Lecture 1.html (3741B)
1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 3 <html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/><meta name="exporter-version" content="Evernote Mac 7.9 (457563)"/><meta name="altitude" content="-1.017717242240906"/><meta name="author" content="Alex Balgavy"/><meta name="created" content="2018-04-13 10:27:24 +0000"/><meta name="latitude" content="52.37361054567599"/><meta name="longitude" content="4.836365138715647"/><meta name="source" content="desktop.mac"/><meta name="updated" content="2018-05-30 14:39:41 +0000"/><title>Lecture 1 - Prehistory of computing</title></head><body><div><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prehistory of computing</span></div><div>Ideals made machines into a success</div><ul><li><div>in the 18th century, machines were for entertainment</div></li></ul><ul><ul><li><div>autonomous piano player</div></li><li><div>mechanical turk</div></li></ul><li><div>Charles Babbage (1791-1871)</div></li><ul><li><div>"On the economy of machines and manufacturers”</div></li><li><div>son of a rich banker dude from London, mathematician</div></li><li><div>good ideas, started working on Difference Engine & thought of Analytical Engine</div></li><li><div> never actually produced a machine, so the government basically told him to piss off and stopped giving him money</div></li></ul><li><div>Frederik Taylor (1856-1915)</div></li><ul><li><div>"Shop management", "The principles of scientific management"</div></li><li><div>tried to systematically describe what systems do and how, using flowcharts to solve problems</div></li></ul><li><div>Henri Fayol (1841-1925)</div></li><ul><li><div>“Administration industrielle et generale"</div></li><li><div><br/></div></li></ul></ul><ul><li><div>Trust in numbers & machines</div></li><ul><li><div>initially, trust in machines was not obvious</div></li><li><div>they were built to fool or destroy you</div></li><li><div>trust grew during the 19th century</div></li><li><div>US census in 1890 — government counted people, and Hollerith machines were used to count and produce a table</div></li></ul></ul><ul><li><div>Three traditions</div></li><ul><li><div>Administration — <span style="font-weight: bold;">money</span>, (felt) urgency, outlines, practices</div></li><ul><li><div>table making, printing, punched card typing, calculators, typewriters</div></li><li><div>Sorting, counting, and tabulating machines</div></li><li><div>The office in 1876 vs Office in 1920</div></li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li><div>Efficiency movement</div></li></ul><li><div>Process control — outlines, technology (analog), practices</div></li><ul><li><div>processes in mining & oil companies</div></li><li><div>Shell with their huge factories, Hoogovens</div></li><li><div>Edison or DSM</div></li></ul><li><div>Science and engineering — concepts, calculations, outlines</div></li><ul><li><div>human computers active in weather prediction calc, mechanical calc, aeronautics, econometry, telephones, military applications</div></li><li><div>Douglas Hartree: "Numerical analysis"</div></li><li><div>Differential analyser — making calculations easier</div></li></ul><li><div>all three were concerned with outlines — plans for how the current systems and processes could be improved</div></li></ul><li><div>this set the pre-war scene for development during the war — e.g. Colossus in Poland</div></li><li><div>people wanted to build cross-tradition machines, but why? it would be too expensive…so they didn't</div></li></ul><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div></body></html>