History of Computing: Basic Computing Periods

Flashcards covering the key milestones and concepts from the lecture notes on the history of computing and the basic computing periods.

The year in which the word 'computer' was first used.

1613

What the word 'computer' referred to when it was first used in 1613.

a person who carried out calculations

A mechanical device used to aid an individual in performing mathematical calculations.

Abacus

The inventor of Napier’s Bones.

John Napier

The year Napier’s Bones were invented.

1614

The invention discovered by John Napier in 1614; used to multiply, divide, and calculate square and cube roots by moving rods on specially constructed boards.

Napier’s Bones

The inventor of the Slide Rule.

William Oughtred

The year the Slide Rule was invented.

1622

The invention by William Oughtred in 1622; based on Napier's logarithms; used for multiplication, division, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry; not used for addition or subtraction.

Slide Rule

The inventor of the Pascaline.

Blaise Pascal

The year the Pascaline was invented.

1642

The invention by Blaise Pascal in 1642; limited to addition and subtraction; expensive.

Pascaline

The inventor of the Stepped Reckoner.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The year the Stepped Reckoner was invented.

1672

The invention by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1672; could add, subtract, multiply, and divide automatically.

Stepped Reckoner

The inventor of the Jacquard Loom.

Joseph-Marie Jacquard

The year the Jacquard Loom was invented.

1881

An automatic loom controlled by punched cards, invented by Joseph-Marie Jacquard in 1881.

Jacquard Loom

The inventor of the Arithmometer.

Thomas de Colmar

The inventor of the Difference Engine.

Charles Babbage

The year the Difference Engine was conceived.

1822

A mechanical calculator designed by Charles Babbage in 1822, intended to compute polynomial functions.

Difference Engine

The inventor of the Analytical Engine.

Charles Babbage

The year the Analytical Engine was designed.

1837

A proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by Charles Babbage, considered to be the first design of a general-purpose computer.

Analytical Engine

Often regarded as the first computer programmer for her work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

Ada Lovelace

The inventor of the Tabulating Machine.

Herman Hollerith

The year the Tabulating Machine was invented.

1890

An electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting, that used punched cards for data input.

Tabulating Machine

The year IBM was founded.

1911

The German engineer who built the Z1, the first programmable binary mechanical computer.

Konrad Zuse

The year the Z3, often cited as the first functional program-controlled, all-automatic digital computer, was completed.

1941

The British mathematician who formalized the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, and played a crucial role in cracking the Enigma code during WWII.

Alan Turing

The year the Colossus, one of the world's first electronic digital programmable computers, was built to help decipher German messages during WWII.

1943

The inventor of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC).

John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert

The year ENIAC was completed.

1946

The first general-purpose electronic digital computer.

ENIAC

The inventor of the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC I).

J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly

The year UNIVAC I was delivered.

1951

The inventors of the transistor, marking a significant advancement

Bell Labs scientists (John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley)