COM SCI 31 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Eusebian Canons, Eniac, Sound
28 May 2019
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A brief history of computation: in the early days: pebbles calculus , pascal/leibniz: mechanic calculator, 17th century clock industry, 18th century textile industry. Metal rod: hit > something happens; not hit > something else happen. Credited as the first programmable devise: change the behavior without changing the whole machine. Plug in a wooden peg, change the route of a toy car > program & won"t have to rebuild the whole thing: something accurate for computing the logarithms and trigonometry. Program some gears setting: 1880s u. s. census. Completed in 1887, took 7 years to tabulate the data. Someone"s idea: encode the information on the index card into the boards with wholes: copper stick and copper circuit. War and computing canon tables: upenn. The eniac: programmers: female math majors, telegraph network. General structure of the computer hasn"t changed much from 1950s: structure. Memory: holds values, store the program itself. Central processing unit: executing the steps of the program.
