The Englishman designed the first modern digital computer, but he never built it. He did build other useful devices, though, including a submarine.
Charles Babbage, Master Inventor
English mathematician Charles Babbage designed the
first modern computer in the 1830's. He called it an analytical engine.
Babbage had been able to get enough money to build the computer, the analytical engine would have been as big as a locomotive. It would have been able to store 1.000 50-digit numbers. That was unheard of back then - even though today's machines can store millions of times more information.
Charles Babbage was born the day after Christmas in 1792. As a child, he liked to take toys apart to see how they were made. He loved to work with math problems. He eventually became a professor at Cambridge University in England.
Babbage could be mean and he sometimes yelled at people who disagreed with him. But he had a brilliant mind. In addition to designing , the forerunner of today's digital computer. Babbage invented a railroad signal system, a device for examining eyes, a submarine and a system of flashing lights for lighthouses.
During the 70 years following Babbage's death in 1871, computer scientists improved on Babbage's original idea.
Howard Aiken (1900-1973)
He built the Mark I, the first working digital computer. A brilliant inventor, he was not a good fortune-teller. Said Aiken in 1947: "There will never be enough problems, enough work for more than one or two of there computers."
Howard Aiken, A Step Toward Today
In 1944, Harvard University physicist Howard Aiken built the forerunner of today's computer.
Aiken's Mark I was the first working digital binary computer. It used thousands of electrical switchers that clicked on and off to compute data. When it was running, the switches sounded like the clicking of knitting needles.
Howard Aiken drew up poor in Indianapolis, Ind. He had to work his way though school, but he made it though Harvard.
Aiken, like Charles Babbage, had a prickly personality. While his computer, the Mark I, was being built, he drove the workers like slaves.
For 16 years the Mark I was used to solve the complex equations needed to aim the U.S. Navy's big guns. But it was much slower than later computers, which use electronic components instead of switches.
2 Answer the questions:
1) Where did the scientist come from?
2) What have you learned about his childhood?
3) What was his job?
4) What university did he teach at?
5) Did he design his computer?
6) Did he manage to build it?
7) What was his computer like?
8) What kind of man was the scientist?
9) What do you know about his other inventions?
3 When you have answered the questions, find a partner from the other group. Compare your answers and swap information.
4 Tell about one of the Masters of Invention.
5 Find out if you are a ‘computer nerd’ or a ‘technophobe’. Match each word or word-combination in the left-hand column with the best meaning in the right –hand column. Put a letter to indicate your choice.
___1. a modem
___2. a computer nerd
___3.a disk
___4.a mouse
___5.the Internet
___6.cyberspace
___7.a technophobe
___8.a cyber buddy
a) a person who doesn’t like modern machines, especially computers.
b) a computer system which allows millions of computer users to exchange information.
c) a piece of electronic equipment that allows information to be sent along telephone wires from one computer to another.
d) a friend who you only ever communicate with through computers.
e) a small object which you move with your hands to give instructions to a computer.
f) a flat piece of plastic you use for storing computer information.
g) the imaginary place where electronic messages, information, pictures, etc. exist when they are sent from one computer to another.