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As an analog computer does not use discrete values, but rather continuous values, processes cannot be reliably repeated with exact equivalence, as they can with Turing machines. [58] The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine, invented by Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, in 1872. It used a system of pulleys and wires ...
Users were experienced specialists who did not usually interact with the machine itself, but instead prepared tasks for the computer on off-line equipment, such as card punches. A number of assignments for the computer would be gathered up and processed in batch mode. After the jobs had completed, users could collect the output printouts and ...
Computer: A History of the Information Machine is a history of computing written by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray first published in 1996. It follows the history of "information machines" from Charles Babbage's difference engine through Herman Hollerith's tabulating machines to the invention of the modern electronic digital computer.
A human computer, with microscope and calculator, 1952. It was not until the mid-20th century that the word acquired its modern definition; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the word computer was in a different sense, in a 1613 book called The Yong Mans Gleanings by the English writer Richard Brathwait: "I haue [] read the truest computer of Times, and the best ...
The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables.
The Information Age [a] is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on information technology. [2]
The term information appliance was coined by Jef Raskin around 1979. [3] [4] As later explained by Donald Norman in his influential The Invisible Computer, [5] the main characteristics of IA, as opposed to any normal computer, were: designed and pre-configured for a single application (like a toaster appliance, which is designed only to make ...
An excellent computer history site; the present article is a modified version of his timeline, used with permission. The Evolution of the Modern Computer (1934 to 1950): An Open Source Graphical History, article from Virtual Travelog