[HN Gopher] A brief history of computers ___________________________________________________________________ A brief history of computers Author : zdw Score : 159 points Date : 2023-07-22 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.lesswrong.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.lesswrong.com) | kalverra wrote: | Not specifically computers, but if you want a very deep dive into | the creation of the internet (including some bits about the | earliest computers) The Dream Machine is a great, and extensive | look at the history of the internet through the lens of J.C.R. | Licklider's life. It was rather mind blowing to me in various | ways, one of the big ones being that it seems a lot of early | computer pioneers weren't only mathematicians and physicists, but | also psychologists. | nappy wrote: | Agreed. It's an excellent book. But perhaps a little long if | you are purely interested in computer history and want an | introduction in a shorter volume. I recommend these two: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory | https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer... | olooney wrote: | Maybe mention Pascal[1] and Leibniz[2] as important predecessors | to Babbage? | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_calculator | | [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepped_reckoner | chubot wrote: | One interesting question (which is very hard to answer) is how | many of the ideas were passed down vs. re-invented, and how much | theory influenced practice: | | - I think Mauchly and Eckert (of ENIAC) in the 1940's were | unaware of Babbage (1810's) | | - There was the (in)famous von Neumann paper describing the ENIAC | and patent lawsuit - | https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=639 - this | page says that "most likely" Von Neumann and Mauchly/Eckert | developed it together | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell,_Inc._v._Sperry_Rand.... | | Hm these sources are a bit vague -- my memory is that "The Dream | Machine" was more critical of von Neumann. Basically it ended up | that he put his name on work that wasn't really his, or he gave | that impression. | | i.e. the name "von Neumann architecture" doesn't give the proper | credit | | - Did they need Turing or Church to build a real computer? | Probably not, I guess Babbage also proves that. Computation is | just "out there"; it's part of nature; it's been discovered many | times. | | - That said, I would guess that Boolean logic is the most | important theory/math in building a computer, though Babbage | didn't have that either !!! | dboreham wrote: | Most written history is "bunk" in that it's a long-after | interpretation of events in the context of what we know today. | That's why Turing features heavily -- because he's a colorful | character about which many books have been written and movies | made that people watch today. But Tommy Flowers is never | mentioned. | | The computer wasn't really invented at all. It evolved from | earlier things in a step-wise manner. There were computing | machines for decades prior. E.g. before WW1 there were | sophisticated gunnery computers that could fire shells taking | account the vector velocity of a ship, wind, distance measured | optically, movement of the attacking ship. Boolean logic was | used in telephone switching systems. Boolean circuits already | existed both in electromechanical form (relays) and electronics | (vacuum tubes|valves). So when Turing decided he needed a | machine to do so and so calculations on some kind of data, | Flowers didn't need to invent Boolean logic nor design Boolean | circuits -- those already existed off the shelf. Teleprinters | existed. Paper tape existed. | chubot wrote: | Yeah definitely agree, Taleb has warned us about such | teleological explanations. | | As far as I remember, Woz's biography is good evidence that | you don't need the idea of "boolean logic" to design | circuits. That did come after the fact -- the way it's | taught, not the way it was invented | | I think he just said he figured it all out himself | essentially, and often did a lot better than the pros. Some | of his claims were suspect to me, but I do think his claimed | ignorance of prior work is genuine :) | | Shannon did come decades earlier though, so the designs of | somebody who was influenced by Shannon probably influenced | Woz. It's hard to tease apart, but I agree with "evolution" | and "tinkering" as the main explanations. | | The entertaining explanations are the ones that tend to stick | in our minds, but they're not necessarily true | | --- | | The other example I think of is when I look at Debian -- a | lot of it is not at all what the Unix inventors had in mind. | Debian/Linux basically looked at an artifact and then came up | with their own divergent ideas around them | | Likewise Woz probably looked at a lot of computers, but he | didn't have much of an idea what the creators were thinking | -- just the artifacts themselves | AsmiKittu wrote: | [flagged] | dmvdoug wrote: | > I'm confused though. Babbage came up with the blueprints for | his Difference Engine in the 1820s. I know he never succeeded at | actually building it, but he never really had a fair chance if | you ask me. | | Babbage had a chance to build his difference engine. The problem | was that the engineering was a lot harder than he thought it was | going to be, and he was a mathematician/economist, not so much a | working engineer. The idea that if only he had had a better | chance the difference engine would've been successful is just | simply a misreading of what happened. It didn't help that after | the British government poured tens of thousands of pounds into | the project Babbage suddenly decided to start pushing analytical | engine before he had even finished the difference engine. That | made it look like these were just wild, cockeyed schemes, when | Babbage was supposed to be engaged in a practical, mechanical | calculating project (to help reduce the labor expended on | computing, for example, navigational tables). | lproven wrote: | A Swedish family, called Scheutz, finished the Difference | Engine within a few years after Babbage gave up, and sold them | very profitably for many decades. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Georg_Scheutz | | It wasn't too hard for the time... Babbage just kept getting | distracted. | dboreham wrote: | > The problem was that the engineering was a lot harder than he | thought it was going to be | | This is true of many (most?) innovations. E.g. the steam | engine: people knew about steam power, and built primitive | steam engines. Watt succeeded eventually in manufacturing one | that had the right mix of reliability, power, cost, | maintainability to be widely useful. E.g. the jet engine : | Whittle conceived of turbine aircraft power during WW1, but | didn't succeed in manufacturing a viable engine and putting it | in a plane until the end of WW2. | ghaff wrote: | A lot of similar things come into play if you ask questions | like "Could the Romans have invented $X?" | | Some cultural factors like slavery meant they were less | interested in e.g. labor-saving inventions. And there | probably were health and life sciences concepts you could | introduce--but might have limited ability to prove. But, for | the most part, there are technology trees that you can't | really shortcut and, even with the right high-level | knowledge, it's hard to accelerate things too mych. | jazzyjackson wrote: | I read a good description of the affair in James Essinger's | "Jacquard's Web" - came down to the machinist cutting the gears | not-to-spec, for the geartrains to function smoothly they would | have needed precision not achieved for decades. The Royal | Society was willing to fund the project but it became a | bottomless money pit as Babbage kept sending the parts back to | the kitchen so to speak. | d_silin wrote: | reminds me of fusion energy promises, or at least "the | bottomless money pit". The science is solid, but the | engineering challenges delayed even proof-of-concept | experiment literally until next century. | nemo wrote: | >It's not what Godel was hoping for. Godel was hoping to add some | support to that shaky Jenga piece at the bottom so that they | could continue building their beautiful tower taller and taller, | consisting of structures ever more elegant. | | Godel was a Lutheran Platonist who was personally morally opposed | to Logicism and his contemporary mathematical program. He was an | odd man, really, but he was in no respect a booster of, or a | person working to promote Hilbert's program. He was tearing it | down very deliberately. | Sharlin wrote: | Boole didn't introduce propositional logic; what he did was come | up with an _algebra_ that encodes propositional logic. | | Abstract algebra was a new snd developing thing back then, the | idea that you can generalize from numbers and addition and | multiplication to other structures that have something like | numbers and addition and multiplication. | | Boole found that if you take the two-element set {0, 1} and | choose saturating addition as the addition-like operation and | normal multiplication as the multiplication-like operation, you | get an algebra (specifically a ring) that is isomorphic to | propositional logic with its AND and OR operations. | | So the idea that the number 1 can represent true and the number 0 | false was Boole's insight and the foundation of modern digital | circuits. | javajosh wrote: | And actually Boole is only dealing with two distinguishable | states. Any two distinguishable physical states can be used to | define binary 1 and 0. But in general, any N distinguishable | states can be used to form an algebra. N=2 is just the | simplest, most elegant, and what most real computers are based | on. I've heard rumors that an N=3 computer exists, aka | 'ternary' (EDITed) but I have my doubts. On the math side you | can turn the integers into a discreet N-part thing with | modulus. | helf wrote: | [dead] | grahamlee wrote: | No, Boole was dealing with probabilities. The first half of | his investigation on the laws of thought is all ones and | zeroes, but the second half admits any value in between. | ccppurcell wrote: | The word is ternary, and Ternary Computer is a Wikipedia page | you could read if you're interested. | dreamcompiler wrote: | Boole figured out Boolean Algebra, but nobody paid attention | until Claude Shannon realized we could use Boolean Algebra to | design digital circuits. In his _masters thesis._ | | Very few masters theses have changed the world, but Claude | Shannon's was one of them. | raspyberr wrote: | Seems pretty reasonable for someone doing their own high level | research. Notably missing any references to telegrams and | telephone systems. | DiscourseFan wrote: | Yeah, there was a lot of work on logic in both India and the | West in the medieval period, which was very influential in | later thought, its just that what we conceive of as the | "modern" form of logic only took shape in the 19th century. But | reading medieval tracts on logic is fascinating. | jazzyjackson wrote: | Wish I had a source but I've read Mr and Mrs Boole were both | involved in the study of Indian mathematics, and that "Bool" | as a datatype might be more true to its namesake if it | included "maybe" or "null" | jll29 wrote: | Also between the middle ages and the 19th century: e.g. The | Logic and Grammar of Port Royal were very influential - c.f. | https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/port-royal-logic/ | DiscourseFan wrote: | I meant "medieval" here to refer to any time between the | beginning of neoplatonism and the industrial revolution: | quite a large space, but it seems like those are the only | two time periods people are generally aware of in the | history of thought, since we teach kids that everything | between then was the "dark ages." | retrac wrote: | In terms of causes and forces, the influence of | telecommunication on computing is really hard to overstate. In | the Internet era, I think some might be unaware that | telecommunication definitively came first, and in my view, | effectively led directly to computers. | | From the electrical engineering perspective, the earliest relay | and vacuum tube computers were built out of elements developed | for radio and telephone exchanges. Bell Labs developed the | transistor with their phone system primarily in mind. Same with | high speed digital data circuits. (Digital audio was demo'd in | the late 1940s, deployed in the phone network in the late 50s). | | It's not just the physical circuits; much of the theory, too. | Claude Shannon was trying to optimize subnets of switches in | the phone network, when he proved that binary switching logic | is equivalent to Boolean algebra and so such systems could be | described, manipulated, and optimized symbolically. | | Similarly, both frequency and time division multiplexing date | to the late 1800s with telegraphy. One of the first uses of | vacuum tubes as switching elements was for multiplexing | telegraph lines c. 1940 or so. (The terminology from that era | is quite charming - modern Wi-Fi might be described as | supersonic harmonic multiplexed radiotelegraphy.) | kitd wrote: | _From the electrical engineering perspective, the earliest | relay and vacuum tube computers were built out of elements | developed for radio and telephone exchanges._ | | Indeed. A "main frame" was originally the housing used for | the relay switches in the original telephone exchanges. | kens wrote: | I've done a ton of research on this, and "main frame" in | the computer sense originated with the IBM 701, which was | built from various frames such as the power frame, the | storage frame, and the main frame (which performed | computation). There is a direct (but complicated) path from | this to the modern meaning of "mainframe". The "main | distribution frame" in a telephone exchange was unrelated. | [deleted] | pjmlp wrote: | For example during the 1800's sport results were already | being telegraphed and printed into dotted paper. | citelao wrote: | What would be a good, more academic overview of computing | history? Do you have any specific book recommendations? I'd | love to read a more "citation-based" version. | nappy wrote: | Not sure about academic history, but in a single volume, this | does a good job on early 20th century computer history: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory | cfmcdonald wrote: | IMO the best overall "soup to nuts" survey of the history of | computers is Campbell-Kelly, et. al., "Computer: A History of | the Information Machine." | | Specifically on the relation of telecommunications to | computers I will toot my own horn and recommend my book, | McDonald, "How the Telegraph, Telephone, and Radio Created | the Computer." | mjbrusso wrote: | The First Computers | | History and Architectures | | Edited by Raul Rojas and Ulf Hashagen | | https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262681377/the-first-computers/ | 123pie123 wrote: | no mention of Konrad Zuse or the Z1? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer) | jchw wrote: | > But the biggest thing is probably that it made assemblers and | compilers possible. Well, I'm not sure if that's strictly true. | Maybe you could still have them without a shared memory | architecture. But the shared memory architecture made them a | whole lot easier. | | I think the actual important part is _being able to_ address and | manipulate code like it 's data somehow, rather than the specific | architecture. Having two separate address spaces for code and | data doesn't necessarily prevent that, though it's surely simpler | with only one. | nappy wrote: | I don't recommend reading this. There are many gaps and a lot of | important history missing, including: | | 1. Computation before ~1800. Abacus, Napier's Bones, Slides | rules, Pascal's Calculator, motivations from celestial navigation | and astronomy. | | 2. Modern analog computers ~1900-1950. The author seems to refer | to them as "math machines" and leaves it at that, without | exploring much deeper than that they were used for besides | calculating firing solutions for artillery. I think the author | lacks a solid grasp of how mathematical tables were used from | 1614 onwards, and that analog computers were used to create much | more accurate and complex tables which could be used for more | accurate firing solutions. And for other purposes as well, beyond | code-breaking. | | >"It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that early, | pre-general purpose computers (~1890-1950s) weren't computers in | the way that we think about computers today. I prefer to think | about them as "math machines"." | | >"But subsequent machines were able to do math. From what I'm | seeing, it sounds like a lot of it was military use. A ton of | code-breaking efforts during World War II. Also a bunch of | projectile calculations for artillery fire." | | 3. Poor description of the advent of electronic computers. | | >"Then in the 1940s, there was a breakthrough.[10] The vacuum | tube took computers from being mechanical to being electric. In | doing so, they made computers cheaper, quieter, more reliable, | more energy efficient, about 10-100x smaller, and about 100x | faster. They enabled computations to be done in seconds rather | than hours or days. It was big." | | It was certainly a breakthrough, but the idea that computers | immediately became quieter, cheaper, and more reliable is false. | They were _much_ larger, initially, compared to analog computers | of the era. By almost any measure, they were also much less | efficient with energy, though this may depend on what sort of | calculations you are doing - I 'm less sure of this. | | 4. Incomplete and incorrect descriptions of programming languages | and the history of digital logic. No mention of information | theory and Claude Shannon, digital circuits. | | This is a poor analogy that misleads a reader who is unfamiliar | with programming languages, it obscures the abstraction: | | >"Think of it like this. It's translating between two languages. | Assembly is one language and looks like this: LOAD R1, #10. | Machine code is another language and looks like this: | 10010010110101010011110101000010101000100101. Just like how | English and Spanish are two different languages." | | 5. Lack of understanding of digital hardware. | | The author never describes why or how vacuum tubes and then | transistors allowed computers to use logic that is both _digital_ | and _electronic_. | | The author jumbles a lot of ideas into one and does not seem to | understand the relationship and distinction between the evolution | of transistor technology (point-contact -> BJT -> FET -> MOSFET) | and the creation of integrated circuits. | | >"Before 1966, transistors were a thing, but they weren't the | transistors that we imagine today. Today we think of transistors | as tiny little things on computer chips that are so small you | can't even see them. But before 1966, transistors were much | larger. Macroscopic. Millimeters long. I don't really understand | the scientific or engineering breakthroughs that allowed this to | happen, but something called photolithography allowed them to | actually manufacture the transistors directly on the computer | chips." | | 6. Lack of historical context. No mention of the motivations for | creating the vacuum tube or transistor: amplification and | switching for use in telegraph and phone networks. No mention of | the role the US government played beyond the 1860 Census, no | mention of continued investments motivated by the Cold War, | Apollo Program, ICBMs, etc. They briefly cover artillery firing | solutions and mention code-breaking. | | 7. Over reliance on LLMs to research and write this. | | Hard to take a history which includes this seriously: | | >"And from what ChatGPT tells me, it's likely that this would | have been an investment with a positive ROI. It'd make the | construction of mathematical tables significantly faster and more | reliable, and there was a big demand for such tables. It makes | sense to me that it'd be a worthwhile investment. After all, they | were already employing similar numbers of people to construct the | tables by hand." | | >"Anyway, all of this goodness lead to things really picking up | pace. I'm allowed to quote Claude, right?" | kaycebasques wrote: | The sections on the super early years were great. A lot of ideas | and perspectives in there that I have not heard before. The later | sections personally didn't do as much for me, but that's probably | only because I am more familiar with those topics. | | Thank you to the author for creating this! This style of super | personal historical overview is very enjoyable. I like how the | author says outright to take everything with a grain of salt and | I like how they call out things about the narrative that don't | make sense to them. | sdfgionionio wrote: | >And from what ChatGPT tells me, it's likely that this would have | been an investment with a positive ROI. | | Wonderful. | | It's interesting to me that, in just a few months, I've already | developed muscle memory for checking whether or not things I read | online are machine-generated. The first thing I do on any website | is search for "GPT", "Bing", and "AI" and stop reading if I find | them. | | Reading someone's writing is an exercise in trust. If they claim | something, I have to be able to trust that they have done enough | of their homework to back it up. If they cite a source, I have to | be able to trust it says what they claim. Otherwise what's the | point? If I can't rely on the author, then reading their writing | requires checking everything they've said. Their writing is | useless to me since I'll need to do my own research anyway. | | If you write something and ask me to read it, you are asking me | to trust that you have done the legwork. If you really just typed | it into ChatGPT, that's more than just stupid. It's a betrayal. | gerikson wrote: | At least this author states openly that they used ChatGPT. In a | couple of months such honesty will be rare. | MostlyStable wrote: | It's weird to me that you are conflating asking GPT a question | related to your article and writing your article. Would you | have a similar reaction if he had said "according to google"? | There does not seem to be any evidence at all that the author | didn't write this entire article, and the fact that they | explicitly reference that they consulted GPT on some related | point seems further evidence that they _didn't_ have GPT write | it (I think if they _had_ had GPT write it, they would have | avoided mentioning GPT at all) | howenterprisey wrote: | Not them, but no, I wouldn't have a similar reaction if it | were "according to google", because in the context of a blog | posted to HN I'd expect it to mean a cursory bit of research, | which is way better. | RyanAdamas wrote: | A decent brief history. Author should look into Vannevar Bush. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush | spenrose wrote: | Agreed. My history emphasized the Bush/memex -> | Engelbart/Online System -> Alto -> Mac and Engelbart -> | Berners-Lee/WWW lineages: | http://whatarecomputersfor.net/machines-for-millions/ | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | For a more humorous overview of this, take a look at Verity | Stob's account | | https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/22/verity_stob_8086_and_... | nashashmi wrote: | Not sure what it is about computer history, but it garners a lot | of interest among computer science students. Electives on | computer history have usually been packed classes. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-22 23:00 UTC)