History of computing hardware: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:38, 11 February 2025

Revision as of 19:21, 11 February 2025

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By 1920, electromechanical tabulating machines could add, subtract, and print accumulated totals.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1920.html |website=IBM Archives |title=1920 |date=23 January 2003 |access-date=2020-12-01 |archive-date=2020-10-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201029080349/https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1920.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Machine functions were directed <!-- other than the calculators (602, 604...) unit record machines are not programmed – there is no sequence of operations on their control panels. See [[plugboard]]--> by inserting dozens of wire jumpers into removable [[plugboard|control panel]]s. When the United States instituted [[Social Security (United States)|Social Security]] in 1935, IBM punched-card systems were used to process records of 26 million workers.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/decade_1930.html |website=IBM Archives |title=Chronological History of IBM: 1930s |date=23 January 2003 |access-date=2020-12-01 |archive-date=2020-12-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201203145246/https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/decade_1930.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Punched cards became ubiquitous in industry and government for accounting and administration.

[[Leslie Comrie]]'s articles on punched-card methods<ref>Leslie Comrie [https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1928MNRAS..88..506C (1928) On the Construction of Tables by Interpolation]</ref> and [[W. J. Eckert]]'s publication of ''Punched Card Methods in Scientific Computation'' in 1940, described punched-card techniques sufficiently advanced to solve some differential equations or perform multiplication and division using floating-point representations, all on punched cards and [[unit record equipment|unit record machines]].{{sfn|Eckert|1935}} Such machines were used during World War II for cryptographic statistical processing, as well as a vast number of administrative uses.<ref>{{citation needed|date editor-last =August 2023Erskine | editor-first = Ralph | editor2-last = Smith | editor2-first = Michael | editor2-link = Michael Smith (newspaper reporter) | title = The Bletchley Park Codebreakers | publisher = Biteback Publishing Ltd | year = 2011 | page = 134| isbn = 978-184954078-0}} Updated and extended version of ''Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer'' Bantam Press 2001 The Astronomical Computing Bureau, [[Columbia University]]</ref>, performed astronomical calculations representing the state of the art in [[computing]].<ref>{{cite web |author=Frank da Cruz |title=A Chronology of Computing at Columbia University |website=Columbia University Computing History |publisher=Columbia University |url=https://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/#timeline |access-date=2023-08-31|archive-date=2023-08-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230822234349/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/#timeline |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Eckert|1940|pp=101–114}}

===Calculators===