01:198:170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Herman Hollerith, Antikythera Mechanism, Difference Engine

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: Computer Science
• Course: 01:198:170
• Professor: D Nesci

Document Summary

Early computing machines, such as the abacus were fully mechanical, no electricity. Ancient greek machines, such as the antikythera mechanism were able to predict stars, eclipses & celestial events years before they happened. Shows the digitizing of information & performing calculations in olden times. Digitizing infromation - refers to the practice of data represented as numbers. Charles babbage (1792-1871)- father of the computer age. Created the difference, analytical & difference engine ii. Never completed them, but others ended up finishing them. Difference engine- automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Derived name from the method of divided differences , a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial coefficients. Analytical engine- was a similar mechanical computer. Punch cards- a crank handle would feed cards through. Bell- to alert user when printing was done. Programming language- similar to an assembly language today. Essentially tried to improve on the difference engine i design.