@randellAnalyticalEngineElectronic1982
[!info] - Cite Key: @randellAnalyticalEngineElectronic1982 - Link: IEEE Xplore Full Text PDF - Abstract: This paper, based on an invited lecture given at MIT in March 1980, discusses the little-known work of Percy E. Ludgate (1883- 1922), Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (1852- 1936), and Vannevar Bush (1890- 1974). These three inventors, who apparently were unaware of one another's existence, were all directly influenced by know/edge of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, and each played a significant role in the history of the development of program-controlled computers. - Bibliography: Randell, B. 1982 From Analytical Engine to Electronic Digital Computer: The Contributions of Ludgate, Torres, and Bush. Annals of the History of Computing 4(4): 327–341. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.1982.10042. - Tags: #Calculators, #Character-recognition, #Engine-cylinders, #Engineering-drawings, #Hardware, #History, #Information-analysis, #Information-processing, #Permission, #Time-sharing-computer-systems
Annotations¶
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Imported on 2023-02-08 2:20 pm¶
Relevant / important¶
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight from the vast collection of his engineering drawings in London’s Science Museum, shows the mechanism he envisaged for program control (punched cards, similar to those used for Jacquard looms) and microprogram control (a pegged cylinder, as found in music boxes even to this day).
connects to punch cards, and pipe organs
Page 2 [[2023-02-08#12:25 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight Percy E. Ludgate (1914), who wrote mainly about Babbage’s Analytical Engine, but also stated that he had himself designed an analytical engine some years earlier.
I haven't heard of other forms of the analytical engine being created
Page 2 [[2023-02-08#12:26 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight The machine that Ludgate describes in this paper was indeed a general-purpose program-controlled computer, mechanical in operation, although perhaps powered by an electric motor. It was to be capable of storing 192 numbers, each of 20 decimal digits, and would perform all the basic arithmetic operations. It was to work automatically under the control of a perforated tape, or could be controlled manually from a keyboard.
interesting seeing how it innovated upon Babbage's design using an electric motor, being more powerful, and having a more modern interface (keyboard)
Page 2 [[2023-02-08#12:29 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight all three main components of Ludgate’s analytical machine-the store, the arithmetic unit, and the sequencing mechanism-show evidence of considerable ingenuity and originality.
Page 3 [[2023-02-08#12:16 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight method of sequence control, or the means by which a program determined the machine’s behavior. Each row of perforations across the control tape (or formula paper, as he called it) specified an instruction consisting of an operation code, two operand addresses, and one or two result addresses. As such, the scheme was a definite advance and simplification of that proposed by Babbage
that is so interesting and so similar to primitive programming languages like Cobal!
Page 3 [[2023-02-08#12:48 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight In 1911 he made and successfully demonstrated (Scientific American Suppl. 1915) a chess-playing automaton for the end game of king and rook against king (Figure 10). This chess automaton, believed to have been the world’s first (the one earlier apparent chessautomaton, exhibited by von Kempelen, turned out to have small human operator hidden inside it; see Chapuis and Droz 1958), was fully automatic, with electrical sensing of the pieces on the board and what was in effect a mechanical arm to move its own pieces.
Page 5 [[2023-02-08#1:29 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight The paper ends with a comparison of the advantages unit connected to a (possibly remote) typewriter, on of electromechanical devices over the sort of mechan- which commands could be typed and the results ical devices that were all that were available to Bab- printed automatically (Figure 15). Torres apparently bage
interesting that the comparison had to be made when the answer seems so clear in retrospect
Page 10 [[2023-02-08#1:51 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight Vannevar Bush, as inventor in 1930 of the first differential analyzer
I was unaware he made one of those
Page 11 [[2023-02-08#1:54 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight Bush’s work on information retrieval, and in particular his farsighted Memex proposal (1945) for a completely automatic personal information-retrieval machine, is well known-although it is perhaps only now becoming close to being realized via networks of personal computers.
interesting to know he worked on information retrieval previously and to see someone else's views on his memex concept
Page 12 [[2023-02-08#2:01 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight (His first actual attempt at construction of an information-retrieval device, the Rapid Selector Machine, which scanned microfilm to select pages carrying relevant index codes, was thought to have been abandoned prior to completion until Bush revealed in his autobiography (1970) that the device had become the basis for a hitherto highly classified project for one of the United States’ code-breaking agencies.)
thats really interesting I couldn't imagine a world wherein that concept came into reality but I guess lots of weird concepts get picked up by the government
Page 12 [[2023-02-08#2:03 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight Vannevar Bush apparently started to work on the design of an electronic digital computer.
Page 13 [[2023-02-08#2:05 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight The machine was to be completely automatic, able to read data on perforated paper tape, to store the data in internal registers, to perform any of the four basic arithmetic operations, and to print the results of its calculations. It was to be controlled by a program represented on perforated tape. Each row of holes would consist of several fields that together constituted one instruction. Each field could contain but a single punched hole, whose position indicated directly which operation was to be performed, say, or which storage reservoir was to provide the operand.
very close in concept to primitive computers and programming languages like Cobal
Page 13 [[2023-02-08#2:07 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight Bush’s 1940 memorandum reviewing progress to date contains estimates that the machine would be able to multiply two six-decimal digit numbers in about 0.2 ‘second, assuming a basic pulse rate of 10,000 per second.
that's a lot faster than Torres' design but a much smaller size numbers
Page 13 [[2023-02-08#2:12 pm]]
[!quote|#a28ae5] Highlight The great principles on which the Analytical Engine rests have been examined, admitted, recorded and demonstrated. The mechanism itself has now been reduced to unexpected simplicity. Half a century may probably elapse before anyone without those aids which I leave behind me will attempt so unpromising a task. If, unwarned by my example, any man shall undertake and shall succeed in really constructing an engine embodying in itself the whole of the executive department of mathematical analysis upon different principles or by simpler means, I have no fear of leaving my reputation in his charge, for he alone will be fully able to appreciate the nature of my efforts and the value of my results. (Babbage 1864)
a very interesting quote
Page 15 [[2023-02-08#2:19 pm]]
Agree¶
[!quote|#5fb236] Highlight he limits within which thought is really necessary need to be better defined, and that an automaton can do many things that are popularly classed with thought.
this is very true and is being demonstrated with how many jobs are being automated today
Page 7 [[2023-02-08#1:36 pm]]
[!quote|#5fb236] Highlight It will do certain things which depend upon certain conditions, and these according to arbitrary rules selected in advance.
I agree that our definition of thought is often very poor and only requires basic input-output response to meet our definitions
Page 7 [[2023-02-08#1:36 pm]]
Questions / confusion¶
[!quote|#ffd400] Highlight There was apparently no thought of having numerically coded addresses,nor of providing means of conditional branching.
conditional branching seems like such an instramental part of computing I couldn't imagine one without the ability
Page 13 [[2023-02-08#2:08 pm]]
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