The accuracy requirements of mechanical computers are very difficult to satisfy and it was only with the development of electronics that computers became technically feasible. There was another line of development of electromechanical computers called tabulating machines. Tabulation machines were created by Herman Hollerith to meet the needs of the U.S. Census Bureau. The punched card technology of tabulating machines had its antecedents in the Jacquard loom. The coding of information arose with the telegraph.
Morse code is essentially the binary coding of information.
The input was via toggle switches on the front and output via a set of lights. Lee Felsenstein, freelance engineer and formerly the Man Friday of the Berkeley Barb and Berkeley Tribe, served as the facilitator of the Homebrew Computing Club in Palo Alto. Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak created Apple Computer. George Tate marketed dBaseII, a data base package created by Wayne Ratliff who modeled it on software used at JPL for the space program. Tate formed Ashton-Tate to market dBaseII, but the only Ashton involved in the operation was Tate's parakeet.