The Advent of the Computer: From Babbage to Berners-Lee

Posted by smaldonado - August 8, 2010

Computer – A history of the information machine

The chapter entitled “Babbage’s Dream Comes True” from the book Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray focuses on Charles Babbage’s attempts at building the first real calculating machine and the attempts of others after him to finally build and complete this device that had been so many years in the making. As the authors of the book reveal to the readers, Babbage did not have the easiest of lives or easiest of tempers. Babbage was way ahead of his time in terms of invention, creation, and pioneering this type of technology on a much grander scale than people were truly ready for.

Charles Babbage lived in England during the nineteenth century. He created two different machines that could compute numbers and equations at a much faster rate than “human computers” (we will return to the term human computers later). The first of these machines was called the Difference Engine, which he worked on for about ten years, but he eventually left that one behind to focus on his second one called the Analytical Engine which was “the chief work on which his fame in the history of computing rests” (Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, 54). The main distinction between the two machines was that the Difference Engine could simply make tables while the Analytical Engine could calculate any type of equation. The Analytical Engine’s most important aspect “was the separation of arithmetic computation from the storage of numbers” (Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, 54). This type of capability was a huge step forward in terms of computing and really like nothing the world had ever seen.

Unfortunately though for Babbage, his home country’s government did not exactly see the point of this machine nor did they really care about it enough to support or fund the project. This obviously devastated Babbage, but he was asked to make a presentation at the Italian Scientific Academy in Turin. King Victor Emmanuel was very interested in science and in Babbage’s inventions. When he came back from Italy he again appealed to the British government for money to build his machines but sadly he faced defeat when they deemed it “worthless” (57). Although disappointed, Babbage continued to invent new machines. He even completed plans for another machine called the Difference Engine Number 2 (58). But Babbage eventually gave up when the British government failed to show any interest.

The next important part of this century long story was Lord Kelvin and his tide predictor invention. This was a very important machine that was replicated all over the world to guide ships safely into ports. But again like the engines Babbage thought-up, it only addressed a specific issue rather than something more universal—it was a piece, not the whole. Another man, Vannevar Bush also made huge contributions to science: “he invented a machine the called a ‘profile tracer,’ which was used to plot ground contours” (62). He also created the “differential analyzer” which was closer to a computer because it did not just solve specific problems, but rather was able to address many. Another man who is fundamental to this story was Lewis Fry Richardson who focused on the weather and meteorology. He knew that predicting the weather took a lot of calculation.

Leslie John Comrie is one of the most important people that contributed to the story of the computing machine. He used a different type of human computer: “ordinary, clerical labor….young, unmarried women with basic knowledge of commercial arithmetic” (67). This was a very interesting move on Comrie’s part. He wanted to use the least-specialized people in order to maybe prove that even the most basic of minds or to say it in another way the most basic equations would be better at solving many computations versus the most specialized who could only solve specific problems. He also had the difficult task of making a table of the moon positions. Interestingly enough, tracking moon positions is something that has been going on for thousands of years as we learned earlier the semester with the Blanchard Plaque. Comrie had notable successes and eventually founded the Scientific Computing Services Limited which “was the world’s first for-profit calculating agency” (68). This was again a huge step forward because it further legitimized this type of scientific venture.

And finally one of the last pieces of the puzzle: the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator which is also known as the Harvard Mark I. This machine was made for Harvard University in the late 1930s and early 1940s. A Harvard researcher, Howard Hathaway Aiken, a driving force behind this machine later said that there was still not that much popular support or enthusiasm for this machine. This may sound crazy for a modern-day individual because computers are such an important part of everyday life but again as Babbage’s machines were ahead of their time, this one was as well.

However, they were able to raise the funds for this “five-ton calculator….which ran mechanical synchronisms that were all lined up and driven by a 50-foot shaft and powered by a 5-horsepower electric motor” (72). Basically this machine, was huge. One of the most important aspects of the Harvard Mark I was “not its speed but in the fact that it was the first fully automatic machine to be completed” (73). Babbage’s “dream” was finally completed a few years later but people should not forget that he truly pioneered the computing and calculating machine.

Venessa McDonald

Weaving the Web

The science of computing has advanced massively since the days when Babbage first devised his Analytic Engine, and even since the Harvard Mark-1 was first booted. However, one of the most radical and important advances in computing has occurred only over the last two decades—the creation of the World Wide Web. The general nature of the web needs no exposition—we’re all aware of what it is and what it can do. What we may not be aware of, however, of how the Web came about. Communication between computers has been around since at least the late 1960s, as can be seen in Douglas Englebart’s demonstration, wherein two people collaborate to perform tasks from two locations using two cursors on a single display. This demo was a powerful indicator of what might be coming in computing—indeed, the next decade saw the creation of the modern Internet. However, this was far from the most interesting innovation demonstrated by Englebart.

Not even the computer mouse—which made its debut during this demonstration—could be called the most interesting (it probably couldn’t even be called the most influential) innovation Englebart produced. The title of “Most interesting Innovation” would probably have to be bestowed on hypertext—a system by which strings of characters—pieces of text, that is—in a document are “linked” to other documents containing information relevant to those pieces of text. This is the basis of “linking” on the web—a process which every web user relies on every time they perform a search. (Remember those highlighted, clickable names of web pages that a Google search produces? Yeah. Those. They’re pieces of hypertext, each and every one.)

Linking formed the basis for the very first web-like pieces of software, and for the software that eventually became the basis for the web. While working at the CERN particle physics laboratory in 1980, Tim Berners-Lee wrote Enquire—a piece of software utilizing hypertext to connect “nodes”–pages within files—and even to connect files to each other. Using this program one could, for example, create a link between a project and the researcher who oversaw the project, and by clicking on the researcher’s name access a page which might tell you about his involvement in other projects—just as today a Wikipedia page on an invention might link you to a page about its inventor. Although Enquire fell by the wayside when Berners-Lee left CERN, the ideas within it formed the basis for his later creation of the web.

Berners-Lee went through several iterations of programs similar to Enquire after he returned to CERN in 1984 in an attempt to create a global database which, importantly, would preserve each individual’s formatting and style, rather than forcing them to change and standardize to conform to the database (an approach which, according to Berners-Lee, caused several similar projects to fail due to lack of support). Berners-Lee also insisted on a decentralized network for his database—he wished to avoid a situation in which a new user had to ask permission from someone before using the database to—for example—create new nodes based on their own work. Berners-Lee considered this point essential, especially in ensuring that the database could scale easily as the number of contributors grew—he wanted to avoid any bottlenecks or choke-points through which all the information had to flow because it would eventually lead to a slow and massively bogged-down network. In the course of his attempt, Berners-Lee discovered the Internet, and realized the massive capabilities it had as a network of networks to transfer information, especially on a global scale. He also realized, however, that in order to implement the network he envisioned, he would have to create some sort of common addressing scheme, so that each node in the network (each document, essentially) could be accessed by address—something easily parseable by a computer program. To satisfy this need, he creating the URI (now known as URL) addressing system—the now ubiquitous web addresses we all type on a near-daily basis.

A further innovation by Berners-Lee came when he created the first accessible web server on his computer. Not only was this a massive innovation in and of itself, Berners-Lee hit upon the idea of creating a URI which was not connected to the specific identity of his computer, but which would “travel with him” if he decided to transfer the server data to another machine. He named this server info.cern.ch. Having already invented client software for his web (including a simple browser/editor), Berners-Lee had essentially succeeded in creating the World Wide Web. He wrote the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) at this time as the universal language in which computers would communicate over the web, and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) as a method of creating and formatting documents (i.e. web pages) using hypertext. At this point, all that remained was to make the web accessible to all types of computers, rather than limited to the type which he had designed the software on—and this was accomplished in relatively short order. In just ten short years, Tim Berners-Lee had gone from ideas about how data could be stored and accessed bouncing around in his head to a fully-functioning world wide web—and had, in the process, revolutionized information technology.

The implications of the web for communication and the dissemination of information can hardly be overstated. Suddenly, anyone with a computer and an internet connection could have a repository of information more vast than any single person could reasonably examine in a lifetime literally at his fingertips. And, thanks in no small part to the creation of hypertext, browsing this web and finding information related to a particular topic became easy and intuitive. Social media (like Facebook or Youtube), forums, and even the rise of the blogosphere (and the enormous uptick in amateur journalism)–all can be traced, more-or-less directly, to the advent of the World Wide Web.

-Samuel Maldonado

Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage

Ada Lovelace was an avid supporter of Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Her key points in its defense were:

1. The Analytical Machine requires no human intervention and therefore removes human error in calculating.

2. The Machine saves time, as it can perform computations faster and more efficiently.

3. The Machine spares the need for intellectual labor, which can then in turn be used for more practical matters.



Registering Operations” and “On the Division of Mental Labour,” chapters 8 & 20 in On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures.

These same ideas are found within Babbage’s own writing, published 7 years prior. Machinery becomes the “check… against the inattention, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents” and he goes on the elaborate the different functions for which machines are invented and capable of doing. From counting to measuring exact liquid quantities to measuring the directionality of earthquakes, these instruments are important in increasing efficiency and exactness.

In Chapter 20, “On the Division of Mental Labour,” Babbage elaborates on the economic benefits and efficiency of employing labor based on maximizing ability. For example, “we avoid employing any part of the time of a man who can get eight or ten shillings a day by his skill in tempering needles, in turning a wheel, which can be done for sixpence a day; and we equally avoid the loss arising from the employment of an accomplished mathematician in performing the lowest processes of arithmetic.”

Betty Lin

Additional Sources

History of the Internet

This movie clip is a brief history but clear history of how the internet was develop, and in the first half of the movie clip, we can see how the concept of “Connection” and “Multiple user” came up and lead to the idea of network in a time where knowledge is only transferred by people. Both these two concepts are important because they imply that we started to have the sense that the transferred of information can go beyond physical limitation and be done in a way that is totally different than the traditional ways (oral, books…) information is delivered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIQjrMHTv4&feature=related

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

This is one of the best clips about web, its supposed to be a clip on the idea of Web2.0 but it actually demonstrate the fundamental concept of web really well, especially in the last half of the clip. “We are teaching the Machine. Each time we forge a link, we teach it an idea.”(3:20), the whole cyber space is constructed rapidly by all kinds of information and the relationship between them, creating a world that is no longer serve as a tool for communication or information storage, but a subset of the real world itself. “The web is linking people…”(3:50) as it concluded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

World Wide Web Creator Worries About Internet Control

The impact Internet has on the society involves a variety of aspects and brings about dramatic changes, and it can be a potential and powerful tool for people to exert control. This is a clip on Berners-Lee’s concern of World Wide Web, mainly about online privacy issues and neutrality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiNzA0raLe4

By Angie Peng

Resouces

Campbell-Kelly, Martin & William Aspray.  1996. “‘Babbage’s Dream Comes True,”  (pp. 53-104) in Martin Campbell-Kelly & William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine.  New York: Basic Books.

Menabrea, L.F. 1842. Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, trans. Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace

Berners-Lee, Tim. 2000. Chapters 1-3, pp. 1-34 in Weaving the Web. New York City: HarperCollins.

Babbage, Charles.  1835.  “Registering Operations” and “On the Division of Mental Labour,” On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures.

Video provide by youtube

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