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Daily Archives: July 13, 2012

Charles Babbage

The Father of the Modern Computer

 

Probably the most admired person in annals of computing science history is Charles Babbage.  His work is considered visionary because it exceeded the scope of early 19th century European, British, and American calculator technology.  Historians applaud Babbage for his theoretical logic for complex calculations with calculating machines, the Difference Engine of 1822 and the Analytical Engine of 1842.  Babbage envisioned a calculating machine—a difference engine—capable of automatically producing error free calculations for mathematical tables  publication, avoiding the errors normally produced by manual production of actuarial and scientific tables with arithmometers and comptometers (Wilkes, 2003).

His plan for a difference engine began while a student at Trinity College in Cambridge.  John Herschel, a colleague and mentor at Cambridge, encouraged Babbage to fulfill his dreams after listening to a presentation.  The proposed results were would be accomplished, for example, by representing a trigonometric function, such as sine or tan, as a polynomial.  The degree of complexity of the function was determined by the required accuracy of the tables.  By using a finite method, the calculation for said polynomial substitutes were reduced by repeated addition of only the differences in each resulting equation (Bromley, 2003).

In 1823, Babbage proposed to Parliament that building such a machine would aid the British government with its actuary tables as well as the scientific and business communities.  To prove the project was viable, Babbage built a smaller prototype of the Difference Engine that handled only six digit numbers and was capable of processing the formula: T = x2 + x + 41 (Bromley, 2003).  After a successful demonstration with the prototype, Babbage initially received ₤1500 funding from the British government (Swedin & Ferro, 2007).  The support from the government grew eventually to more than ₤17,000 for the project (Bromley, 2003).

The Difference Engine, had it been built, would have had more than 25,000 parts and weighed more than three tons (White, 2004, p. 5).  Despite the purported general-purpose processing of the Difference Engine, as a practical aid to printing tables, it is, in the mathematical sense, according to Broomley, an extremely limited instrument.  Consequently, Babbage sought new avenues to solve his automated table production problems.  Referring to the Broomley (2003) “Analytical Engine” text once more, Babbage conceived of the second difference engine to solve the equation T = x2 + x + 41.  Once Babbage realized the second difference in the equation was a constant, he modified original configuration of the Difference Engine but it could not perform the required multiplications of the new equation T = x2 + x + 41.

To automate the second difference into the calculator operations, Babbage modified the gears of the Difference Engine so that the tabulated values of the second difference were feedback into the machine.  The results of which would cause the values of the function to be calculated without an intermediate polynomial.   The modifications Babbage imagined for the Difference Engine resulted in the conception of a new machine, the Analytical Engine.  If the Analytical Engine had been built, it would have been in principle the first fully programmable, general-purpose, automatic digital computer (Wilkes, 1992).

The Analytical Engine contained the four basic components found in the von Neumann architecture required of modern computers: memory, CPU, input and output.  The Analytical Engine design consisted of these four components: the mill, the store, the reader, and the printer.

The mill was the calculating unit, consistent with the CPU of a modern computer.  The store was where the Analytical Engine held data prior to processing, which is consistent with memory and storage in modern computers.  The reader and printer are self-explanatory and the equivalent to the input and output devices.  Input for the Analytical Engine was performed using a series of punch cards similar Jacquard’s punch cards and the Hollerith cards of the electromechanical and electronic eras.  (Bromley, “Analytical Engine,” 2003).

Popular legend would have the casual historian believe Babbage and the Difference Engine succumbed to the same engineering problems that befell Leibniz and the Step Reckoner.  After further investigation of Babbage, the author discovered the reasons behind the failure to complete either Difference Engines or the Analytical Engine had little to do with the engineering skill or technological savvy of British machinist during the Industrial Revolution.  Quite the opposite was true; the skills the Babbage staff gained while working on the Difference Engine fortified British engineering that proliferated throughout machine shops across the nation.  Elements of the techniques employed by Babbage trained engineers supplanted known methods in the parts and tools fabrication industry and influenced the development of new machinery across Great Britain (Williams M. R., The Difference Engines, 1979).

What caused Babbage’s failure to complete either machine had more to do with his hubris, his personality, his eccentricities, his inability to cope with people or the ever-changing fabric of British society during the Industrial Revolution than any technological shortcomings (Bromley, 2003).  Compounding the aforementioned factors contributing to his downfall was the loss of his father and his own chronic poor health.

The complete story of Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace,  and the Difference Engines he conceived  is in the book A History of the Computer and Its Networks now available at these retailers  Lambert Academic Publishing, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and More Books and other fine booksellers on the Internet worldwide.

The Analog King

Most people associate the name Vannevar Bush with the development of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan during World War II.  However, prior to the war, Vannevar Bush was one of the nation’s leading engineers and computer scientist pioneering the development of several analog computing projects.  He was the first vice president and dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and later president of the Carnegie Institution.  Vannevar Bush was born March 11, 1890, in Everett, Massachusetts.  He received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Tufts College.  He received his doctorate in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1916.

His rise to prominence began with the invention of a simplistic analog computer the Profile Tracer, a surveying tool.  Briefly, the profile tracer plotted the traverse of the land and reproduced it on paper.  Over a nine-year period between 1922 and 1931, Bush was recognized by his peers for the invention of several electromechanical devices, which included the Product Intergraph an analog computer that could solve simple equations and the Differential Analyzer.  Differential Analyzer or the Rockefeller Differential Analyzer (as it eventually became) was Bush’s attempt to reproduce or re-invent the Babbage Difference Engine (Redshaw, 1996).  The Rockefeller Differential Analyzer was one of the most powerful analog computers ever built.  It could solve differential equations with as many as 18 independent variables.  The Rockefeller Differential Analyzer weighed 100-tons, contained 2000 vacuum tubes, and 150 electric motors.

Bush’s scientific success with analog computing, allowed him to become the chief scientific advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt.  With Roosevelt’s backing, Bush was instrumental in mobilizing the United States’ scientific community prior to the outbreak of hostilities in World War II, in 1939.

At the behest of Vannevar Bush, President Roosevelt created the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), to organized, and coordinated federal government scientific research relating to national defense.  A year later, Bush asked the President Roosevelt to create the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which superseded the NDRC.  As the primary administrator of the OSRD, Bush was instrumental in spearheading the Allies’ development of radar and the atomic before the Axis, Japan, and Germany.

The complete story of Vannevar Bush and the analog computer is found in the book A History of the Computer and Its Networks now available at these retailers  Lambert Academic Publishing, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and More Books and other fine booksellers on the Internet worldwide.

The Quiet Warrior

Fortunately, Lewis Latimer did not have the same attitude as Granville Woods had towards Civil Rights.  Instead of following the advice of Frederick Douglass—the preeminent Civil Rights advocate of the 19th century—who advised African Americans to instigate or agitate on matters of Civil Rights.  Latimer worked quietly within the system building a reputation for himself in the company of the prominent industrialist of America, men like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Hiram Maxim.  Lacking formal education, Latimer was able to through raw talent and skill work his way up the corporate latter to  hold a prominent position with the  two of the corporate giants of the 19th century, General Electric and Bell Telephone.

Lewis Latimer was born in 1848, the son of two fugitive slaves, George and Rebecca Latimer of Chelsea, Massachusetts.  Latimer began his adult career in the Union Navy during the Civil War aboard the USS Massasoit a side-wheeled gunboat.  The USS Massasoit fought several skirmishes with Confederate naval forces on the James River in Virginia (1861-1865).

Latimer began his civilian career working as an office boy in 1868 at Crosby and Gould, a well-known patent law firm, in Boston.  Crosby and Gould specialized in helping inventors protect their intellectual properties and inventions from patent infringement.  In his spare time, Latimer taught himself the art of mechanical drawing, first by observing other draftsmen employed by Crosby and Gould, then later by reading books on the subject.  After several months of study and practice, he requested an opportunity to demonstrate his talent to his employer.  Latimer’s drawings were described as beautiful works of art.  As consequence, Crosby and Gould promoted Latimer to the position of draftsman with a salary of $20 per week (Haber, 1970, p. 73) (George, 1999).

Latimer’s first important client as a draftsman was none other than Alexander Graham Bell.  Latimer provided Bell with the appropriate technical drawings he needed to submit his version of the telephone to the United States patent office in 1876.  (During the post-Civil War era, there were always challenges to the veracity of the skills 19th African Americans.  Some historians maintain Latimer never worked for Bell during the historic race to the patent with Gray.)  Still other historians claimed that Latimer (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996), not Bell, invented the telephone; however, that notion is mere bloviation.  What is claimed by references from Smithsonian Institution to M.I.T., Latimer worked as a draftsman for Bell providing him with the blueprints and expertise to submit an application for the telephone.  Because of Latimer’s dedication to the task, Bell was able to submit his patent for the telephone a few hours before rival Elisha Gray.  (In fact, Bell was not the first to invent the telephone.  Antonio Meucci invented the telephone.  Bell submitted his patent a year after the Meucci patent caveat expired.)  (George, 1999).

In 1880, Latimer worked for Hiram Maxim, an inventor and founder of the United States Electric Lighting Company (since 1888 a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric) of Brooklyn.  After familiarizing himself with the design and fabrication of the light bulb, Latimer made a number of improvements to Maxim’s method of manufacturing incandescent bulb filaments.  Among them, he initiated a change in the way to attach the carbonized wire filaments that provided light in the bulb (Schneider & Singer, 2005).  Latimer along with Maxim received patents for developing a method for connecting the metal wires to the carbon filament inside an incandescent lamp in 1881 (Haber, 1970, p. 75).  Latimer’s new filament manufacturing process helped make electric lighting in homes and businesses a commercial success.  Filaments based on Latimer’s carbon envelop were used until the 1930s, when the tungsten-based filaments replaced carbon-based filaments.

In addition to the carbon filament Latimer, also, fostered the threaded socket for the light bulb that allows users to screw the bulb into the socket (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996).  Latimer’s light bulb manufacturing process added an inert gas to the bulb to retard the disintegration of the carbon filament (Schneider & Singer, 2005).  In 1882, he received an individual patent for creating the first commercially viable long-lasting light bulb based on the carbon filament.  Later in 1882, Latimer received a third patent for creating a globe for arch lights (Haber, 1970, p. 77).

Thomas Edison became aware of Latimer’s skills as a draftsman and inventor and retained his services for Edison General Electric during 1884.  His knowledge of electric lighting and electric patents proved invaluable.  Edison at first hired Latimer as a draftsmen and engineer but his uncanny knowledge of the manufacture of light bulbs, the patent application process, and electric appliances soon made Edison promote Latimer to the position of the company’s chief draftsmen and patent expert.  In that, position Latimer investigated claims patent infringement of Edison General Electric products (Vetter, 2011).

The complete story of Lewis Latimer, Thomas Edison, the incandescent lamp  other African American inventors, and Latimer’s contributions to history  is found in the book A History of the Computer and Its Networks now available at these retailers  Lambert Academic Publishing, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and More Books and other fine booksellers on the Internet worldwide.