From Abacus to Computer

 

Most today have a quick and clear mental image when we hear the word "computer." But did you realize that the abacus was really the first "computer" developed some 3000 years ago? 

Next came Blaise Pascal's arithmetic machine in 1642. This machine operated by dialing a series of wheels bearing the numbers 0 to 9 around their circumferences.  

In 1822, Charles Babbage, a British mathematician, built this difference engine to produce tables for navigation and astronomy. It was Babbage who first came up with the idea for a computer, a machine which could handle any sort of mathematical computation automatically. 

Dr. Herman Hollerith, a statistician from Buffalo, New York, solved a problem of major importance for the U.S. Census Bureau when he designed his electric tabulating machine in the 1880s. Before this, a decade would nearly pass before the previous census was counted. 

Computers from the 1940s to the 1960s looked like this............ and never no way would an individual be able to use one..............for family history!!!

 

*** Big, BIG thanks to an old magazine advertisement from IBM; think the ad was under infosystems.