LECTURE 1 - THE HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

Computer History Museum
http://www.computerhistory.org

Computer History at Virginia Tech (lots of images)
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/

VISIBLE STORAGE - computer artifacts on display at the computer museum
http://www.computerhistory.org/VirtualVisibleStorage/entry.html

Detailed history of computing machines to 1970
http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/timeline.htm

Alternate link

PART 1 - THE AGE OF MECHANICAL COMPUTING: COMPUTERS BEFORE THE 20th CENTURY

Mechanical calculators (special-purpose computers) in the ancient world
 

• The Antikythera mechanism  - a 2,000 year old special-purpose computer (predicts positions of planets, with dials and readouts)
  http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1337165
  
   
• Blaise Pascal - mechanical calculator for addition (1642)
  
   
• Multiplying calculator - G.W. von Leibniz (1694)
  

Programmable mechanical computers

• Jacard Loom (1801) - computer driving assembly (first-generation industrial robot)
  (note used of punched cards to store the "program")
  http://www.technology.niagarac.on.ca/courses/tech238g/conne4.htm
  
   

Charles Babbage
Creator of the first complete programmable computers, beginning in the 1820s.
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/babbage.html

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html
"...He also invented the cowcatcher, dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, heliograph opthalmoscope. He also had an interest in cyphers and lock-picking..."

• The Difference engine (1822) and II (1842)
  http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/babbage/page3.asp
• The Analytical Engine - a steam-powered, complete mechanical computer plus printer
  http://www.maxmon.com/1830ad.htm

Difference Engine No. 2 reconstruction (click to enlarge)	Printer for Difference Engine and Analytical Engine
Link to movie of Difference Engine in operation	Analytical Engine component in operation
Component of the Analytical Engine	Another component of Analytical Engine

Software and programming

• Ada Byron (Lovelace) - world's first "programmer"
  (actually the person who suggested Babbage write sample programs, promoted the concepts of mechanical computing in scholarly publications, and who understood the long-term implications of computing)
  http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html
   
• 1843 article
  http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/ada-bio.html
  "...In her article, published in 1843, Lady Lovelace's prescient comments included her predictions that such a machine might be used to compose complex music, to produce graphics, and would be used for both practical and scientific use..."
   
• Not completely cool...(died before age 40)
  http://www.walrus.com/~gibralto/acorn/germ/Ada.html
  "...Lost in the space of laudanum and other drugs, she had outerspace and cyberspace visions, even believing her mind to be able to perceive God's...She was able to give up drinking and drugs for awhile, but she unfortunately she took up another addictive behavior: gambling. Since a Lady (literally in this case) couldn't be seen with a bookie, she sent Babbage with her horse bets...

The "Victorian Internet"

The telegraphic system (which consisted of telegraph wired and pneumatic tubes running throughout cities) was digital, and more like today's Internet than the phone system which replaced it

• The steam-powered Internet ("steampunk")
  Everything we think of today with the net and the web is old stuff; it all happened 150 years ago when the telegraph was invented. Online romances, chat rooms, sigs, well-paid high-tech workers, women in high-tech: all of this happened 150 years ago...
   
• Telegraph operators added their initials at the end of transmissions, to identify themselves. These signatures were called "sigs." All sorts of local abbreviations, similar to today's LOL and BTW, were invented.
   
• Meetings were held online, with hundreds of telegraph operators, strung out along a 700-mile line, in attendance.
• Friendships arose between people who never met in person.
   
• Online romances were common and sometimes, when they met for the first time, these came to an abrupt halt.
   
• Ella Cheever Thayer's novel "Wired Love" (1879) was based on online romances.
   
• An article entitled "The Dangers of Wired Love" (1886) told the story of George McCutcheon, who installed a telegraph in his newsstand and set Maggie, his 20-year old daughter, to operate it. Soon, she was flirting online with several young men. Soon, she was involved with Frank Frisbie, a married man. Father yanked out the telegraph, but Maggie found a job at a nearby telegraph office and resumed the online affair.
   
• Marriages were performed online, with the minister telegraphing the ceremony, and the bride and groom, apart in different cities, taping "I do." All of the telegraph operators along that line were present online at the wedding.
  http://www.andreas.com/faq-steamnet.html

The Victorian Internet (book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Internet

Tom Standage on "The Victorian Internet"
http://tomstandage.com/vicnet.html

Mr. Abraham Lincoln's "T-mails" (telegraphic mail)
"Just when we might think nothing new can be written about Lincoln comes Wheeler's eye-opening, highly original, and altogether captivating take on the Lincoln legacy: Old Abe as the first master of new technology."
http://www.mrlincolnstmails.com/

The first electronic "spam" message (1864)

"ON A May evening in 1864, several British politicians were disturbed by a knock at the door and the delivery of a telegram—a most unusual occurrence at such a late hour. Had war broken out? Had the queen been taken ill? They ripped open the envelopes and were surprised to find a message relating not to some national calamity, but to dentistry. Messrs Gabriel, of 27 Harley Street, advised that their dental practice would be open from 10am to 5pm until October. Infuriated, some of the recipients of this unsolicited message wrote to the Times. “I have never had any dealings with Messrs Gabriel,” thundered one of them, “and beg to know by what right do they disturb me by a telegram which is simply the medium of advertisement?” The Times helpfully reprinted the offending telegram, providing its senders with further free publicity.

This was, notes Matthew Sweet, a historian, the first example of what is known today as “spam”.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10286400

Computers and networks are forgotten for most of a century

• Report of the committee - why the Analytical Engine was never built
  "...In 1878 (7 years after Babbage's death) The Cayley committee told the government not to bother constructing Babbage's Analytical Engine..."
  http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/baas.html
  http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/contents.html
   
• **An "at the scenes" writer bemoans the neglect of Babbage's Engines
  http://www.rtpnet.org/robroy/Babbage/hawks.html
   
• Difference engines exhibited at 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Fair and many other places (but apparently nobody cared)
   
• Computers are forgotten
  http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html
  When (Charles Babbage) died in 1871, however, few people knew who he was. The Royal Society printed no obituary, and the Times ridiculed him. The parts of the Difference Engine that had seemed possible of completion in 1830 gathered dust in the Museum of King's College...In 1899 the magazine Temple Bar reported that "the present generation appears to have forgotten Babbage and his calculating machine..."

What if Baggage, Ada and the telegraphic pioneers had been successful?...and the computer age had begun in 1860?

The Age of Steampunk
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/26/the_age_of_steampunk/

A designer who specializes in creating "Steampunk" hardware
http://steampunkworkshop.com/

Steampunk magazine
http://www.steampunkmagazine.com/

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