Content deleted Content added
Better phrasing; using up to with a single phrase (two-bit) is not grammatically sound. |
m →History: caps |
||
Line 26:
[[Richard Hamming]], the inventor of Hamming codes, worked at [[Bell Labs]] in the late 1940s on the Bell [[Model V]] computer, an [[electromechanical]] relay-based machine with cycle times in seconds. Input was fed in on [[Punched tape|punched paper tape]], seven-eighths of an inch wide, which had up to six holes per row. During weekdays, when errors in the relays were detected, the machine would stop and flash lights so that the operators could correct the problem. During after-hours periods and on weekends, when there were no operators, the machine simply moved on to the next job.
Hamming worked on weekends, and grew increasingly frustrated with having to restart his programs from scratch due to detected errors. In a taped interview, Hamming said, "And so I said, 'Damn it, if the machine can detect an error, why can't it locate the position of the error and correct it?'".<ref>{{citation|last=Thompson|first=Thomas M.|title=From Error-Correcting Codes through Sphere Packings to Simple Groups|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ggqxuG31B3cC&q=%22From%20Error-Correcting%20Codes%20through%20Sphere%20Packings%20to%20Simple%20Groups%22&pg=PA16|pages=16–17|year=1983|series=The Carus Mathematical Monographs (#21)|publisher=Mathematical Association of America|isbn=0-88385-023-0}}</ref> Over the next few years, he worked on the problem of error-correction, developing an increasingly powerful array of algorithms. In 1950, he published what is now known as Hamming
=== Codes predating Hamming ===
| |||