Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: programmer cxuan (ID:cxuangoodjob), "the first step in Learning computer well", "computer History (2)", author: cxuan

Computers have been developed for half a century. We can enjoy the fruits of the rapid development of computers from birth, but we have never been in awe of computers. Why? How can we be in awe because we don't know anything about computers? How can we talk about awe as if everything is predestined and comes naturally? This sentence may be a little arrogant, but let's reflect on who really knows about computers. This is not only our problem, but also the school's problem, but also the industry's problem. Because the university has never really understand the computer past life this course, either speak what C language, or speak Java, we do not understand these things, so why should we learn these things? You don't even know this girl, so how can you have a relationship with her? Someone is bound to say that you can get married without feelings.

If we only talk about the results, then history is a false proposition, if everything is result-oriented, then the process is the body of tomorrow night, no one remembers, no one cares, then human beings are just a name on the tombstone.

So I think computer history is a course that we should really treat well, and it is also a period of history that we should understand seriously.

In fact, software development is like building a car, it does not have car design drawings from the beginning, nor is it possible to install wheels, body and door engines step by step. It is likely to pass an one-wheeled unicycle, then a two-wheeled bicycle, then a three-wheeled tricycle, then a two-wheeled motorcycle, a tricycle and so on.

In the course of the development of the computer, it evolved step by step, not like a hericium Erinaceus popping out of a crack in a stone. If you have experienced a complete software development process, then you will know a complete development process: from software requirements analysis-> software programming-> drawing various class diagrams, sequence diagrams, ER diagrams, etc.-> software development-> software testing-> software launch-> operation and maintenance. These processes do not emerge out of thin air, but have evolved over the past few decades.

I'll give you an example and you'll see that maybe some readers know the difference machine (it doesn't matter, it doesn't affect our follow-up understanding), as shown in the following figure.

This is the first generation of industrial computing product-differential machine designed and manufactured by Mr. Charles Babbage, who is known as the computer pioneer. The difference machine saved the manual counting and completed the complex calculation by looking up the table, but Mr. Babbage was not satisfied with the difference machine. On this basis, he constantly improved and tried again and again, and then put forward the analytical engine and put forward three core ideas. these core ideas are not out of date even in today's society:

1. It can solve all kinds of problems and is not limited to calculation.

2. It should have a general solution to describe the process of solving the problem.

3. Its calculation and storage are separate.

Next, let's explore this period of computer history with me.

Long before the emergence of computers, human beings had the demand for computing devices, and human beings needed a device that could support a large number of calculations, so the abacus, a computing device, appeared. The abacus has a very long history, dating back to 2500 BC. The abacus is a manual calculator that can visualize the results of calculations, not just in our minds. It is also important that the abacus can store the current state. Storing the current state was a very novel idea in the context of that time, which also provided a theoretical idea for later devices such as hard drives.

In fact, human beings have a special fondness for computing a long time ago, and can even be traced back to the logarithmic table and trigonometric function period in the 16th and 17th centuries. Arithmetic operations are completed by addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but the calculation at this time is limited to the mathematical period and has little impact on other fields. By the late 18th century, some special tables had been drawn, and the desired output could be obtained by looking up the table. By this time, mathematical calculation has played a role in nautical meters, astronomy, insurance, civil engineering and other fields.

Since this period was the period of great discovery of navigation, and the British Empire had a very strong dominance in navigation, the British government hoped to compile a nautical table of the nautical calendar, so the project began to be published in 1766 and has never been interrupted.

The nautical calendar is made up of a large number of calculators all over the UK, many of whom have devoted their lives to the compilation of nautical calendars, but it is a pity that the names of these people have hardly been recorded in history.

During this period, a great man named Charles Babbage appeared. Babbage came from a family of celebrities and graduated from Cambridge University. Cambridge University's mathematics major is already among the top in Britain. But Babbage found that the professors of Britain's top universities did not know as much as one of his own college students, so he and several friends formed the Analytical Society. A major reform of mathematics at Cambridge University has been successfully carried out. Babbage became an English gentleman after graduation (it turned out that a gentleman could be called a profession).

The story of Babbage and the difference engine begins with the French Revolution. After the overthrow of the monarchy, the newly established National Assembly carried out drastic reforms in many ways, including tax reform and the unification of weights and measures. At the same time, the original mathematical tables are no longer applicable and need to be recompiled. The arduous task fell to the mathematician Gaspard de Proney. Babbage visited Paris in 1819 and met a large number of French scientists. It was during this visit that Babbage came into contact with Dropney's French watchmaking project. During this period, he began to have a strong interest in the problems in watchmaking and how to eliminate them, so Babbage also participated in the watchmaking process. When he participated, he found that the process of watchmaking was extremely cumbersome. So how to improve and optimize the way of tabulation and whether to use a machine to replace manual watchmaking has become Babbage's lifelong pursuit.

Babbage named the machine he designed as the difference machine, and Babbage used his excellent communication skills to promote the difference machine (so programmers can not only write code, but also be able to express their own code). In 1822 Babbage wrote to the president of the Royal Society, proposing to ask the British government to fund him to build the difference machine. The following year (1823) the British government contributed 1700 pounds and assured him that it would continue to fund it if necessary (whether there was a prototype for angel investors).

However, despite his deep mathematical and philosophical attainments, Babbage underestimated the engineering complexity of the differential machine, and Babbage did not envision the budget control and technical details, but he persisted despite the difficulties. in the context of the environment at that time, building a differential machine was as difficult as building a computer in the mid-1940s. At this time, Babbage faced two huge challenges, one was to design a new machine that had never existed in the world, and the other was the technology needed to develop the machine. It's like writing C while fiddling with hardware.

Babbage drew hundreds of mechanical drawings for the differential machine and wrote thousands of pages of notes, all of which were kept at the Science Museum in London during the 1820s. Babbage is committed to finding the technology that can be used on the differential machine, but unfortunately there is almost no technology that can be used. During this period, the British government has been funding Babbage's difference project, which is said to be as much as 17000 pounds, and Babbage himself has invested a lot of money.

In 1833 Babbage made a prototype of a differential machine, but the function of this machine is still very different from that of human manual tabulation, and the differential machine at this time has no printing function, so it is not mass-produced. The differential machine is still on permanent display at the Science Museum in London.

When the difference machine was not yet in mass production, Babbage had a new idea: he imagined that a brand new machine could be built to perform all the functions of the difference machine and perform any calculation done by human beings. when he continued to apply for financial assistance from the British government, the British government refused, which seriously damaged the British government's confidence in its project, so Babbage has not received any assistance since.

Babbage has been interested in large-scale information processing all his life, and that interest is also reflected in bankers' clearinghouses.

As the use of cheques became very common in the 18th century, in order to deal with the increasing number of cheques in business activities, bankers' clearinghouses appeared. bank staff must send the customer's cheque to the bank that issued it in order to cash it, so each bank has its own money runner, who is the commissioner who goes to the bank to cash for customers. However, it is not a way for long-distance money runners to cash their customers every day, so the work of money runners was simplified in the 1870s. All money runners agreed to meet at one place to cash all checks and cash, thus saving money runners time spent on the road. This form continued to evolve, and eventually in the 1830s, London banks set up bankers' clearinghouses. All the money runners can cash checks and cash directly at the clearing house.

Due to the strong secrecy of the work of the banker's clearing house, it is generally not disclosed to the outside world, and the outside world does not know what the internal working mechanism of the clearing house is. The manager of the banker's clearinghouse was a very prestigious figure, and Babbage was attracted by the concept of the clearinghouse, so Babbage tried every means to find out about the clearinghouse. He wrote to the clearinghouse manager expressing his need to go into the clearinghouse. The steward agreed to his request but warned him not to reveal anything about the clearinghouse. But our dear Babbage completely ignored the request of the steward, who described the specific work of the clearinghouse in detail in his book on the economy of Machinery and Manufacturing.

Another institution very similar to the banker's clearinghouse is the railway clearinghouse, or in the 19th century, the British industrial revolution greatly developed the railway industry, making the railway clearinghouse quickly become one of the largest data processing institutions in the world. By 1870, railway clearinghouses employ more than 1300 people and process nearly 5 million transactions a year.

Another invention that requires large-scale data processing is the Telegraph, which was originally a solution to the communication problem of the railway system, because many people worried that accidents would occur when two passenger cars were driving toward each other from the track. so engineers developed an electrical communication system, and people soon discovered the commercial value of this system, so telephone poles sprang up along the railway overnight.

Although the telegram is transmitted by electrical signals, it still depends on human operation, and most of the telegrams are sent by women, because it is generally believed that women are more suitable for operating precision instruments than men. At first, sending a telegram was very expensive, but with the introduction of the Telegraph network, telegrams became cheaper and more numerous. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Central Telegraph Office had employed at least 4500 telegraphers, sending and receiving between 120000 and 160000 telegrams a day, making it the largest Telegraph office in the world.

By the end of the 19th century, a lot of computing devices will be used in science and engineering, but computing devices are very rare in government, industry and households. The Constitution of the United States faces a very serious problem from the 1890 census, that is, the growing population problem. The US government requires a census to be conducted every 10 years.

But with the bottleneck in computational efficiency, it took seven years to complete the 1880 census and even 13 years to complete the 1890 census. It was outrageous for grandma to open the door to the next round of censuses every 10 years.

So the Census Bureau found Dr. Herman Holly, who invented the punched card tabulator.

The principle of the punch card tabulator is this: Herman first transformed the punched paper tape into a punched card to meet the needs of population data collection. Because each person's survey data have a number of different items, such as gender, place of origin, age and so on. Herman arranged each person's survey items on a card in turn, and then punched holes in the location of the corresponding items according to the results of the survey. For example, under the "gender" section of punched cards, there are two options for "male" and "female"; under the "age" column, there are a series of options ranging from "0" to "over 70", and so on. According to the specific situation of each survey object, the statistician can punch a small hole in the corresponding position of each column of the punched card. Each card represents a citizen's personal file.

Dr Herman's ingenious design is automatic statistics. He installed a set of small cups full of mercury on the machine, and the perforated cards were placed on these cups. At the top of the card are several rows of carefully tuned probes connected to one end of the circuit and the mercury cup to the other end of the circuit. Similar to the principle of Jacquard jacquard perforated tape: as long as a probe hits a hole in the card, it will automatically fall, contact with mercury to turn on the current, and start the counting device to move forward one scale. Thus it can be seen that Hollerith punch card also expresses binary information: the number of connected circuits with holes means that the survey item is "yes" ("1"), and the number of circuits that cannot be connected without holes is "none" ("0").

Punched card tabulation machines are about ten times more efficient than manual popularity, allowing the census to be completed in just two years, saving the Census Office millions of dollars.

Then many companies begin to realize the value of using such computing devices, and they can boost profits by automating labor and data-intensive tasks. This is a great alternative to jobs that require a large amount of computational labor, such as accountants and some warehouse managers.

Herman was aware of this problem and founded the watchmaking Machine Company in 1896, which became the predecessor of IBM, which laid the foundation for the development of electronic computers.

Herman Holly recognized the flaws in the census and founded a watchmaking company that became the predecessor of IBM and laid the foundation for the development of electronic computers.

Before we talk about the development of electronic computers, let's take a look at these four companies. It can be said that without them as pioneers, electronic computers would not have developed so rapidly. The four companies are:

Rimington & rand co.

Burrows adding machine co., Ltd.

National Cash Teller (NCR)

IBM

In order to understand the development of computers, you have to know how the industry developed, so you can't get around these four companies and their rise in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Up to now, the computers we use in the office have nothing more than these functions: using word processing programs and mail systems to write, send and receive emails, and using storage functions to store useful personnel information such as names through a database. Report accounting through spreadsheets, calculation of wages, and so on.

The pioneers who can meet these functions are the four companies mentioned above. Rimington Rand is a leader in document processing and information storage, they are the industry's leading supplier of typewriters and archiving systems, Burrows is a leader in the market for simple adders, IBM dominates the bookkeeping market for punching machines, and NCR is used primarily in the production of cash cashiers and later as a supplier of bookkeeping machines.

Typewriter when it comes to typewriter, I have to say two protagonists: one is a woman and the other is a scribe.

The advent of typewriters has set a precedent for women to enter the office and the workplace. More than a century before the advent of typewriters, office workers were almost entirely male, perhaps because the mind was not liberated, or because there was no medium for women to enter the office. but the advent of typewriters changed all that.

Before the advent of typewriters, the main role of working in the office was scribes, that is, clerks who wrote documents. in the 19th century, almost all business documents were written by hand and pen and paper. Although typewriters also played an important role in this period, typewriters did not become a substitute for handwriting at this time, mainly for two reasons: first, the typing efficiency of typewriters at that time was very slow. The efficiency of using a typewriter is not as efficient as the average human speed of 25 words per minute Second, because the spindles of typewriters at that time were easily stuck together, because in the early days, typewriters arranged in sequence, such as S and T, D and E. As a result, typewriters in the early 19th century did not achieve commercial success.

The first commercial success was a QWERTYUIOP typewriter introduced by Rimington Rand in 1874. Because the printer was expensive to make and could not find an effective customer market, the first customers were journalists, lawyers, editors, writers and priests. So it was not until 1880, with the production cost of Rimington typewriters getting lower and lower, that the annual output of typewriters exceeded 1000 units, that they became the actual monopoly of the typewriter market, and entered the office in the same year. This kind of printer quickly became the most widely used writing tool besides handwritten letters, and the emergence of typewriters improved people's work efficiency. And be able to read it effortlessly (because handwritten letters take a lot of time to identify what is written). At the same time, the keyboard layout of QWERTYUIOP is still in use today.

However, the typewriter is a sophisticated equipment that is prone to failure, so it requires a series of trained maintenance personnel. So Rimington began to follow the example of Shengjia Manufacturing Company (sewing machine manufacturer) to set up branches in major cities in the United States, mainly to facilitate the local sale of typewriters and to provide maintenance services. By 1890, Rimington had become a very large enterprise, and there were many competitors whose sales of typewriters rose year after year, before and after the outbreak of World War I. typewriters have become the most widely used office equipment, accounting for half of all office supplies sales, and the price has gradually dropped from a few hundred dollars at that time to dozens of dollars.

With the market, there will be training demand, which is an immutable truth. If you are only a novice who does not know how to use a typewriter, your typing efficiency is still much slower than that of handwriting, but for people who have been trained, your typing efficiency is incomparable to that of ordinary scribes, so some institutions have begun to train young people to become typists, and many schools have set up related majors, and the threshold for this kind of work is relatively low. Most people can get started directly after training, so it directly promotes the majority of women to choose to become typists, and with the change of times, the number of male staff is no longer enough to meet the needs of the office. these two points have directly contributed to the entry of more and more women into the workplace.

Because for the society at that time, tapping the keyboard was still a profession of equality between men and women.

The rapid development of printers has directly led to the emergence of carbon paper and filing systems, which are also the main business and products of Rimington Rand, so the company is an one-size-fits-all supplier of office equipment.

Adding machine if the typewriter is used to record information, carbon paper is used to output information, and archived information is used to store information, then the adding machine is responsible for processing information. The first generation of commercial adder was invented by Thomas de Colmar in 1820. It is a four-arithmetic adder. This kind of equipment cannot be mass-produced because it is made by hand. It may produce one or two in a month, and its performance is too poor to meet the needs of the office. However, it can support enough precision, so there is a certain demand in insurance companies and engineering enterprises, but it does not meet the needs of ordinary bookkeepers.

Until the 1880s, there was a new development of the adding machine, when the office adding machine was faced with two problems, the first problem was to improve the digital input speed, and the second problem was to be able to keep the transaction records of the adding machine so that the financial system could keep it.

Dole E. Feldt and William S. Burrows, both typical inventors and entrepreneurs, have solved these two problems. Dole first solved the first problem, that is, to improve the speed of digital input. Dole's addition machine is button-driven, which is different from Thomas's four arithmetic adder. In addition to making and selling adders, Dole also founded the Compto training School, where young people who have just graduated from high school can master the use of adding machines after months of intensive training, and very fast. But unfortunately, this kind of Compto calculator was finally engulfed by the tide of history.

The second key problem with the addition machine was the need to print the calculation results, which was solved by the addition machine made by William S. Burrows, who began to develop an addition machine suitable for banks at the age of 24. This kind of addition machine can not only improve the input speed of numbers, but also print calculation results. he also applied for a patent for this product and founded four computer companies. unfortunately, Burrows died young at the age of 43. but the addition machine he made became popular in the market. in 1904, the company founded by Burrows changed its name to Burroughs French Machine Company. In addition, the output has been raised to 8000 units within a year and is rising year by year, and a number of training schools have been established. In the first decade of the 20th century, there were many addition mechanism manufacturers in the United States, but only Burrows made it to the computer age.

NCR in the history of the late 19th century, the sales of office equipment is very important, need to analyze the needs of customers, provide after-sales security, user training, etc. These models are mainly pioneered by the National Cash Teller Company (NCR), the cashier is a machine with records, cash settlement and other business, if an office equipment company needs to establish its own sales model Then he will choose to hire the relevant business staff of NCR company directly. The National Cash Teller Company was founded by John H. Patterson in 1884. This guy is called the father of modern sales, which shows his position in the field of sales.

Like typewriters and addition machines, there has been no shortage of attempts to develop cash cashiers since the 19th century, when a man named James Ritty suspected that employees had cheated him into making false accounts, so he invented a machine that would record transaction data when completing a comparison transaction to beware of fraud. Ritty tried to commercialize her invention, but failed, but Ritty sold her company to Patterson, who later modified it and renamed the company National Cash Cash machines. Two years later, the company sold more than 1000 units a year.

NCR is not bought like a commodity, it needs to be sold, which requires salespeople to have good business literacy and sales ability, so he has set up the most effective sales team in the United States.

Under Patterson's leadership, NCR dominates the global cashier market and is growing at an alarming rate. By 1910, NCR sold 100000 units and employed more than 5000 people, and when Patterson died in 1922, NCR sold his 2 million teller machine. Although NCR was so successful, it still did not become a player in the computer industry. After Patterson's death, NCR expanded the field of bookkeeping machines, and by the early 1820s, the company no longer used the name National Cash Teller Company and changed its name to NCR. NCR's bookkeeping machine is as complex as Burrows's addition machine.

Although NCR did not become a participant in the computer wave, he still left a valuable asset for the computer age, because he created the marketing method of business machines and determined the sales practice model.

They offered future generations a career called a salesman.

If IBM didn't know this history, who would have thought that the old Watson of IBM was a salesman? Watson became a bookkeeper as soon as he graduated, but Watson had no interest in a sedentary office, so he chose to sell piano and organ, based on which Watson developed a set of sales skills and communication skills.

In 1895, Watson got a job selling NCR cash machines and became a salesman. With Watson's excellent personal skills, his business has been rising rapidly, but when Watson's unemployment climbed to its peak, the 39-year-old Watson was directly fired by the capricious Passente. However, talent is not afraid of career, and soon he became the president of C-T-R. This is a company that has obtained the patent of Holly punch card system.

Before 1905, typewriters and adders have become an important part of economic development, but punch card equipment is still in its infancy. But for he Leli's punching card equipment, the census became his opportunity. The 1900 census kept Ho Leli's watchmaking company for another three years, but as soon as the census was over, he Leli's company was in trouble again.

In 1905, unable to reach an agreement on cooperation, he Leli terminated his business relationship with the US Census Bureau and devoted all his energies to the commercial research and development of watchmakers. Later, the US Census Bureau hired engineer James Bowers to improve he Leli's watchmaking machine. Bowles was also an inventor and entrepreneur, and he soon became a competitor to him.

During this period, he Leli has been improving his business machines, producing automation products that have played an important role in the following 20 years. There are three kinds of commercial punching machines: key punching machines, watchmaking machines and sorting machines. Later, all punch card offices were equipped with at least one kind of equipment, and larger offices were equipped with a variety of equipment. The advent of automatic machines has put tabulator companies in a leading position. In the next few years, he Leli's company was successfully transformed into an office equipment company. By 1911, 51-year-old Herman Holly was already a wealthy entrepreneur, but his health was deteriorating. Later, on the doctor's advice, he sold the company to Charles R. Flint, the "father of trust", who planned to merge watchmaking company, slide rule company and international time recording company to form Compute-watchmaking-recording company, or C-T-R. In 1924, he Leli witnessed the renaming of C-T-R to IBM. He died before the American stock market crash in 1929. He did not experience the Great Depression, nor did he witness the rebirth of IBM.

Watson has no shortage of jobs since he was laid off by NCR, but Watson is ambitious and doesn't want to be a monthly-paid manager. Although C-T-R 's business is much smaller than NCR, Watson knows the potential of their equipment better than Flint and Holly. After negotiation, Watson received only a small base salary, but earned a commission of 5% of the company's profits. Watson introduced the sales experience created at NCR to C-T-R and created the sales area, commission and quota system. Watson spent about five years changing the culture and prospects of C-T-R to make the company the top in the office equipment industry. In 1924, C-T-R officially changed its name to "International Business machines Corporation" (IBM), intended to build a sunset enterprise, from today's point of view. IBM is still an excellent enterprise, which has existed for more than 100 years, and it can be said that the sun will never set.

IBM survived the Great Depression, thanks to the business model of punching cards, where punching machines are rented rather than sold to customers, and even if IBM fails to get new customers during the Great Depression, existing customers will continue to rent existing equipment, ensuring a steady income for the company. The rental of IBM equipment can basically repay the cost in two or three years, and the rest is profit. The service life of most of the equipment is 7 years, or even 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. The second reason IBM has maintained financial stability is the sale of punch cards, which are so precise that other companies cannot copy the paper. In the 1930s, IBM cards sold 3 billion cards a year, accounting for 10 per cent of its revenue and 30-40 per cent of its profits.

Although IBM competed with some other business tycoons in the punch card market, all kinds of products launched by IBM did not lose ground, coupled with an excellent sales team, making Watson one of the most influential businessmen in the United States.

The most glorious era of IBM is far from coming.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.