Early Computing: Crash Course Computer Science #1
Summary
TLDRIn diesem CrashCourse Computer Science-Video führt Carrie Anne das Publikum von der Geschichte der Rechengeräte wie dem Abakus und der Step Reckoner bis hin zu modernen Computern und deren Einfluss auf unsere Welt. Sie erklärt, wie frühe Computerpioniere wie Charles Babbage und Ada Lovelace zu den Grundlagen der heutigen Computertechnik beigetragen haben und wie elektromechanische Geräte wie Holleriths Tabulator die Effizienz in Handel und Regierung erhöhten. Das Video gibt einen Einblick in die Entwicklung von Computern und ihre Bedeutung für die Gesellschaft.
Takeaways
- 🌐 Die Computerwissenschaft ist ein zentraler Bestandteil unserer heutigen Welt und beeinflusst fast jeden Aspekt unseres Lebens.
- 🔄 Die Geschichte der Computertechnik begann mit einfachen Rechenhilfsmitteln wie dem Abakus und entwickelte sich zu komplexen modernen Computern.
- ⚙️ Die Industrial Revolution verbesserte die Lebensqualität durch Mechanisierung, ähnlich wie heutige Computertechniken in Landwirtschaft, Medizin und Telekommunikation.
- 💡 Die Erfindung des Abakus im Mesopotamien um 2500 v. Chr. war ein frühes Werkzeug zur Unterstützung bei der Rechnung und Speicherung von Zahlen.
- 🔢 Die Entwicklung von Hilfsmitteln wie dem Astrolabium und der Schieberegel zeigte, wie Rechengeräte die menschliche Intelligenz erweitern konnten.
- 👨💻 Der Begriff 'Computer' wurde ursprünglich als Berufsbezeichnung für Personen verwendet, die Rechnungen durchführten, bevor er sich auf Maschinen bezog.
- 🛠️ Gottfried Leibniz' Step Reckoner war eine der ersten mechanischen Rechenmaschinen, die Addition, Subtraktion, Multiplikation und Division durchführte.
- 🎯 Militärische Anwendungen, wie die Präzisionsschießtabellen zur Artilleriefeuerung, waren frühe Beispiele für die Notwendigkeit von Rechenhilfsmitteln.
- 🏛️ Charles Babbages Difference Engine und Analytical Engine waren Pionierkonzepte für allgemeine Rechenmaschinen, die viele verschiedene Berechnungen durchführen konnten.
- 👩💻 Ada Lovelace, die als erste Programmiererin bekannt ist, entwickelte hypothetische Programme für Babbages Analytical Engine und sah die Zukunft der Computerprogrammierung.
- 📊 Herman Holleriths elektro-mechanische Tabulatormaschine revolutionierte die Datenverarbeitung und führte zu gravierenden Zeit- und Kostenersparnissen bei der Durchführung von Volkszählungen.
Q & A
Was ist der Hauptzweck der CrashCourse Computer Science-Serie?
-Der Hauptzweck der Serie ist es, eine Reihe von Computerthemen als Disziplin und Technologie zu erforschen, von Bits und Bytes über Transistoren und Logikgatter bis hin zu Betriebssystemen, Virtual Reality und Robotern.
Warum wird in der Serie nicht das Programmieren gelehrt?
-Die Serie konzentriert sich darauf, das Spektrum der Informatik als Disziplin und Technologie zu erkunden, anstatt spezifische Programmierfähigkeiten zu vermitteln.
Wie würde ein plötzlicher Ausfall aller Computer die Welt beeinflussen?
-Ein solcher Ausfall würde zu einem Zusammenbruch des Stromnetzes, Autounfällen, Abstürzen von Flugzeugen, Stillstand von Wasseraufbereitungsanlagen, Einfrieren von Börsen, Verlust von Lebensmittellieferungen und Nichtauszahlung von Löhnen führen.
Was war die früheste anerkannte Rechenmaschine?
-Die abacus, erfunden in Mesopotamien um 2500 v. Chr., war eine handbetriebene Rechenmaschine, die bei der Addition und Subtraktion von Zahlen half und den aktuellen Zustand der Berechnung speichern konnte.
Wie funktionierte die Funktionsweise des abakischen Systems?
-Jede Reihe des Abakus repräsentierte eine Potenz von zehn. So standen die Kugeln in der unteren Reihe für die Einer, in der nächsten Reihe die Zehner, in der darüberliegenden Reihe die Hundert und so weiter.
Welche Rolle spielten frühere Rechengeräte wie der Astrolab und der Lineal?
-Diese Geräte ermöglichten schnellere, einfachere und oft genauere Berechnungen, die die menschliche Intelligenz verstärkten und die Berechnung von Dingen, die zuvor mühsam waren, erleichterten.
Was war die Bedeutung des Wortes 'Computer' im 17. Jahrhundert?
-Im 17. Jahrhundert war 'Computer' ein Berufstitel für Personen, die Berechnungen durchführten, manchmal mit Hilfe von Maschinen, oft jedoch auch ohne.
Welche Bedeutung hatte die Step Reckoner von Gottfried Leibniz für die Geschichte der Rechenmaschinen?
-Die Step Reckoner war das erste Gerät, das alle vier grundlegenden Rechenoperationen ausführen konnte und das Design für die nächsten drei Jahrhunderte von Taschenrechner-Entwicklungen beeinflusste.
Worum handelte das Konzept des von Charles Babbage vorgestellten Analytical Engines?
-Das Analytical Engine war ein Konzept für eine allgemeine Rechenmaschine, die Daten verarbeiten und Operationen in einer bestimmten Reihenfolge ausführen konnte, mit Speicher und einem primitiven Drucker.
Warum war die Erfindung von Herman Holleriths Tabulatormaschine für die Verwaltung des US-Zensus von 1890 so bedeutend?
-Holleriths Maschine war zehnmal schneller als manuelle Tabulationen und ermöglichte die Fertigstellung des Zensus in nur zweieinhalb Jahren, was dem Zensusbüro Millionen von Dollar einsparen ließ.
Wie beeinflussten die elektromechanischen Geschäftsmaschinen des 20. Jahrhunderts den Handel und die Regierung?
-Diese Maschinen transformierten Handel und Regierung, indem sie effiziente Datenverarbeitung ermöglichten und den Bedarf an schnelleren und flexibleren Werkzeugen für die globale Handelsexpansion befriedigten.
Outlines
🌐 Einführung in die Computerwissenschaft
Die Video-Skript-Paragraphe beginnen mit einer Einführung in die Computerwissenschaft von Carrie Anne, der Moderatorin der CrashCourse-Reihe. Sie kündigt an, dass die Serie von grundlegenden Konzepten wie Bits, Bytes, Transistoren und Logikgattern bis hin zu komplexeren Themen wie Betriebssystemen, Virtual Reality und Robotern reichen wird. Sie betont, dass die Serie nicht darauf abzielt, Programmieren zu lehren, sondern die Computerwissenschaft als Disziplin und Technologie zu erforschen. Carrie Anne beschreibt die zentrale Rolle der Computer in der heutigen Welt und vergleicht die Auswirkungen der Computertechnologie mit denen der Industriellen Revolution. Sie erwähnt, dass Computer fast jedes Aspekt unseres Lebens transformiert haben und dass wir in einer Ära leben, die möglicherweise als die Elektronische Ära in Erinnerung bleiben wird. Die Serie wird sich auch auf die Geschichte der Computerwissenschaft konzentrieren, beginnend mit dem Abakus, einer der ältesten bekannten Rechengeräte.
🔄 Die Geschichte der Rechengeräte
Der zweite Absatz delves in die Geschichte der Rechengeräte, die zur Computerwissenschaft beigetragen haben. Es wird über die Entwicklung von Hilfsmitteln wie dem Astrolab, der Schieberegler und verschiedenen Uhrenmodellen gesprochen, die die Berechnungen von Sonnenaufgang, Gezeiten und Himmelskörperpositionen erleichtern konnten. Die Erfindung des Step Reckoner von Gottfried Leibniz wird hervorgehoben, ein Gerät, das Addition, Subtraktion, Multiplikation und Division durch mechanische Tricks automatisierte. Die Rolle von Charles Babbage und seiner Vision von der Differenzmaschine und der analytischen Maschine wird diskutiert, letztere von Ada Lovelace, der als erste Programmiererin anerkannt wird, inspiriert. Die historische Bedeutung dieser Entwicklungen wird betont, die den Weg für die kommenden Generationen von Computerwissenschaftlern ebneten.
📊 Die Bedeutung der elektromechanischen Maschinen für das Zählen
Der dritte Absatz konzentriert sich auf die Bedeutung elektromechanischer Maschinen für das Zählen und die Verarbeitung von Daten, insbesondere im Kontext der US-Volkszählung. Es wird erzählt, wie die Erfindung von Herman Holleriths Tabulatormaschine, die Lochkarten verwendete, die Effizienz der Datenverarbeitung revolutionierte. Die Maschine war zehnmal schneller als manuelle Tabulationen und ermöglichte die schnellere und kosteneffizientere Durchführung der Volkszählung. Die kommerzielle Anerkennung des Werts von Computern und ihre Anwendung in Bereichen wie Buchhaltung, Versicherungsbewertungen und Bestandsverwaltung wird erwähnt. Hollerith gründete daraufhin The Tabulating Machine Company, das später zu IBM wurde, ein Name, der heute für seine Signifikanz in der Computerindustrie bekannt ist.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Bits und Bytes
💡Transistoren
💡Logik
💡Betriebssysteme
💡Virtuelle Realität
💡Roboter
💡Industrielle Revolution
💡Abacus
💡Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
💡Charles Babbage
💡Ada Lovelace
Highlights
Introduction to the CrashCourse Computer Science series, covering topics from basic computing concepts to advanced technologies.
Emphasis on the importance of computing in modern society, including its impact on various industries and daily life.
Historical comparison of computing technology to the Industrial Revolution, highlighting its transformative effect on human civilization.
Explanation of how computing technology has improved various fields such as agriculture, medicine, communication, and education.
Description of the abacus as one of the earliest computing devices, invented around 2500 BCE.
Discussion of the evolution of computing devices, including the astrolabe, slide rule, and various types of clocks.
Introduction of the term 'computer' as a job title in 1613, predating the invention of computing machines.
Description of Gottfried Leibniz's Step Reckoner, one of the first mechanical calculators capable of basic arithmetic operations.
Explanation of how mechanical calculators were limited by their complexity and cost, leading to the use of pre-computed tables.
Historical context of 'human computers' and their role in performing calculations before the advent of electronic computers.
Overview of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, a mechanical device designed to automate polynomial calculations.
Introduction of Ada Lovelace, who is often considered the world's first programmer for her work on the Analytical Engine.
Herman Hollerith's invention of the tabulating machine and its significant impact on the efficiency of the 1890 US Census.
The founding of IBM, which began as The Tabulating Machine Company, and its role in the development of business and government computing.
Anticipation of the rise of digital computers to meet the increasing demands for data processing in the mid-1900s.
Transcripts
Hello world, I’m Carrie Anne, and welcome to CrashCourse Computer Science!
Over the course of this series, we’re going to go from bits, bytes, transistors and logic
gates, all the way to Operating Systems, Virtual Reality and Robots!
We’re going to cover a lot, but just to clear things up - we ARE NOT going to teach
you how to program.
Instead, we’re going to explore a range of computing topics as a discipline and a
technology.
Computers are the lifeblood of today’s world.
If they were to suddenly turn off, all at once, the power grid would shut down, cars
would crash, planes would fall, water treatment plants would stop, stock markets would freeze,
trucks with food wouldn’t know where to deliver, and employees wouldn’t get paid.
Even many non-computer objects - like DFTBA shirts and the chair I’m sitting on – are
made in factories run by computers.
Computing really has transformed nearly every aspect of our lives.
And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of technology-driven global change.
Advances in manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution brought a new scale to human civilization
- in agriculture, industry and domestic life.
Mechanization meant superior harvests and more food, mass produced goods, cheaper and
faster travel and communication, and usually a better quality of life.
And computing technology is doing the same right now – from automated farming and medical
equipment, to global telecommunications and educational opportunities, and new frontiers
like Virtual Reality and Self Driving Cars.
We are living in a time likely to be remembered as the Electronic Age.
With billions of transistors in just your smartphones, computers can seem pretty complicated,
but really, they’re just simple machines that perform complex actions through many
layers of abstraction.
So in this series, we’re going break down those layers, and build up from simple 1’s
and 0’s, to logic units, CPUs, operating systems, the entire internet and beyond.
And don’t worry, in the same way someone buying t-shirts on a webpage doesn’t need
to know how that webpage was programmed, or the web designer doesn’t need to know how
all the packets are routed, or router engineers don’t need to know about transistor logic,
this series will build on previous episodes but not be dependent on them.
By the end of this series, I hope that you can better contextualize computing’s role
both in your own life and society, and how humanity's (arguably) greatest invention is
just in its infancy, with its biggest impacts yet to come.
But before we get into all that, we should start at computing’s origins, because although
electronic computers are relatively new, the need for computation is not.
INTRO
The earliest recognized device for computing
was the abacus, invented in Mesopotamia around 2500 BCE.
It’s essentially a hand operated calculator, that helps add and subtract many numbers.
It also stores the current state of the computation, much like your hard drive does today.
The abacus was created because, the scale of society had become greater than what a
single person could keep and manipulate in their mind.
There might be thousands of people in a village or tens of thousands of cattle.
There are many variants of the abacus, but let’s look at a really basic version with
each row representing a different power of ten.
So each bead on the bottom row represents a single unit, in the next row they represent
10, the row above 100, and so on.
Let’s say we have 3 heads of cattle represented by 3 beads on the bottom row on the right side.
If we were to buy 4 more cattle we would just slide 4 more beads to the right for a total of 7.
But if we were to add 5 more after the first 3 we would run out of beads, so we would slide
everything back to the left, slide one bead on the second row to the right, representing
ten, and then add the final 2 beads on the bottom row for a total of 12.
This is particularly useful with large numbers.
So if we were to add 1,251 we would just add 1 to the bottom row, 5 to the second row,
2 to the third row, and 1 to the fourth row - we don’t have to add in our head and the
abacus stores the total for us.
Over the next 4000 years, humans developed all sorts of clever computing devices, like
the astrolabe, which enabled ships to calculate their latitude at sea.
Or the slide rule, for assisting with multiplication and division.
And there are literally hundred of types of clocks created that could be used to calculate
sunrise, tides, positions of celestial bodies, and even just the time.
Each one of these devices made something that was previously laborious to calculate much
faster, easier, and often more accurate –– it lowered the barrier to entry, and at the same
time, amplified our mental abilities –– take note, this is a theme we’re going to touch
on a lot in this series.
As early computer pioneer Charles Babbage said: “At each increase of knowledge, as
well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.”
However, none of these devices were called “computers”.
The earliest documented use of the word “computer” is from 1613, in a book by Richard Braithwait.
And it wasn’t a machine at all - it was a job title.
Braithwait said, “I have read the truest computer of times,
and the best arithmetician that ever breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number”.
In those days, computer was a person who did calculations, sometimes with the help of machines,
but often not.
This job title persisted until the late 1800s, when the meaning of computer started shifting
to refer to devices.
Notable among these devices was the Step Reckoner, built by German polymath Gottfried Leibniz
in 1694.
Leibniz said “... it is beneath the dignity of excellent men to waste their time in calculation
when any peasant could do the work just as accurately with the aid of a machine.”
It worked kind of like the odometer in your car, which is really just a machine for adding
up the number of miles your car has driven.
The device had a series of gears that turned; each gear had ten teeth, to represent the
digits from 0 to 9.
Whenever a gear bypassed nine, it rotated back to 0 and advanced the adjacent gear by one tooth.
Kind of like when hitting 10 on that basic abacus.
This worked in reverse when doing subtraction, too.
With some clever mechanical tricks, the Step Reckoner was also able to multiply and divide
numbers.
Multiplications and divisions are really just many additions and subtractions.
For example, if we want to divide 17 by 5, we just subtract 5, then 5, then 5 again,
and then we can’t subtract any more 5’s… so we know 5 goes into 17 three times, with
2 left over.
The Step Reckoner was able to do this in an automated way, and was the first machine that
could do all four of these operations.
And this design was so successful it was used for the next three centuries of calculator design.
Unfortunately, even with mechanical calculators, most real world problems required many steps
of computation before an answer was determined.
It could take hours or days to generate a single result.
Also, these hand-crafted machines were expensive, and not accessible to most of the population.
So, before 20th century, most people experienced computing through pre-computed tables assembled
by those amazing “human computers” we talked about.
So if you needed to know the square root of 8 million 6 hundred and 75 thousand 3 hundred
and 9, instead of spending all day hand-cranking your step reckoner, you could look it up in
a huge book full of square root tables in a minute or so.
Speed and accuracy is particularly important on the battlefield, and so militaries were
among the first to apply computing to complex problems.
A particularly difficult problem is accurately firing artillery shells, which by the 1800s
could travel well over a kilometer (or a bit more than half a mile).
Add to this varying wind conditions, temperature, and atmospheric pressure, and even hitting
something as large as a ship was difficult.
Range Tables were created that allowed gunners to look up environmental conditions and the
distance they wanted to fire, and the table would tell them the angle to set the canon.
These Range Tables worked so well, they were used well into World War Two.
The problem was, if you changed the design of the cannon or of the shell, a whole new
table had to be computed, which was massively time consuming and inevitably led to errors.
Charles Babbage acknowledged this problem in 1822 in a paper to the Royal Astronomical
Society entitled: “Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical
and mathematical tables".
Let’s go to the thought bubble.
Charles Babbage proposed a new mechanical device called the Difference Engine, a much
more complex machine that could approximate polynomials.
Polynomials describe the relationship between several variables - like range and air pressure,
or amount of pizza Carrie Anne eats and happiness.
Polynomials could also be used to approximate logarithmic and trigonometric functions, which
are a real hassle to calculate by hand.
Babbage started construction in 1823, and over the next two decades, tried to fabricate
and assemble the 25,000 components, collectively weighing around 15 tons.
Unfortunately, the project was ultimately abandoned.
But, in 1991, historians finished constructing a Difference Engine based on Babbage's drawings
and writings - and it worked!
But more importantly, during construction of the Difference Engine, Babbage imagined
an even more complex machine - the Analytical Engine.
Unlike the Difference Engine, Step Reckoner and all other computational devices before
it - the Analytical Engine was a “general purpose computer”.
It could be used for many things, not just one particular computation; it could be given
data and run operations in sequence; it had memory and even a primitive printer.
Like the Difference Engine, it was ahead of its time, and was never fully constructed.
However, the idea of an “automatic computer” – one that could guide itself through a
series of operations automatically, was a huge deal, and would foreshadow computer programs.
English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote hypothetical programs for the Analytical Engine, saying,
“A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis.”
For her work, Ada is often considered the world’s first programmer.
The Analytical Engine would inspire, arguably, the first generation of computer scientists,
who incorporated many of Babbage’s ideas in their machines.
This is why Babbage is often considered the "father of computing".
Thanks Thought Bubble!
So by the end of the 19th century, computing devices were used for special purpose tasks
in the sciences and engineering, but rarely seen in business, government or domestic life.
However, the US government faced a serious problem for its 1890 census that demanded
the kind of efficiency that only computers could provide.
The US Constitution requires that a census be conducted every ten years, for the purposes
of distributing federal funds, representation in congress, and good stuff like that.
And by 1880, the US population was booming, mostly due to immigration.
That census took seven years to manually compile and by the time it was completed, it was already
out of date – and it was predicted that the 1890 census would take 13 years to compute.
That’s a little problematic when it’s required every decade!
The Census bureau turned to Herman Hollerith, who had built a tabulating machine.
His machine was “electro-mechanical” – it used traditional mechanical systems for keeping
count, like Leibniz’s Step Reckoner –– but coupled them with electrically-powered components.
Hollerith’s machine used punch cards which were paper cards with a grid of locations
that can be punched out to represent data.
For example, there was a series of holes for marital status.
If you were married, you would punch out the married spot, then when the card was inserted
into Hollerith’s machine, little metal pins would come down over the card – if a spot
was punched out, the pin would pass through the hole in the paper and into a little vial
of mercury, which completed the circuit.
This now completed circuit powered an electric motor, which turned a gear to add one, in
this case, to the “married” total.
Hollerith’s machine was roughly 10x faster than manual tabulations, and the Census was
completed in just two and a half years - saving the census office millions of dollars.
Businesses began recognizing the value of computing, and saw its potential to boost
profits by improving labor- and data-intensive tasks, like accounting, insurance appraisals,
and inventory management.
To meet this demand, Hollerith founded The Tabulating Machine Company, which later merged
with other machine makers in 1924 to become The International Business Machines Corporation
or IBM - which you’ve probably heard of.
These electro-mechanical “business machines” were a huge success, transforming commerce
and government, and by the mid-1900s, the explosion in world population and the rise
of globalized trade demanded even faster and more flexible tools for processing data, setting
the stage for digital computers, which we’ll talk about next week.
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