Tölvumál - 01.06.1982, Qupperneq 5

TÖLVUMÁL
5
but 19 years further back, in 1623, when
the German astronomer and mathematician,
Wilhelm Schichard, constructed his machine,
which, like he wrote to the astronomer
Kepler "immediately computes the given
numbers automatically, adds, subtracts,
multiplies, and divides. Surely you will
beam when you see how it accumulates left
carries of tens and hundreds by itself
or while subtracting takes something away
from them". Unfortunately, the machine
Schichard constructed does not exist any-
more, but thanks to descriptions and drafts
a reconstruction has been possible. In
comparison Pascal's machine was "only"
capable of performing addition and sub-
traction, but not the operations of multi-
plication and division.
The next step in development took place
in 1805 when Jacquard succeded in build-
ing a fully automatized loom. A series
of punched cards were attached in a chain
and was automatically advanced and pro-
cessed one by one. The combination of per-
foration and none-perforation guided a
set of hooks, which lifted or lowered the
individual threads on the loom while the
weaver's shuttle advanced. The machine
was a great succes, and in 1812 11.000
Jacquard looms were into use in France.
Jacquard's idea by using punched cards
for automatic guiding and repeating a
complicated process was developed further
by the Englishman Charles Babbage, who
tried to transfer the process to a calcu-
lating-machine. Babbage was a mathemati-
cian and astronomer and at an early stage
he began to wonder, how the time consuming
calculations of astronomic tables could
be automized.
Unfortunately Babbage was far ahead of
his time and had to fight for economic
support for the project. The technologi-
cal capability of that time did not per-
mit the construction of such advanced me-
canics. In conformity with the plan the
machine was to calculate with 50 figure
numbers, and the enormous amount of gear
wheels, axles, bearings etc. put great
demands as to mecanical precision and uni-
form mass production, which could not be
fulfilled. Even though Babbage invented
a special documentations technic to de-
scribe the many standardized machine parts
and constructed special tools for' the manu-
facturing of the parts, the analytic ma-
chine was never finished, and Babbage
died in 1871 a disappointed man. Since
then part of the machine have been build
based on his drafts and has in full shown
to meet his expectations.
Babbage's genious ideas were more or less
forgotten after his death and had to be
reinvented, when, in the 1940'es, the elec-
tro technic was put into use for the cal-
culator.
The development that lead direct to the
modern programmed electronic computer star-
ted up in the late 30'es. The development
took place almost simultaneously in Ger-
many, England and the USA. Time had now
become mature due to the fact that the
necessary conditions existed. Some of the
most important conditions were:
- Electro mecanics and electronics were
among others via radio technics deve-
loped to a degree so that rather reli-
able components could be mass produced.
- The idea of automation had had a break
through in the industry, and both on
the organizational and technological
side it was possible to carry through
grand industrial projects.
- The increasing demand for high-scale
calculations within many fields, among-
others astronomy, land measuring, meteolo-
gy, physics, etc.
In America Howard Aiken at the Harvard
university started the planning of an au-
tamatic calculator in 1937, because he
was not able to handle by manual power,
the physics differential equations he work-
ed with.
Thus, at the beginning of the 40'es, when
he had made IBM interested in the plan,
the MARK I was constructed. The machine
was programmed and for a long time it was
assumed that this was the very first pro-
grammed machine in the world. Nevertheless,
in 1941, Conrad Zuse in Germany, had build
a more advanced and much smaller machine,
23.
The first, purely electronic machine, the
ENIAC, which was build fra 1943-45 in Pen-
sylvania under the supervision of J.P.
Eckert and J.W. Maucly. During the pro-
cess of construction the mathematician,
John von Neuman, was involved and he made
out a draft for the functional part of
the machine in
a calculation unit ,
a storage comprising programs and data,
a CPU, and
a control unit for input and output.
Ever since this principle has been the
essential element.
At a very early stage the Nordic countri-
es took up activities, and in 1953 the
Swedes constructed the machine, BESK. In
Denmark the DASK machine was constructed
in 1955 and the same year in Norway the
NUSSE machine (Norsk Universel Sifferma-
skine Selvstyrt Elektronisk).
All these machines were developed for the
solution of mathematical problems, but
having involved a commercial firm like
IBM - the thought was very near at hand
to go into the administrative sector with
the much more important sales potential.
Consequently a revolutionary development
was started. A development where capacity
and speed has doubled many times, and at
the same time size and price per unit have
been reduced drastically.
A tremendous development - symbolized by
the development from vacuum tubes over
transistors to chips with quite unbeliev-
able capacity - has created the physic
base for the possibilities to change our
everyday life in a radical way. There seems
to be no boundries as to how much memory,
speed and logic these miniscule circuits
can contain - and still new possibilities
show up.
The chips alone do not render possible
these colossal changes. It is thus neces-
sary to build up an electronic infrastruct-
ure in Society. And it seems like this
does happen, even with a speed that we
know from the chips development.