History of computer electromechanical age

HISTORY OF COMPUTER

ELECTROMECHANICAL AGE

1840-1940

ELECTROMECHANICAL AGE -The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses.

The beginning of telecommunicationAlessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile which is considered to be the first source of stored electricity in the 8th Century.The battery made by Volta is credited as the first electrochemical cell. It consists of two electrodes: one made of zinc, the other of copper. The electrolyte is sulfuric acid or a brine mixture of salt and water. The electrolyte exists in the form 2H+ and SO4 2-. The zinc, which is higher than both copper and hydrogen in the electrochemical series, reacts with the negatively charged sulphate. ( SO4 ) The positively charged hydrogen bubbles start depositing around the copper and take away some of its electrons. This makes the zinc rod the negative electrode and the copper rod the positive electrode.

Voltaic Battery

Telegraph

Samuel F.J. Morse invented the first magnetic telegraph in the year 1832 and made an experiment version in 1815.

TelephoneThe first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson was made on 10 March 1876 when Bell spoke into his device, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” and Watson answered. Bell used Gray's liquid transmitter design[9] in his famous 10 March 1876 experiment, but avoided describing the liquid transmitter in his public demonstrations. The liquid transmitter had the problem that waves formed on the surface of the liquid, resulting in interference.

Marchese Guglielmo Marconi,(25 April 1874 - 20 July 1937) was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide.

RADIO

Electromechanical Computing

Pehr and Advard Scheutz (1853) complete their tabulating Machine, capable of processing fifteen-digit numbers, printing out results and rounding off to eight digits

A Comptometer (1885) is a type of mechanical (or electro-mechanical) adding machine. The comptometer invented by Dorr Felt , was the first adding device to be driven solely by the action of pressing keys, which are arranged in an array of vertical and horizontal columns.

COMPTOGRAPH- Comptometer with built-in printer.

Punched CardsA punch card or punched card (or punch card or Hollerith card or IBM card), is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Now almost an obsolete recording medium, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and early 20th century for operating fairground organs and related instruments. It was used through the 20th century in unit record machines for input, processing, and data storage. Early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data, with offline data entry key punch machines. Some voting machines use punched cards.

The company which became IBM was founded in 1896 as the Tabulating Machine Company[6] by Herman Hollerith, in Broome County, New York (Endicott, New York, Where it still maintains very limited operations). It was incorporated as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR) on June 16, 1911, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1916. IBM adopted its current name in 1924, when it became a Fortune 500 company.

The Millionaire (1893), the first efficient four-function calculator invented by Otto shweiger, a Swiss Engineer.