History of the creation of the computer. The very first programmer in the world When the first program was created

Ada Augusta Lovelace - 1815 - 1852 - the world's first programmer

Ada Augusta Lovelace was an English mathematician, daughter of the great English poet Byron.

In 1834, Ada Augusta visited Babbage's workshop for the first time and became acquainted with his difference engine. Mrs. de Morgan, who accompanied Ada, described this visit as follows: “While some of the guests looked in amazement at this device with the feeling with which, as they say, savages see a mirror for the first time or hear the shot of a gun, Miss Byron, still very young, was able to understand the workings of the machine and appreciated the great merit of its invention."

Ada Lovelace studied Charles Babbage's computer.

In 1843, Ada Lovelace developed the first programs for the Analytical Engine of Charles Babbage's computer, and laid the theoretical foundations for programming. She first introduced the concept of "operation cycle". She expressed the main idea that the analytical engine can solve problems that, due to the difficulty of calculations, are almost impossible to solve manually.

The first program included a conditional control program invented by Bubbage, repeating cycles of operations. Ada wrote the first programming textbook.

When did the first computers appear? It is not so easy to answer this question, since there is no single correct classification of electronic computers, as well as formulations of what can be classified as them and what cannot.

First mention

The word "computer" was first documented in 1613 and meant a person who performs calculations. But in the 19th century, people realized that a machine never gets tired of working, and it can do work much faster and more accurately.

To begin counting the era of computing machines, the year 1822 is most often taken. The first computer was invented by the English mathematician Charles Babbage. He created the concept and began manufacturing the difference engine, which is considered the first automatic computing device. She was capable of counting multiple sets of numbers and making a printout of the results. But, unfortunately, due to funding problems, Babbage was never able to complete its full version.

But the mathematician did not give up, and in 1837 he introduced the first mechanical computer, called the Analytical Engine. It was the very first general purpose computer. At the same time, his collaboration with Ada Lovelace began. She translated and supplemented his works, and also made the first programs for his invention.

The Analytical Engine consisted of the following parts: an arithmetic-logical unit, an integrated memory unit and a device for monitoring the movement of data. Due to financial difficulties, it was also not completed during the scientist’s lifetime. But Babbage's designs and designs helped other scientists who created the first computers.

Almost 100 years later

Oddly enough, over the course of a century, computers have made almost no progress in their development. In 1936-1938, German scientist Konrad Zuse created the Z1, the first electromechanical programmable binary computer. Then, in 1936, Alan Turing built a Turing machine.

It became the basis for further theories about computers. The machine emulated the actions of a person following a list of logical instructions and printed the result of the work on a paper tape. The Zuse and Turing machines are the first computers in the modern sense, without which the computers we are accustomed to today would not have appeared.

Everything for the front

The Second World War also influenced the development of computers. In December 1943, the Tommy Flowers Company introduced a secret machine called the Kollos, which helped British agents break German message codes. It was the first all-electric programmable computer. The general public learned about its existence only in the 70s. Since then, computers have attracted the attention of not only scientists, but also the ministries of defense, which actively supported and financed their development.

There is some debate about which digital computer should be considered the first. In 1937-1942, University of Iowa professor John Vincent Atanasoff and Cliff Berry (graduate student) developed their ABC computer. And in 1943-1946 J. Presper Eckert and D. Mauchly, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, built the most powerful ENIAC weighing 50 tons. Thus, Atanasov and Berry created their machine earlier, but since it was never fully functional, the title of “very first computer” often goes to ENIAC.

First commercial samples

With their enormous dimensions and design complexity, computers were available only to military departments and large universities, which assembled them themselves. But already in 1942, K. Zuse began work on the fourth version of his brainchild - Z4, and in July 1950 he sold it to the Swedish mathematician Eduard Stiefel.

And the first computers that began to be mass produced were models with the laconic name 701, produced by IBM on April 7, 1953. A total of 19,701 of them were sold. Of course, these were still machines intended only for large institutions. In order to become truly widespread, they needed a few more important improvements.

So, in 1955, on March 8, “Whirlwind” went into operation - a computer that was originally conceived during the Second World War as a simulator for pilots, but by the time of its creation it arrived in time for the beginning of the Cold War. It then became the basis for the development of SAGE, an air defense subsystem designed to automatically target interceptor aircraft. The key features of the Whirlwind were the presence of 512 bytes of RAM and the display of graphic information on the screen in real time.

Technology to the masses

The TX-O computer, introduced in 1956 at MIT, was the first to use transistors. This made it possible to greatly reduce the cost and dimensions of the equipment.

The team of scientists who developed the TX-O then left the institute, founded Digital Equipment Corporation, and introduced the PDP-1 computer in 1960, ushering in the era of minicomputers. They were no larger than one room or even a closet, and were intended for a wider range of clients.

Well, the first desktop computers began to be produced by Hewlett Packard in 1968.

So when was the first computer invented? This question cannot be answered unequivocally due to the different classifications of computers. The first mechanical computer, created by Charles Babbage in 1822, is actually not very similar to what we call a computer today.

When was the word "computer" first used?

The word "computer" was first used in 1613, and originally meant a person who performed calculations or calculations of some kind. The definition of computer carried the same meaning until the end of the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution gave rise to machines whose main purpose was calculation.

The first mechanical computer or the concept of an automatic computing machine.

In 1822, Charles Babbage conceptualized and began developing the Difference Engine, which is considered the first automatic calculating machine. This is where the history of the computer began. The difference engine was capable of operating on multiple sets of numbers and producing paper copies of the results. Babbage was helped in developing the difference engine by Ada Lovelace, who is considered by many to be the first. Unfortunately, due to financial problems, Babbage was unable to complete a full-scale functional version of this machine. In June 1991, the Science Museum in London built Difference Engine No. 2 in honor of Babbage's bicentenary birthday, and then completed the printing mechanism in 2000.

In 1837, Charles Babbage proposed the first programmable computer, called the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine contained an arithmetic logic unit (ALU), basic flow control, and on-chip memory. Unfortunately, due to funding problems, this computer was never built during Charles Babbage's lifetime. It was not until 1910 that Henry Babbage, Babbage's youngest son, was able to complete the central part of this machine from his father's designs, which was capable of performing basic arithmetic calculations.

The first computer with programming capabilities.

The first electro-mechanical binary programmable computer, the Z1, was created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in his parents' living room between 1936 and 1938, and is considered the first truly functional modern computer.

The Turing machine was proposed by Alan Turing in 1936 and became the basis for theories about computing and computers. This mechanism printed characters onto punched paper tape in a manner that emulated a human after a series of logical instructions. Without these basic principles, we would not have the computers we use today.

The first electrical programmable computer.

In December 1943, the first electrical programmable computer, the Colossus, developed by Tommy Flowers, was demonstrated and used to decipher intercepted German communications.

The first digital computer in history

The Atanasoff-Berry computer - ABC was developed by Professor Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry in 1937. Its development continued until 1942 at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University).
ABC was an electrical computer that used vacuum tubes for digital computation, including binary mathematics and Boolean logic, and had no processor.
On October 19, 1973, US Federal Judge Earl R. Larson signed a decision revoking the ENIAC patent of J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly and named Atanasov as the inventor of the electronic digital computer.
ENIAC was invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania and began construction in 1943 and was not completed until 1946. It occupied about 1,800 square feet, and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons. Even though the judge ruled that the ABC computer was the first computer, many still believe that the ENIAC is the first computer because it was fully functional.

The first computer with a stored program.

The British computer, known as the EDSAC, is generally considered to be the first electronic computer to store programs in memory. The computer was launched on May 6, 1949 and was the first computer to run a graphical computer game.
Around the same time, another computer called the Manchester Mark 1 was being developed at Victoria University of Manchester, which could also execute stored programs. The first version of the Mark 1 computer went into operation in April 1949. On the night of June 16-17, 1949, Mark 1 was used to run a program to find Mersenne primes, and for nine it made no errors.

The first computer company.

The first computer company was the Electronic Controls Company, which was founded in 1949 by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the same people who helped create the ENIAC computer. The company was later renamed EMCC or Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and produced a series of mainframe computers under the UNIVAC name.

First stored computer program

The first computer that was capable of storing and executing a program from memory was the UNIVAC 1101 or ERA 1101, introduced to the US government in 1950.

The first commercial computer.

In 1942, Konrad Zuse began working on the Z4, which later became the first commercial computer. The computer was sold to Eduard Stiefel, a mathematician at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich on July 12, 1950.

IBM's first computer.

On April 7, 1953, IBM publicly unveiled the 701, the company's first commercial scientific computer.
The first computer with RAM
On March 8, 1955, MIT introduced the revolutionary Whirlwind computer, which was the first computer with ferrite core RAM and real-time graphics.

First transistor computer

The TX-O (Transistor Experimental Computer) is the first transistorized computer, which was demonstrated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956.

The first mini-computer.

In 1960, Digital Equipment Corporation released its first of many PDP computers, the PDP-1.

The first desktop and mass market computer.

In 1964, the first desktop computer, Programma 101, was presented to the public at the New York World's Fair. It was invented by Pier Giorgio Perotto and manufactured by Olivetti. Approximately 44,000 Programma 101 computers were sold, each priced at $3,200.
In 1968, Hewlett Packard began selling the HP 9100A, which is believed to be the first mass-market desktop computer.

First workstation.

Although this computer was never sold, the Xerox Alto, introduced in 1974, is considered the first workstation. The computer was revolutionary for its time and included a fully functional computer, display and mouse. This computer, like most computers today, used windows, menus, and icons as the interface to its operating system. Many of the capabilities of this computer were demonstrated on December 9, 1968.

The first microprocessor.

The first microcomputer.

In 1973, engineer André Truong Trong Thi, together with François Gernel, developed the Micral computer. Considered the first "microcomputer", it used the Intel 8008 processor and was the first commercial computer without assembly. Originally sold for $1,750.

The first personal computer.

In 1975, Ed Roberts coined the term "personal computer" when he introduced his creation, the Altair 8800, even though the first personal computer is widely believed to be the KENBAK-1, introduced for $750 in 1971. The computer relied on a series of switches for input and a series of lights for output. Thus, the history of computers reached a new level.

First laptop or laptop computer

The IBM 5100 is the first portable computer, which was released in September 1975. The computer weighed 55 pounds (25 kg) and had a five-inch CRT display, tape drive, 1.9MHz PALM processor and 64 KB of RAM.

The first truly portable computer or laptop is the Osborne I, which was designed by Adam Osborne and released in April 1981. Osborne weighed 24.5 lb (11.1 kg), had a 5-inch display, 64 KB of memory, two 5 1/4-inch floppy drives, ran the CP/M 2.2 operating system, had a modem, and cost US$1,795 .
The IBM PC Division (PCD) later released the IBM, the first portable computer, which weighed 30 pounds. Later in 1986, IBM PCD announced the first laptop, weighing 12 pounds (5.4 kg). Then, in 1994, IBM introduced the IBM ThinkPad 775CD, the first laptop with an integrated CD-ROM.

The first Apple computer.

Apple I (Apple 1) was the first Apple Computer and sold for $666.66. The computer was designed by Steve Wozniak in 1976 and featured an 8-bit processor and 4 KB of memory, expandable to 8 or 48 KB with expansion cards. Even though Apple was sold fully assembled, it still could not function without the power supply, display, keyboard and case, which were sold separately.

IBM's first personal computer.

IBM introduced its first personal computer, called the IBM PC, codenamed Acorn, in 1981. It was equipped with an 8088 processor, 16 KB of memory, which was expandable to 256 KB, and MS-DOS was used as the operating system.

The first PC clone.

The Compaq Portable model is the first PC clone and was released in March 1983 by Compaq. Compaq Portable was 100% IBM compatible and capable of running any software developed for IBM computers.

The first multimedia computer.

In 1992, Tandy Radio Shack became one of the first companies to produce computers based on the MPC standard with its introduction of the M2500 XL/2 and M4020 SX computers.

The program for the demolition of residential buildings from the era of mass industrial housing construction is most often discussed in only one tone: how fair will be the conditions for relocating people whose houses will fall under bulldozers.

Renovation surprises. Discussion of the bill

Nevertheless, those residents of the capital who carefully studied the bill immediately had a huge number of questions about it. And the most important of them: does the decision on the mass demolition of owned housing violate the constitutional rights of Muscovites? All the pros and cons were discussed in the Pravda.Ru studio by Moscow City Duma deputy Elena Shuvalova and activist Sergei Khabarov, a member of the committee of creditors of the Gagarinsky commercial bank.

— What’s wrong with this renovation program?

Elena Shuvalova: There is not just disinformation, but deception at various levels. This is not just some kind of Khrushchev demolition program. To be correct, we are talking about the adoption of a law in the State Duma, the introduction of changes to the law on the status of the capital, and so on. There is not a single word about Khrushchev. And if we take only the demolition aspect, it says that renovation includes houses that were built between 1958 and 1968.

This program puts the norms of the law of the city of Moscow above the norms of the law of the Russian Federation, creates a kind of state within a state and puts all Muscovites on a volcano, who can be deported and expropriated at any time.

— Those residents of the capital who carefully studied the bill had a huge number of questions about it, and the most important of them is whether the renovation violates the Constitution? The fact is that it is planned to send proposals to the owners of houses included in the renovation program to provide equivalent premises with a draft agreement on the transfer of ownership attached, and if people do not agree and sign this agreement, they will be forced. How does this correlate with the rules of law?

Sergey Khabarov: The Constitution says that the right of citizens to judicial protection cannot be limited in any way. But the renovation document explicitly states that this right may be limited in a certain way. It's not just about the Constitution, there is also an issue that conflicts with the Land and Housing Codes.

E. Sh.: I would say much more harshly: all norms of legal proceedings are violated there.

“Literally a few months ago, none of this happened, but suddenly a bill is being prepared in some hurry, a lot of information is being dumped on the heads of Muscovites, and there is a massive attack in the media space.

S.Kh.: In February, the ninth reporting congress of the Council of Municipalities of the City of Moscow was held, where the issue of five-story buildings and the second wave of demolition was raised. A response was received from Marat Khusnullin, who heads the Moscow construction complex: “We currently do not have the opportunity to implement this program for three reasons. First, it requires enormous resources, which Moscow simply does not have. Second: about 20% of the cost of the program is spent to the courts, people are against it, you have to somehow negotiate with them. Finally, there are no launching pads.” In February, all this did not happen, but on March 10, this draft law was suddenly introduced. Developing a draft law is not such an easy task, you can’t write it on your knees, but here people worked with some unique speed.

— There is another point: if within sixty days from the date of sending the proposal to conclude an agreement, and it is not signed, then the capital authorities have the right to go to court with a demand to force the conclusion of the agreement. But then what about the assertion that an agreement is a product of non-resistance between two parties?

S.Kh.: It is not clear how they are going to implement this in the courts. The court is an independent authority, and it is not a fact that the courts will side with the city. An even more difficult question is related to the fact that the second wave of relocation of five-story buildings differs from the first. There were a lot of bad houses in the first wave. Almost all of these five-story buildings were in such a terrible condition that people really wanted to leave them. Moreover, the city offered them quite tasty conditions.

— How is affiliation with the region reflected in this bill? That is, if a person lives on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, and his house is included in this program, where will he then be provided with alternative housing?

E. Sh.: It's different for different areas. Someone gets it in their own area or in adjacent ones. Residents of the Central District and the territory of New Moscow were especially unlucky in this regard. In addition, there is the wording “within the district,” but no one thinks about the fact that for a very long time there has been talk about the consolidation of individual districts of Moscow. What areas do you mean? To what size will they be enlarged? Where will the new building in which they will offer apartments to Muscovites end up?

“When citizens began to find out which houses would be included in the renovation program, it turned out that these were quite strong buildings. After this, a wave of negativity arose. Why are city authorities doing this? Did they really expect that everything would somehow grow together on its own, that no one would notice or show any dissatisfaction?

S.Kh.: This possibility cannot be denied, given that the demolition of five-story buildings itself was quite successful over the course of twenty years. In the first program of demolition of five-story buildings, the houses were very bad, with dead communications and leaky walls. The second wave includes houses built in the 50s of the twentieth century; their shelf life is 100-150 years. These are good, solid houses, just a little shabby. Their walls and foundation are in excellent condition. If it is not filled with water, then that’s it, the house can stand. The main thing that needs to be done in them is to rearrange the communications and install plastic frames instead of wooden ones. But, for example, in Ochakovo these houses are being demolished in large numbers, almost in blocks. You need to understand that this is simply freeing up land for new mass construction.

Prepared for publication by Maria Snytkova

Ada Lovelace

On December 10, 1815, Ada Lovelace was born, known to most of us as the world's very first programmer. It just so happens that this title belongs to a representative of the fair sex. Today marks the two hundred and one year anniversary of the birth of this man. And in this post I would like to talk a little about the most interesting moments from her life, without getting off with fragmentary phrases, but without going too deep into details. The material can be found anywhere with the Internet at hand. However, few people will go looking for it just for fun. Therefore, if anyone is interested, welcome to cat.

While studying at school, sitting in literature classes, I knew very well who George Byron was.

We read and, if desired, memorized his poems. After a while, having chosen a profession for myself, I learned about who the mysterious Ada Lovelace was - the first girl programmer, the daughter of that same Lord George Byron. Then it turned out to be an amazing discovery for me. For the rest of my life I remembered who Ada was and, somehow completely unnoticed by myself, I forgot about Byron himself.

Augusta Ada King (later Countess Lovelace, but more on that later) was the daughter of the English poet Lord George Gordon Byron and his wife, Anna Isabella Byron. However, Byron left them a month after the birth of his daughter, and they never saw each other again. Byron himself died when Ada was eight years old. He himself remembered his daughter more than once in his poems.

It is clear that Ada herself grew up in a rather talented family. Her mother, Anna Isabel, was very interested in mathematics even before the birth of her daughter, for which she once received a funny nickname from her husband - “the queen of parallelograms.” This was a truly unusual family. Anna, after her husband left, still managed to raise her daughter alone and this is what came of it.

At the age of twelve, Ada assembled her own flying machine! Before this, a twelve-year-old girl locked herself in her room from her mother for some time and wrote something. Her mother was afraid that she would start reading her father’s poems and go down the same path. However, all this time she was drawing.

Mathematical logic occupied her more than anything else. One day Ada fell ill and spent three years in bed. But all this time she wanted and continued to study. A variety of doctors and teachers came to see her. One of them was Augustus de Morgan, a famous mathematician and logician (yes, de Morgan’s law is named after him). Since then, Ada has become even more immersed in the world of mathematics.

As a result, Ada grew up to be a unique girl. She was beautiful and smart, just like her mother, she studied mathematics, and even surpassed the guys from Cambridge and Oxford in conversations on scientific topics. Among other people, mostly women, this caused hidden anger and envy. It was often spoken of as something dark, even devilish. It must be said that Ada herself felt unusual powers in herself (it’s funny, but in Russian her name actually sounds a little devilish). But there is nothing unusual in this, since a girl mathematician in the high English society of that time - from the outside it really looked strange. Meanwhile, many men were crazy about her.

Mathematics is mathematics, but how did it happen that programmers remember it first of all? One of Ada Lovelace's most fateful meetings was her meeting with Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first analytical computer.

At that time, in France, where Babbage arrived, a large-scale project was launched to create tables of values ​​of logarithms and trigonometric functions. Babbage began to dream of automating this work, at the same time eliminating possible human errors, since at that time it was people who manually created such tables. So Babbage thought about building his difference engine (calculating a polynomial using the difference method).

He created a huge number of drawings, and the prototype itself was completed in 1832, the same one that Ada Lovelace would see a year later.

In 1835, Ada would marry a very worthy man - Baron William King, who was subsequently awarded the title of Earl, and Ada herself became Countess of Lovelace. Four years later they already had three children - two sons and a daughter. The sons of Hell were named after their father - one was named Ralph Gordon, and the other - Byron.

But what about that very first program in the world? And what is the fate of Babbage's machine? In 1842, Italian scientist Luis Manebrea would write a book about Babbage's machine. Ada, at Babbage's request, will translate it. During the translation of the book itself, she made a huge number of comments, seeing in this machine seems more than Babbage himself.

Here are her words: “The essence and purpose of the machine will change depending on what information we put into it. The machine will be able to write music, paint pictures and show science ways that we have never seen anywhere.” Alan Turing subsequently read her notes, introducing into his works the term Lady Lovelace’s objection to the ability of machines to think.

At the same time, when describing Babbage's machine, it was Ada who coined such computer terms as cycle and cell. She also compiled a set of operations for calculating Bernoulli numbers. This is what essentially became the very first computer program. Babbage never built his machine; it was assembled after his death and is now kept in the Science Museum in London.

Ada Lovelace herself died on November 27, 1852, at just 36 years of age. Exactly as long as her father lived. She was buried in the family crypt along with her father, whom she never recognized.
The Ada programming language, developed in the 1980s by the US Department of Defense, was named after Ada Lovelace.

P.S. Probably, those people for whom the phrase “The first programmer was a girl” causes dissatisfaction or a smile should at least once take an interest in the biography of this person. People like Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing and many others are worth remembering. And for some, these stories are another reason to understand that nothing is impossible in the world.

Thanks to those who read this article. Share your opinions, comments or observations).