Prehistory of computing

Ideals made machines into a success

• in the 18th century, machines were for entertainment

  • autonomous piano player
  • mechanical turk

• Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

  • “On the economy of machines and manufacturers”
  • son of a rich banker dude from London, mathematician
  • good ideas, started working on Difference Engine & thought of Analytical Engine
  • never actually produced a machine, so the government basically told him to piss off and stopped giving him money

• Frederik Taylor (1856-1915)

  • “Shop management”, “The principles of scientific management”
  • tried to systematically describe what systems do and how, using flowcharts to solve problems

• Henri Fayol (1841-1925)

  • “Administration industrielle et generale“

• Trust in numbers & machines

  • initially, trust in machines was not obvious
  • they were built to fool or destroy you
  • trust grew during the 19th century
  • US census in 1890 — government counted people, and Hollerith machines were used to count and produce a table

• Three traditions

  • Administration — money, (felt) urgency, outlines, practices
    • table making, printing, punched card typing, calculators, typewriters
    • Sorting, counting, and tabulating machines
    • The office in 1876 vs Office in 1920
    • Efficiency movement
  • Process control — outlines, technology (analog), practices
    • processes in mining & oil companies
    • Shell with their huge factories, Hoogovens
    • Edison or DSM
  • Science and engineering — concepts, calculations, outlines
    • human computers active in weather prediction calc, mechanical calc, aeronautics, econometry, telephones, military applications
    • Douglas Hartree: “Numerical analysis”
    • Differential analyser — making calculations easier
  • all three were concerned with outlines — plans for how the current systems and processes could be improved

• this set the pre-war scene for development during the war — e.g. Colossus in Poland

• people wanted to build cross-tradition machines, but why? it would be too expensive…so they didn’t