First computer designed in 1832, but not built

Press, 3 December 1985, Page 18

First computer designed in 1832, but not built

The first real computer was designed just over 150 years ago by an Englishman, Charles Babbage. It was a mechanical machine, but just like today’s computers it was designed to work automatically from a series of program instructions and store the information it was working on. It would work on up to 1000 groups of 50 decimal digits.

The machine was never made because technology in, Babbage’s day was not advanced enough to manufacture the parts required for this 1832 computer. It was not until 112 years later, in 1944, that the first working computer was built. This was at Harvard University, in the United States. It was called an Automatic Sequence Con-' trolled Calculator.

Again, it was still a mechanical device, not unlike Babbage’s design. It was therefore slow and took about four seconds to perform a multiplication problem.

The problem was to get away from mechanical working. A computer needed to be without mov-

ing parts and work with electrical pulses flowing through it. The first automatic electronic computer was made two years later in Pennsylvania. It was called “Eniac,” an electronic numeral integrator and calculator. This was a huge machine. It weighed 30 tonnes. Since then this basic principle has been improved on, the result being the extremely

powerful and fast machines now in common use. One of the most important developments was the introduction of devices that could record and hold information magnetically on tapes, discs, and drums. Another important development happened in 1948 when transistors were invented. These were first used in computers in the early 1960 s to replace equipment used in earlier

machines. This invention resulted in a big reduction in the size of computers. It also greatly increased their power. Today’s computers are a far cry from the machines of the early 19505. The development of micro-electronics, 1 resulting in the silicon chip — a tiny device that can contain many thousand transistors — has led to the introduction of machines known as micro-computers. Today the ' computing power contained on a single silicon chip can be far greater than that of the first computer weighing 30 tonnes.

Many letters we receive through the mail are addressed by computers and many of our bills have been calculated by computers. The influence of computers, starts at an early age. Many schools have them.

It is hard to get away from the influence of the computer — they are everywhere.

In future editions of Junior Press we will look at other aspects of computers.