A Logical Decision Using the Transistor as an Electronic Switch
Richard Turton · 1996
Abstract The idea of creating a machine which can automatically perform mathematical calculations has been around for much longer than most people imagine. The earliest attempts to build a calculating machine are usually credited to Blaise Pascal and date from the mid-seventeenth century. These machines were very limited in their abilities, being capable only of addition and subtraction (the latter being performed after making a small adjustment to the internal workings). Although the first examples were rather unreliable, many improved versions appeared throughout the following two hundred years. Some of these later models were also capable of performing multiplication and division using a special gear wheel designed by Gottfried Leibniz. The next major advance came in the 1830s. The English mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage had far more ambitious ideas. He proposed a programmable machine, called the Analytical Engine, which would be controlled by punched cards. (Similar cards were already in use to determine the patterns produced by automated Jacquard looms.) Although Babbage never succeeded in building a working model, the Analytical Engine is generally considered to be the original antecedent of the general-purpose digital computer. Indeed, many of the concepts which he proposed, such as the idea of a stored program, were actually redeveloped a hundred years later by researchers who were unaware of Babbage’s earlier work.