics at Tübingen, invented the first certified computer with gears. But, alas, Kepler failed to take advantage of the novelty - the model burned out in a fire. Only at the end of the 1950s. it was possible to create a copy of Schikard's car on the basis of the preserved drawings and prove its efficiency.

Filial help

To help his father, a tax collector, in his tedious calculations, Vlez Pascal developed the Pascaline, a calculating machine capable of adding and subtracting eight-digit numbers, automatically performing decimal transfers. Until the middle of the 17th century. 50 of these machines were designed, one of which became the property of the Swedish Queen Christina.

Helping humanity

The founder and first president of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, not only invented differential and integral calculus, but also presented to the scientific world in 1673 an adding machine, whose mechanical device with cylindrical rollers and a carriage was much more perfect than that of Schickard and Pascal. In this machine, Leibniz was the first to use the binary number invented by him, on which the work of future computers is based.

Start of serial production

On the basis of the Leibniz arithmometer, Charles Xavier Thoma de Colmar constructed in 1818 a calculating machine capable of also extracting square roots, raising to a power, and calculating the values \u200b\u200bof trigonometric functions. Colmar's adding machine was reliable and accurate to the twentieth decimal place. In 1821, the inventor started mass production. In 1833, the British mathematician Charles Babbage invented the first programmed calculating machine. Thus, he became the spiritual father of digital computing machines. However, until the moment when Konrad Zuse created the first modern computermore than 100 years have passed.

• 1853: Georg Scheitz invented the first calculating machine with a printing device in Stockholm.
• 1873: Mechanical engineer Salling builds a calculating machine with a keyboard in Würzburg.
• 1890: Herman Hollerith received a patent for a computer using punched cards.
• 1967: Englishman Norman Kitz created the first desktop electronic calculator, the Anita MK VIII.

Appendix 4

Test on the topic:

"History of the development of computer technology"

Choose the correct answer

1. An electronic computer is:

a) a complex of hardware and software tools information processing;

b) complex technical means for automatic processing of information;

c) a model that establishes the composition, order and principles of interaction of its components.

2. Personal Computer - this:

a) a computer for an individual buyer;

b) a computer that provides a dialogue with the user;

c) desktop or personal computer that meets the requirements of general availability and versatility

3. Inventor of a mechanical device for adding numbers:

a) P. Norton;

b) B. Pascal;

c) G. Leibniz;

d) D. Napier.

4. The scientist who combined the idea of \u200b\u200ba mechanical machine with the idea of \u200b\u200bprogrammed control:

a) C. Babbage (mid-19th century);

b) J. Atanosov (30th year of the XX century);

c) K. Beri (XX century);

d) B. Pascal (mid-17th century)

5. The first programmer in the world is:

a) G. Leibniz;
b) C. Babbage;

c) J. von Neumann;

d) A. Lovelace.

6. The country where the first computer was created that implements the principles of program control:

b) England;

c) in Germany

7. Founder of domestic computer technology:

8. The city in which the first domestic computer was created:

b) Moscow;

in Saint-Petersburg;

yekaterinburg city.

9. Means of communication of the user with a computer of the second generation:

a) punched cards;

b) magnetic tokens;

c) magnetic tapes;

d) magnetic tokens.

10. The first tool for counting

a) sticks;

b) pebbles;

c) human hand;

d) seashells.

11. The numbering system in Russian accounts:

a) binary;

b) fivefold;

c) octal;

d) decimal.

12. Scope of the first generation computers:

a) design;

b) engineering and scientific calculations;

c) banking;

d) architecture and construction.

13. The generation of computers, during which high-level programming languages \u200b\u200bbegan to appear:

a) the first;

b) the second;

c) third;

d) fourth.

14. Computer generation, element base which were the transistors:

a) the first;

b) the second;

c) third;

d) fourth.

15. Programming language in machines of the first generation:

a) machine code;

b) Assembler;

c) BASIC

d) Fortran

Select all correct answers:

16. Computer elements of the third generation:

a) integrated circuits;

b) microprocessors

c) CRT display

d) magnetic disks

e) manipulator "mouse"

17. Elements of Babbage's analytical engine

a) input block;

b) microprocessor;

c) output block;

d) office;

e) mill;

f) block for printing the result;

g) arithmetic device;

h) memory;

18. Computer elements of the fourth generation:

a) integrated circuits;

b) microprocessors;

c) color display;

d) transistors;

e) manipulator "joystick";

f) plotters.

19. The very first devices for counting

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