EECS 1520 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ada Lovelace, Harvard Mark I

• School: York University
• Department: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Course: EECS 1520
• Professor: Lew Lowther

Document Summary

Computing systems are dynamic entities used to solve problems and interact with their environment. They consist of devices, programs, and data: hardware: physical elements of a computing system, software: programs that provide the instructions for a computer to execute, data: information in a form a computer can use. Abstraction: a mental model that removes complex details. A device for manipulating and dealing with numbers: pascaline (blaise pacal 1623-1662) First mechanical adder: staffelwalze (gottfried wilhelm von leibniz 1646-1716, loom (joseph jacquard 1801) Could weave patterns in cloth by programming the loom: difference engine (charles babbage, 1792-1871) Didn"t acquire the tools to built this machine: analytical engine (charles babbage) Didn"t take up: augusta ada byron (lovelace) One of the first programmer to set up the machine to do her work: adding machine (william burroughs, 1857-1898) Help to predict in the future: electro-mechanical tabulator (herman hollerith, 1860-1929) Early history of computing: alan turing (1912-1954) Turing machine: an abstract mathematical model (simple and easy)