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Pre-Twentieth Century: Main Article

1) Ancient civilizations used counting devices like tally sticks and abacuses to aid in basic arithmetic. The Antikythera mechanism, built around 100 BC, was an early analog computer used to calculate astronomical positions. 2) In medieval times, Europeans used checkered cloth on tables and counting rods to perform calculations. Astrolabes, invented in ancient Greece, were analog computers capable of solving spherical astronomy problems. 3) Over subsequent centuries, new mechanical aids were developed for calculations, including slide rules, planimeters, sectors, and tide-predicting machines. The differential analyzer in the late 19th century used mechanical components to solve equations through integration.

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26 views

Pre-Twentieth Century: Main Article

1) Ancient civilizations used counting devices like tally sticks and abacuses to aid in basic arithmetic. The Antikythera mechanism, built around 100 BC, was an early analog computer used to calculate astronomical positions. 2) In medieval times, Europeans used checkered cloth on tables and counting rods to perform calculations. Astrolabes, invented in ancient Greece, were analog computers capable of solving spherical astronomy problems. 3) Over subsequent centuries, new mechanical aids were developed for calculations, including slide rules, planimeters, sectors, and tide-predicting machines. The differential analyzer in the late 19th century used mechanical components to solve equations through integration.

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History

Main article: History of computing hardware


Pre-twentieth century

The Ishango bone


Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly
using one-to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was
probably a form of tally stick. Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile
Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of
items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. [4]
[5]
The use of counting rods is one example.

Suanpan (the number represented on this abacus is 6,302,715,408)


The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was used
in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards
or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered
cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to
certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money.

The ancient Greek-designedAntikythera mechanism, dating between 150 to 100 BC,


is the world's oldest analog computer.
The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest mechanical analog
"computer", according to Derek J. de Solla Price.[6] It was designed to calculate
astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreckoff the
Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated
to circa 100 BC. Devices of a level of complexity comparable to that of the
Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until a thousand years later.
Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for
astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Ab
Rayhn al-Brn in the early 11th century.[7] The astrolabe was invented in
the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BC and is often attributed
to Hipparchus. A combination of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was
effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of
problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe incorporating a
mechanical calendar computer[8][9] and gear-wheels was invented by Abi Bakr
of Isfahan, Persia in 1235.[10] Ab Rayhn al-Brninvented the first mechanical
geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe,[11] an early fixed-wired knowledge
processing machine[12] with a gear train and gear-wheels,[13] circa 1000 AD.
The sector, a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion,
trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares
and cube roots, was developed in the late 16th century and found application in
gunnery, surveying and navigation.
The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by
tracing over it with a mechanical linkage.

A slide rule
The slide rule was invented around 16201630, shortly after the publication of the
concept of the logarithm. It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing

multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales


provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well
as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and
hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Aviation is one of the few fields where
slide rules are still in widespread use, particularly for solving timedistance
problems in light aircraft. To save space and for ease of reading, these are typically
circular devices rather than the classic linear slide rule shape. A popular example is
the E6B.
In the 1770s Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll
(automata) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order
of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be
produced. In effect, it could be mechanically "programmed" to read instructions.
Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the Muse d'Art et d'Histoire
of Neuchtel, Switzerland, and still operates.[14]
The tide-predicting machine invented by Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great
utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to
automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location.
The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to
solve differential equations by integration, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to
perform the integration. In 1876 Lord Kelvin had already discussed the possible
construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output
torque of the ball-and-disk integrators.[15] In a differential analyzer, the output of one
integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The tor

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