Lecture 1 - Prehistory of computing.md (2243B)
1 +++ 2 title = "Lecture 1 - Prehistory of computing" 3 +++ 4 # Prehistory of computing 5 6 Ideals made machines into a success 7 8 - in the 18th century, machines were for entertainment 9 - autonomous piano player 10 - mechanical turk 11 - Charles Babbage (1791-1871) 12 - "On the economy of machines and manufacturers” 13 - son of a rich banker dude from London, mathematician 14 - good ideas, started working on Difference Engine & thought of Analytical Engine 15 - never actually produced a machine, so the government basically told him to piss off and stopped giving him money 16 - Frederik Taylor (1856-1915) 17 - "Shop management", "The principles of scientific management" 18 - tried to systematically describe what systems do and how, using flowcharts to solve problems 19 - Henri Fayol (1841-1925) 20 - “Administration industrielle et generale" 21 22 - Trust in numbers & machines 23 - initially, trust in machines was not obvious 24 - they were built to fool or destroy you 25 - trust grew during the 19th century 26 - US census in 1890 — government counted people, and Hollerith machines were used to count and produce a table 27 - Three traditions 28 - Administration — **money**, (felt) urgency, outlines, practices 29 - table making, printing, punched card typing, calculators, typewriters 30 - Sorting, counting, and tabulating machines 31 - The office in 1876 vs Office in 1920 32 - Efficiency movement 33 - Process control — outlines, technology (analog), practices 34 - processes in mining & oil companies 35 - Shell with their huge factories, Hoogovens 36 - Edison or DSM 37 - Science and engineering — concepts, calculations, outlines 38 - human computers active in weather prediction calc, mechanical calc, aeronautics, econometry, telephones, military applications 39 - Douglas Hartree: "Numerical analysis" 40 - Differential analyser — making calculations easier 41 - all three were concerned with outlines — plans for how the current systems and processes could be improved 42 - this set the pre-war scene for development during the war — e.g. Colossus in Poland 43 - people wanted to build cross-tradition machines, but why? it would be too expensive…so they didn't