03 Hamming, Learning to Learn: History of Computers - Hardware, 31 March 1995
Channel: Hamming on Hamming: Learning to Learn
Date: 19/02/2018

History of Computers - Hardware. The history of computing probably began with primitive man using pebbles to compute the sum of two amounts. Marshack (of Harvard) found that what had believed to be mere scratches on old bones from cave man days were in fact carefully scribed lines apparently connected with the moon’s phases. The famous Stonehenge on the Salisbury plain in England had three building stages, 1900-1700, 1700-1500, and 1500-1400 B.C., and were apparently closely connected with astronomical observations, indicating considerable astronomical sophistication. Work in archeo-astronomy has revealed that many primitive peoples had considerable knowledge about astronomical events. China, India, and Mexico were prominent in this matter, and we still have their structures that we call observatories, though we have too little understanding of how they were used. Our western plains have many traces of astronomical observatories that were used by the Indians.

00:00 Introduction
00:14 History of the Hardware aspect of computers
05:36 Slide rule
07:18 Napier
09:30 Gun directors
11:07 Napier devices Bones
12:45 Babbage minor nobility
16:46 What computing was widely based upon
18:26 Punch cards
21:28 Complex number computers
25:09 Von Neumann types
30:12 Charts at Las Almas
33:56 The purpose of computing is insight not numbers
37:58 Democritus said...all is atoms and void
42:09 I am interested in what man and machine can do together
46:26 End

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