"computer" person who computes

[Adam Funk]

ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this nifty
example:

A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process. It is really
the equivalent of a table of logarithsm.

(Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume 1,
1927)


--
But the government always tries to coax well-known writers into the
Establishment; it makes them feel educated. [Robert Graves]

[LFS]

On 01/02/2013 13:06, Adam Funk wrote:
> ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this nifty
> example:
>
> A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
> the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
> numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process. It is really
> the equivalent of a table of logarithsm.
>
> (Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume 1,
> 1927)
>
>

In much the same way that a typist ised to be called a typewriter, as
cited in OED

1895 How to get Married 86 The marriage of the type-writer and her
employer is so frequent that it has passed into a joke.

--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)

[Guy Barry]

"Adam Funk" wrote in message news:18rst9x...@news.ducksburg.com...

>
>ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this nifty
>example:
>
> A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
> the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
> numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process. It is really

> the equivalent of a table of logarithms.

> (Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume 1,
> 1927)

Presumably such a usage would have been completely unremarkable before the
invention of computing machines. When was the term "computer" first used to
describe a machine? Wikipedia seems to think that this was the first
example (1936):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_%28computer%29

--
Guy Barry

[James Hogg]

The oldest OED quotation is from 1869 but it refers to an imaginary
device. Next comes:

1897 Engineering 22 Jan. 104/2 This was..a computer made by Mr. W.
Cox. He described it as of the nature of a circular slide rule

--
James

[Lanarcam]

On Feb 1, 3:38 pm, James Hogg <Jas.H...@gOUTmail.com> wrote:
> Guy Barry wrote:

> > "Adam Funk"  wrote in messagenews:18rst9x...@news.ducksburg.com...

It was called a calculator in 1642 ;)

Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_calculator

[Jerry Friedman]

On Feb 1, 6:06 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this nifty
> example:
>
>    A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
>    the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
>    numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process.  It is really
>    the equivalent of a table of logarithsm.
>
> (Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume 1,
> 1927)

An early math co-processor?

--
Jerry Friedman

[Adam Funk]

Yabbut he didn't call it the "mechanical calculator"!

The French Wikipedia article says "Blaise Pascal est l'inventeur de la
machine à calculer[1,2]. Dénommée machine d’arithmétique, elle devint
roue pascaline puis enfin pascaline[3]". I guess the "machine
d'arithmétique" was Pascal's own term?

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascaline


--
A man can't just sit around.
--- Larry Walters

[Adam Funk]

good one


--
There's a statute of limitations with the law, but not with
your wife. [Ray Magliozzi, Car Talk 2011-36]

[David Hatunen]

Good grief. Is there nothing the Third Reich didn't invent first?

Dave Hatunen, Tucson
Free Baja Arizona

[Curlytop]

LFS set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time continuum:

> On 01/02/2013 13:06, Adam Funk wrote:
>> ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this nifty
>> example:
>>
>> A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
>> the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
>> numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process. It is really
>> the equivalent of a table of logarithsm.
>>
>> (Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume 1,
>> 1927)

I can vouch for this earlier usage, for I was quite startled to read the
following in one of my mathematical textbooks back in my college days, in a
section on blunders in mathematical caulateions. The book was written as
recently as 1964. [1]
> Blunders are lapses from accurate computation, due to carelessness of
> the computer or failure of the machine.
Notice how the "computer" and the "machine" are kept distinct.
Et ibidem infra:
> [Transpositions, misdoubles] and other blunders can be kept to a
> minimum only when the computer learns to work with an easy rhythm,
> to write his figures clearly and to lay out his computation in an
> orderly fashion.


Back to LFS:

> In much the same way that a typist ised to be called a typewriter, as
> cited in OED
>
> 1895 How to get Married 86 The marriage of the type-writer and her
> employer is so frequent that it has passed into a joke.

The form "typewritist" appears in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories.



[1] B. R. Morton, "Numerical Approximation", Library of Mathematics Series,
Routledge & Kegan Paul
--
ξ: ) Proud to be curly

Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply

[John Varela]

In the late 1950s IBM didn't call their 704 a computer, it was an
Electronic Data Processing Machine.

--
John Varela

[Lanarcam]

Le 01/02/2013 16:31, Adam Funk a écrit :
> On 2013-02-01, Lanarcam wrote:
>
>> On Feb 1, 3:38 pm, James Hogg <Jas.H...@gOUTmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> The oldest OED quotation is from 1869 but it refers to an imaginary
>>> device. Next comes:
>>>
>>> 1897 Engineering 22 Jan. 104/2 This was..a computer made by Mr. W.
>>> Cox. He described it as of the nature of a circular slide rule
>>>
>> It was called a calculator in 1642 ;)
>>
>> Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_calculator
>
> Yabbut he didn't call it the "mechanical calculator"!
>
> The French Wikipedia article says "Blaise Pascal est l'inventeur de la
> machine à calculer[1,2]. Dénommée machine d’arithmétique, elle devint
> roue pascaline puis enfin pascaline[3]". I guess the "machine
> d'arithmétique" was Pascal's own term?

Probably, yes.

> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascaline
>
>

[Mark Brader]

"Lanarcam":

> Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642

Wrong. Wilhelm Schickard invented the mechanical calculator in 1623.
Pascal's "first" was that he was the first person to sell calculators
commercially.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "...ordinarily, a 65-pound alligator in an apartment
m...@vex.net | would be news." --James Barron, New York Times

My text in this article is in the public domain.

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2013 14:16:40 -0000, "Guy Barry"
<guy....@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Take your pick:

[OED]
2. A device or machine for performing or facilitating calculation.

1869 ‘M. Harland’ Phemie's Temptation i. 12 [Phemie] plunged
anew into the column of figures... Her pen was slowly traversing
the length of the page, at an elevation of a quarter of an inch
above the paper, her eyes following the course of the nib, as if
it were the index of a patent computer.

1897 Engineering 22 Jan. 104/2 This was..a computer made by Mr.

W. Cox. He described it as of the nature of a circular slide rule.
1915 Chambers's Jrnl. July 478/1 By means of this computer the
task is performed mechanically and almost instantaneously.
....

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Mark Brader]

Guy Barry:

> When was the term "computer" first used to describe a machine?
> Wikipedia seems to think that this was the first example (1936):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_%28computer%29

Nonsense; the article is about the machine, not the English word.
Konrad Zuse was German and as far as I know his work was completely
unknown in the English-speaking world, so it could not have affected
English usage.

The designation of the Z1 is also anachronistic for the 1930s.
What he called his first three designs was V1, V2, and V3; but he
switched retroactively from V to Z because of the adoption of the
names V1 and V2 for war missiles.

The word "computer" was definitely being used for calculating
machines by the mid-1940s, but the details are fuzzy, because
when things are new their names tend to change. The earliest
machine I know of to have had "computer" in its name was the ABC,
the "Atanasoff-Berry Computer". This was completed in 1941, but
the name was applied retroactively, and I don't know exactly when.
(Today it would more likely be called a special-purpose calculator
than a computer, although in a patent litigation the court decided
that it was enough of a computer to invalidate the patent previously
granted to Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the prime designers of
the ENIAC and founders of UNIVAC.)
--
Mark Brader | "The only thing required for the triumph of darkness
Toronto | is for good men not to call Hydro."
m...@vex.net | --Michael Wares

[Mark Brader]

[Canned article follows -- last substantively modified June 8, 2000.]


What was the first computer and who built it?

It turns out that this is more a question of definition than a
question of fact. The computer, as we now understand the word,
was very much an evolutionary development rather than a simple
invention. This article traces the sequence of the most important
steps in that development, and in the earlier development of
digital calculators without programmability. It may help you
to decide for yourself whether you think the first computer was
the ABC, the Z3 (aka V3), the ENIAC, the SSEC, the Manchester
Mark I (aka Baby), the EDSAC, or perhaps yet another machine --
and how to apportion the honor of invention among John Atanasoff,
Charles Babbage, Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, Alan Turing, John
von Neumann, Konrad Zuse, and others.

----------------------------------------------------

This article has evolved from an original version that I drafted
in 1988, and has been posted to various Usenet groups several times.
It has been prepared primarily from two sources:

"Bit by Bit: An Illustrated History of Computers"
by Stan Augarten
1984, Ticknor and Fields, New York
ISBN 0-89919-268-8, 0-89919-302-1 paperback

"A History of Computing Technology"
by Michael R. Williams
1985, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
ISBN 0-13-389917-9

Either of these books is well worth a trip to the library to read.
(Unfortunately, finding either one in a bookstore today would be an
unlikely proposition.) Augarten is a journalist; he writes very
readably, but occasionally does not say exactly what he means.
Williams is a computer science professor; his book is superior in
technical depth, and covers additional subject areas including
analog computing and computing in ancient times.

For some material I also consulted the following books.

"The Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age"
by Jon Palfreman and Doron Swade
1991, BBC Books, London
ISBN 0-563-36221-9

The book of the TV series of the same title, which changed to "The
Machine that Changed the World" when it was shown in the US on PBS.
I enjoyed the content but found the typographic design so hideously
mannered as to be distracting. This book has less technical detail
than the two mentioned above, and a greater emphasis on the impact of
computers on the modern world; a considerable fraction of its length
is about the uninteresting :-) period after the end of this chronology.

"Portraits in Silicon"
by Robert Slater
1987, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
ISBN 0-262-69131-0

Articles about, and interviews with, 34 of the people to whom goes
much of the credit for the computer world being the way it is, from
Charles Babbage to Donald Knuth.

"The Computer Pioneers"
by David Ritchie
1986, Simon & Schuster, New York
ISBN 0-671-52397-X

This one concentrates in the late 1930s and the 1940s, with one chapter
for each of the key inventors or groups of that period. The author is
a journalist and the book is very readable.

"The Computer -- My Life"
Original German version by Konrad Zuse:
"Der Computer -- mein Lebenswerk"
1993, Springer-Verlag, Berlin
ISBN 3-540-56292-3
English translation by Patricia McKenna and J. Andrew Ross
1993, Springer-Verlag, Berlin and New York
ISBN 0-387-56453-5 (New York), 3-540-56453-5 (Berlin).

An autobiography.

"Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering", 2nd ed.
editor Anthony Ralston, associate Editor Edwin D. Reilly Jr.
1983, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York
ISBN 0-442-24496-7

The title is self-explanatory.

"The Computer Comes of Age"
Original French version by R. Moreau:
"Ainsi naquît l'informatique"
1981
English translation by J. Howlett
1984, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
ISBN 0-262-36103-2

Concentrating on the period from the mid 1940s to mid 1960s, and
with a noticeably IBMish viewpoint.

"ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer"
by Scott McCartney
1999, Walker and Co., New York
ISBN 0-8027-1348-3

This book has somewhat a wider scope than the title suggests, covering
events in the lives of Presper Eckert and John Mauchly over several decades.
However, it is strictly centered on the two men and tends to "prove" their
pioneering status by omitting any developments they weren't involved with.

Two articles from Scientific American were also sources. One in the
August 1988 issue was about the Atanasoff-Berry machines, and one in the
February 1993 issue of was about Babbage's difference engines and the
modern-day completion of one of them.


Information about the cipher-breaking machines came primarily from
two books:

"Seizing the Enigma: the Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes,
1939-1943"
by David Kahn
1991, Houghton Mifflin, Boston
ISBN 0-395-42739-8

"Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park"
edited by F.H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp
1993, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York
ISBN 0-19-820327-6

Kahn is also the author of the monumental cryptological history "The
Codebreakers"; this book is oriented more to a popular readership but
still contains plenty of technical detail. The second book collects
articles by various individuals involved with the cipher-breaking work;
some are quite technical and others not.

A few items of information come from other sources, not listed individ-
ually here. One correction about Konrad Zuse came from his son Horst.


And finally, the book

Faster than Thought
editor B. V. Bowden
1953, Pitman, New York and London

provided an interesting early perspective, and the signature quote.

----------------------------------------------------

I've tried to mention in this chronology each machine within the
relevant time period that meets the following criteria. First, it
must use a digital technique to do arithmetic or other logic. This
eliminates, for instance, the slide rule and the differential analyzer,
while allowing the cipher-breaking machines of the Second World War
to be included.

Second, it must actually do the arithmetic or other work rather than
just assisting the user's memory. I consider this to eliminate the
abacus as well as, say, Napier's Bones.

Third, to count as being able to do an operation, the machine must do
essentially the whole computation, with little or no assistance from the
user. You could subtract 16 on a 6-digit Pascaline by adding 999,984,
but this doesn't mean we should say that a Pascaline could subtract.

Fourth, it must work on user-supplied operands. In 1364, Giovanni
de Dondi completed a clock where chains of various lengths, advancing
in discrete annual steps to represent calendar cycles, computed the
date of Easter; but this still does not qualify. (For details of
this clock see "Some Outstanding Clocks over Seven Hundred Years,
1250-1950" by H. Alan Lloyd, 1958, Leonard Hill.)

And finally, the machine must have either been technologically
innovative, or else well known and influential. For certain concepts
of special importance, I have also listed the first time they were
*described*, although they were not implemented at that time.

Where I do not describe the size of a machine, it is generally
suitable for desktop use if it has no memory and is unprogrammable
or if it is a small prototype, but would about fill a small room if
it has memory or significant programmability.

The term "full-scale" is used, in contrast to "prototype", to refer
to a machine with sufficient capacity to do regular useful work.
For the sorts of machines described toward the end of the chronology,
I generally consider them "completed" when they first run a program,
even though they may be subject to further modifications and debugging.
Unfortunately, sources referring to the "completion" of a machine are
not always clear as to exactly what they mean by it.


----------------------------------------------------
A Chronology of Digital Computing Machines (to 1952)
----------------------------------------------------

1623. Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635), of Tübingen, Württemberg
(now in Germany), makes his "Calculating Clock". This is a
6-digit machine that can add and subtract, and indicates overflow
by ringing a bell. Mounted on the machine is a set of Napier's Rods
(or Bones), a memory aid facilitating multiplications. The machine
and plans are lost and forgotten in the war that is going on.

The plans will finally be rediscovered in 1935, only to be lost in war
again, and then re-rediscovered in 1956 by the same man! The machine
will be reconstructed in 1960, and found to be workable.

(Schickard is a friend of the astronomer Kepler.)

(According to an informal communication, Schickard sometimes uses
the device for 7-digit calculations, counting rings of the overflow
bell by putting rings on one of his, uh, personal digits...)

1644-5. Blaise Pascal (1623-62), of Paris, makes his "Pascaline".
This 5-digit machine uses a different carry mechanism from
Schickard's, with rising and falling weights instead of a direct
gear drive; it can be extended better to support more digits, but
it cannot subtract, and probably is less reliable than Schickard's
simpler method.

Where Schickard's machine is forgotten -- and indeed Pascal is
apparently unaware it ever existed -- Pascal's becomes well known
and establishes the computing machine concept in the intellectual
community. He makes more machines and sells about 10-15 of them,
some supporting as many as 8 digits. (Several survive to the
present day.) Patents being a thing of the future, others also
sell copies of Pascal's machine.

(Pascal is also the inventor of the bus.)

c.1668. Sir Samuel Morland (1625-95), of England, produces a
non-decimal adding machine, suitable for use with English
money. Instead of a carry mechanism, it registers carries on
auxiliary dials, from which the user must reenter them as addends.

1674. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), of Leipzig,
designs his "Stepped Reckoner", which is constructed by a
man named Olivier, of Paris. It uses a movable carriage so that it
can multiply, with operands of up to 5 and 12 digits and a product
of up to 16. The user has to turn a crank once for each unit in
each digit in the multiplier; a fluted drum translates the turns
into additions. But the carry mechanism requires user intervention,
and doesn't really work in all cases anyway.

Leibniz's machine doesn't get forgotten, but it does get misplaced
in an attic within a few years -- and will stay there until 1879 when
it will be noticed by a man working on the leaky roof!

(Leibniz, or Leibnitz, is also the co-inventor of calculus.)

1775. Charles, the third Earl Stanhope, of England, makes a
successful multiplying calculator similar to Leibniz's.

1770-6. Mathieus Hahn, somewhere in what will be Germany, also makes
a successful multiplying calculator.

1786. J. H. Müller, of the Hessian army, conceives the idea of
what came to be called a "difference engine". That's a
special-purpose calculator for tabulating values of a polynomial,
given the differences between certain values so that the polynomial
is uniquely specified; it's useful for any function that can be
approximated by a polynomial over suitable intervals. Müller's
attempt to raise funds fails and the project is forgotten.

1820. Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (1785-1870), of France,
makes his "Arithmometer", the first mass-produced calculator.
It does multiplication using the same general approach as Leibniz's
calculator; with assistance from the user it can also do division.
It is also the most reliable calculator yet. Machines of this general
design, large enough to occupy most of a desktop, continue to be sold
for about 90 years.

1822. Charles Babbage (1792-1871), of London, having reinvented
the difference engine, begins his (government-funded)
project to build one by constructing a 6-digit calculator using
gear technology similar to that planned for the difference engine.

1832. Babbage and Joseph Clement produce a prototype segment of
his difference engine, which operates on 6-digit numbers
and 2nd-order differences (i.e. can tabulate quadratic polynomials).

The complete engine, which would be room-sized, is planned to be
able to operate both on 6th-order differences with numbers of about
20 digits, and on 3rd-order differences with numbers of 30 digits.
Each addition would be done in two phases, the second one taking
care of any carries generated in the first. The output digits
would be punched into a soft metal plate, from which a plate for a
printing press could be made.

But there are various difficulties, and no more than this prototype
piece is ever assembled.

1834. George Scheutz, of Stockholm, produces a small difference
engine in wood, after reading a brief description of
Babbage's project.

1834. Babbage conceives, and begins to design, his "Analytical
Engine". Whether or not this machine, if built, would
constitute a computer depends on exactly how "computer" is being
defined. One essential feature of present-day computers is absent
from the design: the "stored-program" concept, which is necessary
for implementing a compiler. The program would have been in
read-only memory, specifically in the form of punch cards. (In
this chronology, such machines will be called "programmable cal-
culators".)

Babbage continues to work on the design for years, though after
about 1840 the changes are minor. The machine would operate on
40-digit numbers; the "mill" (CPU) would have 2 main accumulators
and some auxiliary ones for specific purposes, while the "store"
(memory) would hold perhaps 100 more numbers. There would be
several punch card readers, for both programs and data; the cards
would be chained and the motion of each chain could be reversed.
The machine would be able to perform conditional jumps. There
would also be a form of microcoding: the meaning of instructions
would depend on the positioning of metal studs in a slotted
barrel, called the "control barrel".

The machine would do an addition in 3 seconds and a multiplication
or division in 2-4 minutes.

1842. Babbage's difference engine project is officially canceled.
(The cost overruns have been considerable, and Babbage is
spending too much time on redesigning the Analytical Engine.)

1843. Scheutz and his son Edvard Scheutz produce a 3rd-order
difference engine with printer, and the Swedish government
agrees to fund their next development.

1847-9. Babbage designs an improved, simpler difference engine,
which will operate on 7th-order differences and 31-digit
numbers, but nobody is interested in paying to have it built.

(In 1989-91, however, a team at London's Science Museum will do
just that. They will use components of modern construction, but
with tolerances no better than Clement could have provided... and,
after a bit of tinkering and detail-debugging, they will find that
the machine does indeed work.)

1853. To Babbage's delight, the Scheutzes complete the first
full-scale difference engine, which they call a Tabul-
ating Machine. It operates on 15-digit numbers and 4th-order
differences, and produces printed output as Babbage's would have.
A second machine is later built to the same design by the firm
of Bryan Donkin of London.

1858. The first Tabulating Machine is bought by the Dudley
Observatory in Albany, New York, and the second one by
the British government. The Albany machine is used to produce
a set of astronomical tables; but the observatory's director is
then fired for this extravagant purchase, and the machine is
never seriously used again, eventually ending up in a museum.
(The second machine, however, will have a long and useful life.)

1871. Babbage produces a prototype section of the Analytical
Engine's mill and printer.

1878. Ramon Verea, living in New York City, invents a calculator
with an internal multiplication table; this is much faster
than the shifting carriage or other digital methods. He isn't
interested in putting it into production; he just wants to show that
a Spaniard can invent as well as an American.

1879. A committee investigates the feasibility of completing the
Analytical Engine and concludes that it is impossible now
that Babbage is dead. The project is then largely forgotten and is
unknown to most of the people mentioned in the last part of this
chronology -- though Howard Aiken is an exception.

1885. A multiplying calculator more compact than the Arithmometer
enters mass production. The design is the independent, and
more or less simultaneous, invention of Frank S. Baldwin, of the
United States, and T. Odhner, a Swede living in Russia. The fluted
drums are replaced by a "variable-toothed gear" design: a disk with
radial pegs that can be made to protrude or retract from it.

1886. Dorr E. Felt (1862-1930), of Chicago, makes his "Comptometer".
This is the first calculator where the operands are entered
merely by pressing keys rather than having to be, for example, dialed
in. It is feasible because of Felt's invention of a carry mechanism
fast enough to act while the keys return from being pressed.

1889. Felt invents the first printing desk calculator.

1890. US Census results are tabulated for the first time with sig-
nificant mechanical aid: the punch card tabulators of Herman
Hollerith (1860-1929) of MIT, Cambridge, MA. This is the start of
the punch card industry. The cost of the census tabulation is 98%
*higher* than the previous one, in part because of the temptation to
use the machines to the fullest and tabulate more data than formerly
possible, but the tabulation is completed in a much shorter time.
Another precedent is that the cards are read electrically.

(Contrary to popular impression and to earlier versions of this
chronology, Hollerith's cards of 1890 are not the same size as
US paper money of the time; they are much smaller. Other sizes of
punch cards will also appear within a few years.)

1892. William S. Burroughs (1857-98), of St. Louis, invents a
machine similar to Felt's but more robust, and this is the
one that really starts the office calculator industry.

(This machine is still hand powered, but it won't be many years
before electric calculators appear.)

1906. Henry Babbage, Charles's son, with the help of the firm of
R. W. Munro, completes the mill of his father's Analytical
Engine, just to show that it would have worked. It does. The
complete machine is never produced.

1919. W. H. Eccles and F. W. Jordan publish the first flip-flop
circuit design.

c.1920. Eugène Carissan of France constructs a machine for factoring
whole numbers, based on 14 rotating metal rings studded with pegs.

1926. Derrick Henry Lehmer, at Berkeley, CA, constructs a machine for
factoring whole numbers, based on 19 bicycle chains. A later
machine will use punched tape -- not paper tape, but film stock.

(Lehmer is the son of mathmatician Derrick Norman Lehmer.)

1931-2. E. Wynn-Williams, at Cambridge, England, uses thyratron
tubes to construct a binary digital counter for use in
connection with physics experiments.

1932. Lehmer adds an optical reader to his punched-film factoring
machine. It is now capable of 5,000 operations per second.

1935. International Business Machines introduces the "IBM 601",
a punch card machine with an arithmetic unit based on relays
and capable of doing a multiplication in 1 second. The machine
becomes important both in scientific and commercial computation,
and about 1,500 of them are eventually made.

Jun 1937. Konrad Zuse (1910-95) of Berlin writes in his diary a
synopsis of the stored-program concept: "Die Operationen
folgen einem Plan ähnlich einem Rechenplan. Mit Ausgangsbedingungen
und Resultat. Dementsprechend Speicherplan. Jedoch kann der
Speicher- oder Arbeitsplan sich aus den vorhergehenden Operationen
ergeben (z.B. die Nummern der Speicherzellen) und sich so aus sich
selbst aufbauen (vgl. 'Keimzelle')." That is, "The operations follow
a plan similar to a computing plan. With initial conditions and
result. Accordingly, a storage plan. However, the storage or work
plan can still result from the preceding operations (e.g. the
numbers in the storage cells) and in this way be built from itself
(cf. 'germ cell')."

Nov 1937. George Stibitz (c.1904 - 1995) of the Bell Telephone Labor-
atories (Bell Labs), New York City, constructs on his kitchen
table the "K-Model": a demonstration 1-bit binary adder using relays.

1937. Alan M. Turing (1912-54), of Cambridge University, England,
publishes a paper on "computable numbers". This paper solves
a mathematical problem, but the solution is achieved by reasoning
(as a mathematical device) about the theoretical simplified computer
known today as a Turing machine.

Nov 1938. Marian Rejewsky (a man, 1905-80) and his group, working
for Poland's Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Office), complete the first
"bomba", a machine using electromechanical digital logic for trying
out combinations of letters to solve the Germans' Enigma cipher.
The Enigma machine uses a series of disks ("rotors") with sets of
26 contacts wired so as to permute and repermute the alphabet; the
sequence of rotors and their initial settings are changed from time
to time, forming a key.

The bomba contains its own set of rotors like the Enigma's, and its
function is to determine, through a combination of logic with an
exhaustive search of rotor positions, whether a particular short
piece of guessed plaintext and a particular piece of encrypted text
could correspond. If the plaintext was correctly guessed, then the
key can be derived from the bomba results, and not only the rest of
that message, but all others using the same key can then be decrypted.
And if it wasn't, then the same guess will be tried against other
messages.

(But the next month, the Germans will add a selection of additional
rotors to their Enigma machines. The Poles, not having the resources
to build more bomby, in July 1939 will turn over all their discoveries
to the British and the French.)

1938. Claude E. Shannon (1916-2001) publishes a paper on the
implementation of symbolic logic using relays.

1938. Helmut Schreyer, of Berlin, designs logic circuitry based on
a combination of vacuum tubes and neon lamps. (By 1940 he
will have produced a 10-bit adder and a prototype memory unit.)

1938. Zuse, with some assistance from Schreyer, completes a
prototype electromechanical binary programmable calculator,
called the "V1" at the time but retroactively renamed "Z1" after the
war. It works with floating point numbers having a 7-bit exponent,
16-bit mantissa, and a sign bit. The memory uses sliding metal parts
to store 16 such numbers, and works well; but the arithmetic unit,
using secondhand relays and stepping switches, is less successful.

The program is read from punched tape. Like Lehmer, Zuse uses film
rather than paper for his tape; specifically, discarded 35 mm movie
film. Data values can be entered from a numeric keyboard, and
outputs are displayed on electric lamps.

Nov 1939. John V. Atanasoff (1903-95) and graduate student Clifford
Berry (1918-63), of Iowa State College (now the Iowa State
University), Ames, Iowa, complete a prototype 25-bit adder. This
is the first machine to calculate using vacuum tubes. To store the
operands, it has 2 25-bit words of memory in the form of capacitors
(with refresh circuits using more vacuum tubes -- the first regen-
erative memory) mounted one word on each side of a revolving disk.
There is no input device; the user enters the operands directly into
memory, by tapping the appropriate capacitors with a wire!

Nov 1939. At Bell Labs, Samuel Williams and Stibitz complete a
calculator which can operate on complex numbers, and give it
the imaginative name of the "Complex Number Calculator"; it is later
known as the "Model I Relay Calculator". It uses telephone switching
parts for logic: 450 relays and 10 crossbar switches. Numbers are
represented in "plus 3 BCD"; that is, for each decimal digit, 0 is
represented by binary 0011, 1 by 0100, and so on up to 1100 for 9;
this scheme requires fewer relays than straight BCD.

Rather than requiring users to come to the machine to use it, the
calculator is provided with three remote keyboards, at various
places in the building, in the form of teletypes. Only one can be
used at a time, and the output is automatically displayed on the
same one.

1939. Zuse and Schreyer begin work on the "V2" (later "Z2"),
which will marry the Z1's existing mechanical memory unit to
a new arithmetic unit using relay logic. The project is interrupted
for a year when Zuse is drafted.

Early 1940. Turing and Gordon Welchman (1906-85), working for
the British government codebreaking department deceptively
named the Government Code and Cypher School, at Bletchley Park,
Bletchley, England, successively improve the design of the bomba
by adding further logic circuits. These greatly reduce the number
of false solutions. With quantity production of these machines, now
called bombes, the full-scale breaking of Enigma ciphers becomes a
practical proposition.

(After the US joins the war, they will make and use them too.
Improvements on the machines will continue, as the Germans also
improve the cipher.)

1940. Zuse is released from the army and completes the Z2.
It works better than the Z1, but isn't reliable enough.
(Later he is drafted again, and released again.)

Sep 1940. Stibitz, attending a mathematical conference in Hanover,
NH, to present a paper on the Complex Number Calculator,
demonstrates operation of the machine from a remote location by
teletype connection.

Summer 1941. Atanasoff and Berry complete a special-purpose calcu-
lator for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations,
later called the "ABC" ("Atanasoff-Berry Computer"). This uses the
same regenerative capacitor memory as their prototype, but with 60
50-bit words of it, mounted on two revolving drums. The clock speed
is 60 Hz, and an addition takes 1 second. (For the purposes of this
calculator, multiplication is not required.) There are circuits to
convert between binary and decimal for input and output; the machine
includes several hundred vacuum tubes altogether.

For secondary memory the ABC uses punch cards, moved around by the
user. The holes are not actually punched in the cards, but burned
by an electric spark. The card system is a partial failure; its
error rate of 0.001% is too high to solve large systems of equations.

(Atanasoff will leave Iowa State after the US enters the war, and
this will end his work on digital computing machines. The ABC will
largely forgotten within a few years, and dismantled in 1946 when
the storage space is needed.)

Dec 1941. Now working with limited backing from the DVL (German Aero-
nautical Research Institute), Zuse completes the "V3" (later
"Z3"): the first operational programmable calculator. It works with
floating point numbers having a 7-bit exponent, 14-bit mantissa
(with a "1" bit automatically prefixed unless the number is 0),
and a sign bit. The memory uses relays; with a capacity of 64 words,
it needs over 1,400 of them. There are 1,200 more relays in the
arithmetic and control units. The machine is the size of a closet.

The program, input, and output are implemented as described above for
the Z1. Conditional jumps are not available. The machine can do 3-4
additions per second, and takes 3-5 seconds for a multiplication.
Zuse considers the machine a prototype; it doesn't have enough memory
to be much use for the equation-solving problems that the DVL was
mostly interested in.

(In 1943, an air raid will destroy Zuse's workshop, and the Z3 with
it, as well as his home nearby. A replica Z3 will be built in 1960
for the Deutsches Museum in Munich. And in 1967, the Patent Office
of West Germany will finally rule on Zuse's 1941 application for a
patent on the Z3, rejecting it "mangels Erfindungshöhe": "for an
insufficient degree of invention"!)

1942. Zuse completes the S1, the first digital machine for process
control. Attached sensors measure the profile of the wing of
a flying bomb under construction; the readings are converted to dig-
ital and computations are run to determine how much the wing deviates
from the ideal shape and needs to be adjusted. (This is cheaper than
making it accurately in the first place.) The machine contains 800
relays; the program is literally wired in, each instruction being read
by advancing a set of stepping switches.

Jan 1943. Howard H. Aiken (1900-73) and his IBM-backed team at
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, complete the "ASCC Mark I"
("Automatic Sequence-Controlled Calculator Mark I"), also called the
"Harvard Mark I". This electromechanical machine is the first pro-
grammable calculator to be widely known: Aiken is to Zuse as Pascal
to Schickard.

The machine is 51 feet long, weighs 5 tons, and incorporates 750,000
parts. It includes 72 accumulators, each incorporating its own arith-
metic unit as well as a mechanical register with a capacity of 23
digits plus sign. (See the ENIAC entry, below, for a more detailed
description of such an architecture.) The arithmetic is fixed-point,
with a plugboard setting determining the number of decimal places.
I/O facilities include card readers, a card punch, paper tape readers,
and typewriters. There are 60 sets of rotary switches, each of which
can be used as a constant register -- sort of a mechanical read-only
memory. An addition takes 1/3 second, and a multiplication, 1 second.

The program is read from one paper tape; data can be read from the
other tapes, or the card readers, or from the constant registers.

Conditional jumps are not available. However, in later years the
machine is modified to support multiple paper tape readers for the
program, with the transfer from one to another being conditional,
sort of like a conditional subroutine call. Another addition allows
the provision of plugboard-wired subroutines callable from the tape.

Apr 1943. Max Newman, Wynn-Williams, and their team at Bletchley
Park, complete the "Heath Robinson". This is a prototype
machine for breaking the new German ciphers collectively codenamed
the "Fish" ciphers, which are based on bit-level manipulations rather
than permutations of the alphabet. The machine uses a combination
of electronics and relay logic. It reads data optically at 2,000
characters per second from 2 closed loops of paper tape, each
typically about 1,000 characters long.

(Newman had taught Turing at Cambridge, and had been the first person
to see a draft of Turing's 1937 paper. Heath Robinson is the name of
a British cartoonist known for drawings of comical machines, like
the American Rube Goldberg. Two later machines in the series will be
named for London stores with "Robinson" in their names!)

Apr 1943. John W. Mauchly (pronounced Mawkly; 1907-80), J. Presper
Eckert (1919-95), and John Brainerd at the Moore School of
Electrical Engineering, of the University of Pennsylvania, Phila-
delphia, write a "Report on an Electronic Diff. Analyzer" for the
US Army's Ballistics Research Lab. The abbreviation "Diff." is
intended to reflect the fact that the proposed machine, eventually
named the ENIAC ("Electronic Numerator, Integrator, Analyzer, and
Computer"; some sources omit "Analyzer" or have "Calculator" as the last
word), is to use *differences* to compute digitally the same results
that a *differential* analyzer would compute by analog means. The BRL,
which has a great interest in calculating shell trajectories to produce
gun aiming tables, accepts the proposal and work on the ENIAC begins in
secret.

Sep 1943. Williams and Stibitz complete the "Relay Interpolator",
later called the "Model II Relay Calculator". This is a
programmable calculator; again, the program and data are read from
paper tapes. An innovative feature is that, for greater reliability,
numbers are represented in a biquinary format using 7 relays for
each digit, of which exactly 2 should be "on": 01 00001 for 0,
01 00010 for 1, and so on up to 10 10000 for 9.

(Some of the later machines in this series will use the biquinary
notation for the digits of floating-point numbers.)

Dec 1943. Tommy Flowers (1905-98) and his team at Bletchley Park
complete the first "Colossus". This full-scale successor to
the "Robinson" series machines is entirely electronic, incorporating
2,400 vacuum tubes for logic. It has 5 paper tape loop readers,
each working at 5,000 characters per second.

(10 Colossi will eventually be built, then destroyed after the war
to maintain secrecy. Turing also has an important role at Bletchley
Park, but does not work directly on the machines. In the 1990s
Bletchley Park will become a museum, and in 1996 a replica Colossus
will be completed there.)

1944-5. Zuse almost completes his first full-scale machine, the "V4"
(later "Z4"), which resembles his earlier designs. Its
memory reverts to the Z1's mechanical design, storing 1,000 words of
32 bits in less then a cubic meter; the equivalent in relays would
have filled a large room.

As the war begins to go very badly for Germany, Zuse's work suffers
major disruptions. The Z4 is moved three times within Berlin, then
to Göttingen, and finally to the Bavarian village of Hinterstein
where it is hidden. Here it survives the war, but the Allies don't
understand what it is, and nobody in Germany is in a position to pay
Zuse for more work.

1945. Zuse invents a programming language called Plankalkül.

Jun 1945. John von Neumann (1903-57), having joined the ENIAC
team, drafts a report describing the future computer
eventually built as the "EDVAC" ("Electronic Discrete Variable
Automatic Computer" (!)); this is the first detailed description
of the design of a stored-program computer, and gives rise to the
term "von Neumann computer".

The first draft of the report fails to credit other team members
such as Eckert and Mauchly; when this version becomes widely
circulated, von Neumann gets somewhat too much credit for the
design. The final version corrects the oversight, but too late.

(Von Neumann, also noted for his mental calculating ability, is
the only one of the principal computer pioneers in the US familiar
with Turing's 1937 paper.)

Nov 1945. Mauchly and Eckert and their team at the Moore School
complete the ENIAC. It's too late for the war, and the
total cost of $486,800 far exceeds the original budget of $150,000
(problems that Eckert and Mauchly will face again on later projects),
but it works.

The ENIAC's architecture resembles that of the Harvard Mark I, but
its components are entirely electronic, incorporating 17,468 vacuum
tubes and more than 80,000 other components. The machine weighs 30
tons, covers about 1,000 square feet of floor, and consumes somewhere
between 130 and 174 kilowatts of electricity (sources differ). Many
of the modules are made to plug into the mainframe, to shorten the
repair time when a tube or other component fails. The cost and
downtime are further reduced by using circuits designed to work even
if the components are off-specification, and wire of the type least
preferred by hungry mice in experiments.

The machine incorporates 20 accumulators (the original plan was for 4).
The accumulators and other units are all connected by several data
buses, and a set of "program lines" for synchronization. Each accum-
ulator stores a 10-digit number, using 10 bits to represent each digit,
plus a sign bit, and also incorporates circuits to add a number from
a bus ("digit trunk") to the stored number, and to transmit the stored
number or its complement to a bus.

A separate unit can perform multiplication (in about 3 milliseconds),
while another does division and square roots; the inputs and outputs
for both these units use the buses. There are constant registers, as
on the Harvard Mark I: 104 12-digit registers forming an array called
the "function table". 100 of these registers are directly addressable
by a 2-digit number from a bus (the others are used for interpolations).
Finally, a card reader is available to input data values, and there
is a card punch for output.

The program is set up on a plugboard -- this is considered reasonable
since the same or similar program would generally be used for weeks
at a time. For example, connecting certain sockets would cause
accumulator 1 to transmit its contents onto data bus 1 when a pulse
arrived on program line 1; meanwhile several accumulators could be
adding the value from that data bus to their stored value, while
others could be working independently. The program lines are pulsed
under the control of a master unit, which can perform iterations.

The ENIAC's clock speed is 100 kHz.

Mauchly and Eckert apply for a patent. The university disputes this
at first, but they settle. The patent is finally granted in 1964,
but is overturned in 1973, in part because of the previous work by
Atanasoff, whom Mauchly had visited in June 1941.

Feb 1946. The ENIAC is revealed to the public. A panel of lights is
added to help show reporters how fast the machine is and what
it is doing; and apparently Hollywood takes note.

Jul-Aug 1946. The Moore School gives a course on "Theory and Techniques
for Design of Electronic Computers"; lectures are given by
Eckert, Mauchly, Stibitz, von Neumann, and Aiken among others. The
course leads to several projects being started, among them the EDSAC.

Jul 1947. Aiken and his team complete the "Harvard Mark II", a large
programmable calculator using relays both for its 50 floating-
point registers and for the arithmetic unit, 13,000 of them in all.

Sep 1947. A moth (?-1947) makes the mistake of flying into the Harvard
Mark II. A whimsical technician makes the logbook entry "first
actual case of bug being found", and annotates it by taping down the
remains of the moth.

(The term "bug" was of course already in use; that's why it's funny.
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-92), a programmer on the machine, will tell
the story so many times in later years that people will come to think
she found the moth herself.)

Oct 1947. Freddie C. Williams (1911-77) and Thomas Kilburn (1921-),
working under Newman at Manchester University, complete a new
type of digital memory (possibly from an original suggestion by Presper
Eckert), which comes to be called the Williams tube or CRT memory.
It uses the residual charges left on the screen of a CRT after the
electron beam has been fired at it; the bits are read by firing
another beam through them and reading the voltage at an electrode
beyond the screen, then rewriting. The technique is a little
unreliable, but is fast, and also relatively cheap because it can
use existing CRT designs; and it is much more compact than any other
memory existing at the time. A further advantage is that if the CRT
face is exposed to view, the values in the memory are visible!

1947. Frederick Viehe (?-1960), of Los Angeles, applies for a patent
on an invention which is to use magnetic core memory.

1947. Aiken predicts that the United States will need a total of six
electronic digital computers.

c.1947. The magnetic drum memory is independently invented by several
people, and the first examples are constructed.

(As noted below, some early machines will use drums as main memory
rather than secondary memory.)

Jan 1948. Wallace Eckert (1902-71, no relation to Presper Eckert)
of IBM, with his team, completes the "SSEC" ("Selective
Sequence Electronic Calculator"). This technological hybrid has
8 vacuum tube registers, 150 words of relay memory, and 66 paper
tape loops storing a total of 20,000 words. The word size is
20 digits, stored in BCD in the registers.

As with the Harvard Mark I in its later form, the machine can be
switched to read instructions from any of the paper tapes. There
is also some use of plugboards in its programming. But it can
also cache some instructions in memory and read them from there;
thus, in effect, it can operate either as a stored-program computer
(with a very small program memory) or not. Because it can do this,
IBM's point of view is that this is the first computer.

Jun 1948. Williams, Kilburn, and their team complete a prototype
computer. This is the first machine that everyone would
call a computer, because it's the first with a true stored-program
capability. At this point it has no formal name, though one paper
calls it the "Small-Scale Experimental Machine"; later the machine
will become known as the "Manchester Mark I", while its initial
form at this date will be nicknamed the "Baby".

The machine's main memory of 32 32-bit words occupies a single
Williams tube. (There are others on the machine, but less densely
used: one contains only an accumulator.)

The machine's programs are initially entered in binary on a keyboard,
and the output is read in binary from the face of another Williams
tube. Later Turing joins the team (see also the "Pilot ACE", below)
and devises a primitive form of assembly language, one of several
developed at about the same time in different places.

(In the 1990s a replica of the Baby is to be constructed, with
completion scheduled for the 50th anniversary year of 1998.)

Sep 1948. The ENIAC is improved, using ideas from Richard F. Clipper
of the BRL and Nicholas Metropolis of Los Alamos. Each program
line is permanently wired for a different operation, and a new converter
unit allows them to be addressed by a program, the way the function
table can -- thus implementing, in effect, opcodes. With this change,
the program can now be entered via the *function table*.

(This conversion will sometimes be described as making the ENIAC into a
stored-program computer, but the program memory is still read-only.
However, setting up a program now takes a matter of hours, rather than
days as before. The ENIAC will also acquire a magnetic core memory in
1952, but will survive only until 1955.)

Fall 1948. IBM introduces the "IBM 604", a programmable calculator
and card punch using vacuum tubes. It can read a card,
perform up to 60 arithmetic operations in 80 milliseconds, and punch
the results on the same card. The programming is by plugboard.

All machines first mentioned in the chronology from here on are
stored-program computers.

1949-51. Jay W. Forrester and his team at MIT construct the
"Whirlwind" for the US Navy's Office of Research and
Inventions. The vague date is because its advance to full-time
operational status is gradual. Its original form has 3,300 tubes
and 8,900 crystal diodes. It occupies 2,500 square feet of floor.
Its 2,048 16-bit words of CRT memory use up $32,000 worth of tubes
each month. There is also a graphical I/O device consisting of a
CRT (only one dot can be displayed at a time) and a light pen.
This allows the machine to be used for air traffic control.

The Whirlwind is the first computer designed for real-time work;
it can do 500,000 additions or 50,000 multiplications per second.

Spring 1949. Forrester conceives the idea of magnetic core memory as
it is to become commonly used, with a grid of wires used to
address the cores. The first practical form, in 1952-53, will replace
the Whirlwind's CRT memory and render obsolete all types of main
memory then existing.

April 1949. The Manchester Mark I, no longer the Baby as its main
memory has been upgraded to 128 40-bit words (on two CRTs),
acquires a secondary memory in the form of a magnetic drum holding
a further 1,024 words. Also at about this time, two index registers
are added to the machine.

(The index register's contents are added, not to the address taken
from an instruction, but to the entire instruction, thus potentially
changing the opcode! Calling Mel...)

May 1949. Maurice Wilkes (1913-) and his team at Cambridge Uni-
versity complete the "EDSAC" ("Electronic Delay Storage
Automatic Computer"), which is closely based on the EDVAC design
report from von Neumann's group -- Wilkes had attended the 1946
Moore School course. The project is supported both financially
and with technical personnel from J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., a large
British firm in the food and restaurant business.

This is the first operational full-scale stored-program computer,
and is therefore the final candidate for the title of "the first
computer".

Its main memory is of a type that had existed for some years, but
had not been used for a computing machine: the "ultrasonic delay
line" memory. It had been invented originally by William Shockley
of Bell Labs (also one of the co-inventors of the transistor, in
1948), and improved by Presper Eckert for use with radar systems.
It works by repeatedly converting from the usual electrical data
pulses to ultrasonic pulses directed along, typically, the length
of a tank of mercury; on arrival at the other end, the pulses are
converted back to electrical form. The memory must be maintained
at a particular temperature, and only the few bits currently in
electrical form are accessible. In the EDSAC, 16 tanks of mercury
give a total of 256 35-bit words (or 512 17-bit words).

The clock speed of the EDSAC is 500 kHz; most instructions take
about 1.5 ms to execute. Its I/O is by paper tape, and a set of
constant registers is provided for booting.

The software eventually supports the concept of relocatable proce-
dures with addresses bound at load time.

Aug 1949. Presper Eckert and Mauchly, having formed their own company,
complete the "BINAC" ("Binary Automatic Computer") for the
US Air Force. Designed as a first step to in-flight computers, this
has dual (redundant) processors each with 700 tubes and 512 31-bit
words of memory. Each processor occupies only 4 square feet of floor
space and can do 3,500 additions or 1,000 multiplications per second.

The designers are thinking mostly of their forthcoming "UNIVAC"
("Universal Automatic Computer") and don't spend much time making
the BINAC as reliable as it should be, but the tandem processors
compensate somewhat.

Sep 1949. Aiken's team completes the "Harvard Mark III". This
computer has separate magnetic drum memories for data and
instructions. Only some of the data drums can be addressed by
the CPU; the others serve as secondary memory. The total memory
capacity is 4,000 instructions, 350 16-bit words in the main data
drums, and 4,000 words more in the secondary memory. The machine
contains over 5,000 vacuum tubes and 2,000 relays, and can do about
80 multiplications per second.

May 1950. A group at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington,
England, complete the "Pilot ACE" (pilot project for an
"Automatic Computing Engine"). This had been largely designed by
Turing when he was there in 1945-47; he had left and gone to Manches-
ter because the designs were not being implemented. The main memory
of this computer is in the form of 200 separate ultrasonic delay
lines, thus allowing better addressability than other ultrasonic-
based machines. An additional group of short delay lines serve as
registers, each of which performs a particular operation automatic-
ally on a number directed to it. Most operations then consist simply
of routing a number, or a counted stream of numbers, from one delay
line to another. Punch cards are used for input and output; a drum
will be added later for secondary memory.

(A successor to this machine will be named "DEUCE".)

May 1950. A group at the US National Bureau of Standards, Washington,
which had found itself unable to wait for commercial computers
to appear, completes "SEAC" (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer").
The design was kept simple for the sake of rapid implementation.
To keep the number of vacuum tubes down, 12,000 of the new germanium
diodes are used. The ultrasonic delay line memory holds 512 45-bit
words.

July 1950. SEAC's western counterpart "SWAC", in Los Angeles, is
completed and becomes the fastest computer in the world.
It has Williams tube memory, which has problems because the tubes'
phosphor layers were contaminated by lint at the former mattress
factory where the tubes were made, and only 256 37-bit words of
main memory are operable. But it can do an addition in 64 micro-
seconds, and a drum is added later to augment the memory.

1950. Zuse's Z4 is finally completed and goes into service at
ETH (Federal Polytechnical Institute) in Zurich, Switzerland.
The design is modified so that it can do conditional jumps. The
machine also implements a form of instruction pipelining, with the
program tape being read 2 instructions ahead and various optimiz-
ations performed automatically.

The Z4 remains in use for 5 years at ETH and 5 more in France, and
Zuse soon begins making his machines commercially. He eventually
sells some 300 machines before being bought out by Siemens.

1950. Douglas Hartree (the leading expert in the country on the
specialized computing machines called differential analyzers)
gives his professional opinion to Ferranti Ltd., of Manchester:
as the 3 existing computer projects will suffice to handle all the
calculations that will ever be needed in England, Ferranti would be
well advised to drop the idea of making computers for commercial sale.

Feb 1951. A rather more optimistic Ferranti Ltd. completes the first
commercial computer. This is yet another "Mark I", but is
also known as the "Manchester Mark II", "MUDC", "MUEDC", and "MADAM"!
It has 256 40-bit words of main memory and 16K words of drum, and
includes 8 index registers (they work the same way as on the Manchester
Mark I, which this machine was derived from). An eventual total of 8
of these machines are sold.

Mar 1951. Presper Eckert and Mauchly, having sold their company to
Remington Rand, complete the first "UNIVAC", which is the
first US commercial computer. (The US census department is the first
customer.) It has 1,000 12-digit words of ultrasonic delay line memory
and can do 8,333 additions or 555 multiplications per second; it con-
tains 5,000 tubes and covers 200 square feet of floor. For secondary
memory it uses 1/2 inch magnetic tapes of nickel-coated bronze, which
store 128 characters per inch; 10,000 characters can be read per second.

Fall 1951. The Lyons company receives its reward for supporting the
EDSAC, as T. Raymond Thompson, John Simmons, and their team
complete the "LEO I" ("Lyons Electronic Office I"), which is modeled
closely after the EDSAC. Its ultrasonic memory is 4 times as large,
and avoids the usual temperature dependency by using one delay line
as a master and synchronizing the others to it instead of to a clock.

The Lyons company wants the LEO I for its own use -- payroll, inven-
tory, and so on; it is the first computer used for commercial calcul-
ations. But other companies now turn out to be interested in the LEO,
and Lyons will soon find itself in the computer manufacturing business
as well.

1951. Grace Murray Hopper, now of Remington Rand, invents the
modern concept of the compiler.

1952. The EDVAC is finally completed. It has 4,000 tubes, 10,000
crystal diodes, and 1,024 44-bit words of ultrasonic memory.
Its clock speed is 1 MHz.

1952. The IBM "Defense Calculator", later renamed the "701", the
first IBM computer unless you count the SSEC, enters
production at Poughkeepsie, New York. (The first one is delivered
in March 1953; 19 are sold altogether. The machine is available
with 2,048 or 4,096 36-bit words of CRT memory; it does 2,200 multi-
plications per second.)

(IBM stayed out of the computer market for some time because its
president, Thomas Watson Sr., didn't want the company competing
against its own business machines. His son and eventual successor,
Thomas Jr., disagreed, and realized that if it was the US *military*
that wanted to buy a computer, Thomas Sr. would not say no to them.)

1952. Grace Murray Hopper implements the first compiler, the "A-0".
(But as with "first computer", this is a somewhat arbitrary
designation.)

----------------------------------------------------

A few things have happened since then, too, but this margin is too
narrow...

--
Mark Brader | "But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, econ-
Toronto | omists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of
m...@vex.net | Europe is extinguished for ever." --Edmund Burke, 1790

[R H Draney]

LFS filted:

Q: "And what happened to the pickle slicer?"
A: "Oh, she was fired too."

....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[Peter Moylan]

On 02/02/13 02:31, Adam Funk wrote:

> The French Wikipedia article says "Blaise Pascal est l'inventeur de la
> machine à calculer[1,2]. Dénommée machine d’arithmétique, elle devint
> roue pascaline puis enfin pascaline[3]". I guess the "machine
> d'arithmétique" was Pascal's own term?

This gave me an unfortunate example of the deterioration in my own
thinking machine. I didn't recognise the word "pascaline", so went to
look it up in a French dictionary. It was only when I saw that the word
was absent from the dictionary that the penny dropped.

I suppose it's because we're used to upper-casing such words in English.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

[Peter Moylan]

On 02/02/13 00:06, Adam Funk wrote:
> ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this nifty
> example:
>
> A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
> the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
> numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process. It is really
> the equivalent of a table of logarithsm.
>
> (Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume 1,
> 1927)

Digressing slightly from your main point, I was interested by that
"checking calculations". It suggests that the (human) calculator first
does the calculation on paper, and then uses a slide rule to check the
answer. By the time I became a student (1965) the slide rule was the
primary mechanism for doing the calculations, and it was only in cases
of doubt that we resorted to a paper calculation as a check.

Mind you, we still did a mental calculation, or sometimes a paper
calculation, to get an approximate answer, because a slide rule doesn't
tell you where to put the decimal point. Students nowadays don't do that
"order of magnitude" estimate because electronic calculators do the job
for them. As a result, students also skip asking themselves "is this
answer plausible?". I have had students analyse an electrical circuit
with a 12-volt source, and find millions of volts at some other point in
the circuit. My generation would have said "That doesn't look right".
Today's students assume that it is right because the machine says so.

[Peter Brooks]

This was, indeed, the great virtue of a slide rule - that and, if you
had an expensive one, an introduction to a vernier.

[Steve Hayes]

On Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:52:05 +0000, LFS <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk>
wrote:

And back then the typewriter could have married a printer.


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

[Curlytop]

R H Draney set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
continuum:

>>1895 How to get Married 86 The marriage of the type-writer and her
>>employer is so frequent that it has passed into a joke.
>
> Q: "And what happened to the pickle slicer?"
> A: "Oh, she was fired too."
>
> ....r
>
>

Where did that leave the saggar-maker's bottom knocker?

[J. J. Lodder J. J. Lodder]

'Wheeler's First Moral Principle' still applies:
Never make a calculation before you know the answer.

Jan

[Don Phillipson]

>> On 01/02/2013 13:06, Adam Funk wrote:
>>> ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this nifty
>>> example:
>>>
>>> A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
>>> the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
>>> numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process. It is really
>>> the equivalent of a table of logarithsm.
>>>
>>> (Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume 1,
>>> 1927)

"Curlytop" <pvstownse...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:kegv18$cos$1...@dont-email.me...

> I can vouch for this earlier usage, for I was quite startled to read the
> following in one of my mathematical textbooks back in my college days, in
> a
> section on blunders in mathematical caulateions. The book was written as
> recently as 1964. [1]
>> Blunders are lapses from accurate computation, due to carelessness of
>> the computer or failure of the machine.
> Notice how the "computer" and the "machine" are kept distinct.

This usage is similar to calculator (before say 1940) and
typewriter (1880.) Both nouns when new meant people, viz. the operators of
what were called calculating machines and typewriting machines.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-01, Peter Moylan wrote:

> On 02/02/13 00:06, Adam Funk wrote:
>> ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this nifty
>> example:
>>
>> A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
>> the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
>> numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process. It is really
>> the equivalent of a table of logarithsm.
>>
>> (Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume 1,
>> 1927)
>
> Digressing slightly from your main point, I was interested by that
> "checking calculations". It suggests that the (human) calculator first
> does the calculation on paper, and then uses a slide rule to check the
> answer. By the time I became a student (1965) the slide rule was the
> primary mechanism for doing the calculations, and it was only in cases
> of doubt that we resorted to a paper calculation as a check.
>
> Mind you, we still did a mental calculation, or sometimes a paper
> calculation, to get an approximate answer, because a slide rule doesn't
> tell you where to put the decimal point.

Yes, that does seem strange. It would make more sense to recomend a
slide rule for repeating calculations with more precision: e.g., round
the numbers off to 1 or 2 significant figures, calculate in your head
or with a pencil, then use the slide rule to get more significant
figures. I've got a high-precision spiral slide rule (inherited from
my grandfather) that just about requires you to do that in order to
read from the right tier of the scale.

http://www.ducksburg.com/atlas_slide_rule/


My late uncle took one like that to university & was wrongly accused
of cheating in an exam because his answers were too precise & correct;
the professor hadn't seen a spiral slide rule until my uncle showed
him one --- then he corrected the exam grade.

> Students nowadays don't do that
> "order of magnitude" estimate because electronic calculators do the job
> for them. As a result, students also skip asking themselves "is this
> answer plausible?". I have had students analyse an electrical circuit
> with a 12-volt source, and find millions of volts at some other point in
> the circuit. My generation would have said "That doesn't look right".
> Today's students assume that it is right because the machine says so.

Wow!

Oh, and ObAUE, there are how many of us left who actually know what
"orders of magnitude" means?


--
No sport is less organized than Calvinball!

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-01, Peter Moylan wrote:

> On 02/02/13 02:31, Adam Funk wrote:
>
>> The French Wikipedia article says "Blaise Pascal est l'inventeur de la
>> machine à calculer[1,2]. Dénommée machine d’arithmétique, elle devint
>> roue pascaline puis enfin pascaline[3]". I guess the "machine
>> d'arithmétique" was Pascal's own term?
>
> This gave me an unfortunate example of the deterioration in my own
> thinking machine.

ITYM "thinkator".

> I didn't recognise the word "pascaline", so went to
> look it up in a French dictionary. It was only when I saw that the word
> was absent from the dictionary that the penny dropped.
>
> I suppose it's because we're used to upper-casing such words in English.

Probably, although I don't see any good reason for all the
capitalization we do; it's a convention that I follow, but I think the
français & italiani have a more sensible approach.


--
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
[Ambrose Bierce]

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) writes:

> Guy Barry:
>> When was the term "computer" first used to describe a machine?
>> Wikipedia seems to think that this was the first example (1936):
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_%28computer%29
>
> Nonsense; the article is about the machine, not the English word.
> Konrad Zuse was German and as far as I know his work was completely
> unknown in the English-speaking world, so it could not have affected
> English usage.

This probably depends on what you consider a "computer". U.S. Patent
1,999,368 (filed 1932) is for a "fire control computer" that's very
definitely a machine, but not the sort of thing we now think of by the
word. It includes wheels, shafts, gears, cylinders, and the like.

Let's go back further.

Patent 1,857,071 (filed 1930) is for a "board-feet computer", "a
machine for registering the number of board feet in boards of
different thickness, width, and length."

Patent 1,825,659 (filed 1926) is for a "data computer" "based on the
linear speed method of fire control for anti-aircraft gunnery".

Ah. Patent 1,622,916 (filed 1919) for a "computer" looks, to all
intents and purposes to be a mechanical adding machine with an actual
keyboard.

Patent 1,004,682 (filed 1909) for a mechanical "computing and registering
mechanism" (also with keys), also describes the device (or perhaps
just the part that performs the computation) as a "computer". It can
add and subtract.

Patent 982,518 (filed 1907) is for a "combined type-writer and
computer" that allowed you to type tabular data, line by line, and
have it automatically print the column totals at the bottom and total
the totals.

Ah, the same guy, Holmes Marshall of the "National Addograph Company"
got a patent 686,627 (filed 1900) for a "combined type-writing and
computing machine", also (or part of which was also) called a
"computer". He also had an earlier patent, 654,992 (filed 1898) which
talked about "computers" and another, 575,570 (filed 1896), whose
specification doesn't contain the word "computer", so that may give us
an indication of when the word started to be used.

Other early patents appear to be of the "circular slide rule" or other
such manual computation aid sort.

So if I had to pick a year, I'd go with 1897 or 1898.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |If all else fails, embarrass the
SF Bay Area (1982-) |industry into doing the right
Chicago (1964-1982) |thing.
| Dean Thompson
evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Peter Moylan]

Is that phrase disappearing? I would have assumed that it still appears
in high school science.

[Guy Barry]

"Adam Funk" wrote in message news:qob0u9x...@news.ducksburg.com...

>Oh, and ObAUE, there are how many of us left who actually know what
>"orders of magnitude" means?

It has no fixed definition. Conventionally it refers to decimal orders of
magnitude, but you can have orders of magnitude based on other number
bases - see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Non-decimal_orders_of_magnitude

--
Guy Barry

[Curlytop]

Adam Funk set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
continuum:

> Oh, and ObAUE, there are how many of us left who actually know what
> "orders of magnitude" means?

In one of those spoof glossaries of scientific terms, "correct within an
order of magnitude" is defined as "wrong".

Here is my own addition to that glossary, copied verbatim from the end of
the introduction to one of the key papers cited in my M.Sc. thesis.
> The conclusions to be drawn at the end of this paper will not provide
> a final answer to these questions, but hopefully set the stage for a
> new line of thought on the problem.
In other words, "I'm stuck - any ideas?" In fact this particular paper was
subjected to some considerable floccinaucinihilipilification in my thesis
after repeated experiments failed to reproduce anything like the author's
results.

[Curlytop]

Evan Kirshenbaum set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
continuum:

> Patent 982,518 (filed 1907) is for a "combined type-writer and
> computer" that allowed you to type tabular data, line by line, and
> have it automatically print the column totals at the bottom and total
> the totals.

Do VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel violate this patent?

[Peter Brooks]

On Feb 3, 2:21 pm, Curlytop <pvstownsend.zyx....@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Evan Kirshenbaum set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
> continuum:
>
> > Patent 982,518 (filed 1907) is for a "combined type-writer and
> > computer" that allowed you to type tabular data, line by line, and
> > have it automatically print the column totals at the bottom and total
> > the totals.
>
> Do VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel violate this patent?
>

You can't violate an expired patent - necrophiliacs might wish this
were true of expired patients as well.

The whole point about patents is that, once they are expired,
everybody is entitled to, even encouraged to, use them free. The whole
point other than protecting the inventor from being ripped off,
anyway.

I love seeing new copies of the Honda 125 motorbike that I had when I
was a lad now made by many different Far Eastern companies - it
vindicates my opinion at the time that it was a very good bike. It's
great that the excellent design work can still find a use and that
small companies can produce good motorbikes without needing the
expensive design and testing process or to pay license fees to
anybody.

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Peter Brooks <peter.h....@gmail.com> writes:

> On Feb 3, 2:21 pm, Curlytop <pvstownsend.zyx....@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> Evan Kirshenbaum set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
>> continuum:
>>
>> > Patent 982,518 (filed 1907) is for a "combined type-writer and
>> > computer" that allowed you to type tabular data, line by line,
>> > and have it automatically print the column totals at the bottom
>> > and total the totals.
>>
>> Do VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel violate this patent?
>>
> You can't violate an expired patent - necrophiliacs might wish this
> were true of expired patients as well.
>
> The whole point about patents is that, once they are expired,
> everybody is entitled to, even encouraged to, use them free. The
> whole point other than protecting the inventor from being ripped
> off, anyway.

Exactly. People forget that the original goal was to encourage
inventors to put things in public domains rather than keep them (for
decades or centuries) as trade secrets. The US Constitution (art. 1,
sect. 8) gives congress the power

to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for
limited Times to ... Inventors the exclusive Right to their
respective ... Discoveries.

It's a quid pro quo. We'll give you a monopoly for a limited time,
and in exchange you publish up front so that others can learn how it
works and build on it.

In any case, the patent was for (in the first claim)

In a combined typewriter and adding machine, the combination with a
shifting carriage of numerical keys, a shaft mounted upon said
carriage, a master wheel mounted upon said shaft, operative
connections between the master wheel and the numerical keys, a
series of detail adding devices with which the said master wheel is
adapted to successively engage, a total detail adding device, a
pinion mounted upon said shaft, said pinion being adapted to rotate
with the shaft but capable of sliding movement thereon, a yoke
having arms which are pivoted upon said shaft, said arms engaging
with the total detail adding device, the said pinion being confined
between the arms whih are pivoted upon the shaft, a spring
coöperating with the yoke and pinion to push the pinion toward one
of the arms of the yoke.

so I don't think Microsoft has anything to worry about. Of course,
that patent was a refinement of earlier work, so it had to be
reasonably narrow. His earliest patent, number 575,570, granted in
1897 is for the much broader

The combination with a depressible operating-key of a type-writer
and a depressible operating key of an adding or computing machine;
of a plunger arranged above and adapted to be moved over said
last-mentioned key, and a mechanism interposed between said plunger
and the aforesaid type-writer key and capable of depressing the
computing-machine key simultaneously with the depression of the
type-writer key, substantially as and for the purpose set forth.

Even that, however presupposes that key-based "adding or computing
machines" existed and what was being claimed here was a system that
allowed pushing a key on a typewriter to push a key on the adding
machine.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |The body was wrapped in duct tape,
SF Bay Area (1982-) |weighted down with concrete blocks
Chicago (1964-1982) |and a telephone cord was tied
|around the neck. Police suspect
evan.kir...@gmail.com |foul play...

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Curlytop <pvstownse...@ntlworld.com> writes:

> Adam Funk set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
> continuum:
>
>> Oh, and ObAUE, there are how many of us left who actually know what
>> "orders of magnitude" means?
>
> In one of those spoof glossaries of scientific terms, "correct
> within an order of magnitude" is defined as "wrong".
>
> Here is my own addition to that glossary, copied verbatim from the
> end of the introduction to one of the key papers cited in my
> M.Sc. thesis.

>> The conclusions to be drawn at the end of this paper will not
>> provide a final answer to these questions, but hopefully set the
>> stage for a new line of thought on the problem.

> In other words, "I'm stuck - any ideas?"

Not at all. It means "Look, they give us an eight-page maximum for
these papers, so we can't cover everything. In any case, this was as
far as we had gotten with the experiments before the conference
deadline. We hope you'll agree that it's interesting, because if the
ones we're running now pan out, we'll have another paper out in six
months."

> In fact this particular paper was subjected to some considerable
> floccinaucinihilipilification in my thesis after repeated
> experiments failed to reproduce anything like the author's results.

Which implies that the experiments they were running as they finalized
their paper didn't pan out and they realized the mistake in their
original analysis. No career benefit in announcing either of those.
Maybe nobody else will notice.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |Yesterday I washed a single sock.
SF Bay Area (1982-) |When I opened the door, the machine
Chicago (1964-1982) |was empty.

evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-03, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

> Curlytop <pvstownse...@ntlworld.com> writes:

>> In one of those spoof glossaries of scientific terms, "correct
>> within an order of magnitude" is defined as "wrong".
>>
>> Here is my own addition to that glossary, copied verbatim from the
>> end of the introduction to one of the key papers cited in my
>> M.Sc. thesis.
>
>>> The conclusions to be drawn at the end of this paper will not
>>> provide a final answer to these questions, but hopefully set the
>>> stage for a new line of thought on the problem.
>
>> In other words, "I'm stuck - any ideas?"
>
> Not at all. It means "Look, they give us an eight-page maximum for
> these papers, so we can't cover everything. In any case, this was as
> far as we had gotten with the experiments before the conference
> deadline. We hope you'll agree that it's interesting, because if the
> ones we're running now pan out, we'll have another paper out in six
> months."

I heartily endorse this interpretation.

>> In fact this particular paper was subjected to some considerable
>> floccinaucinihilipilification in my thesis after repeated
>> experiments failed to reproduce anything like the author's results.
>
> Which implies that the experiments they were running as they finalized
> their paper didn't pan out and they realized the mistake in their
> original analysis. No career benefit in announcing either of those.
> Maybe nobody else will notice.

And this one.


--
Slade was the coolest band in England. They were the kind of guys
that would push your car out of a ditch. --- Alice Cooper

[Adam Funk]

Sure, and if we had twelve fingers, we'd have duodecimal orders of
magnitude (along with the rest of such a system), but you get my
point, right? The same boneheads who talk about "making quantum leaps
in our marketing plan" misuse "orders of magnitude" as a supposedly
impressive synomym for "a lot".

See also Fowler's "popularized technicalities"!


--
There's a statute of limitations with the law, but not with
your wife. [Ray Magliozzi, Car Talk 2011-36]

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> writes:

> On 2013-02-03, Guy Barry wrote:
>
>> "Adam Funk" wrote in message news:qob0u9x...@news.ducksburg.com...
>>
>>>Oh, and ObAUE, there are how many of us left who actually know what
>>>"orders of magnitude" means?
>>
>> It has no fixed definition. Conventionally it refers to decimal orders of
>> magnitude, but you can have orders of magnitude based on other number
>> bases - see here:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Non-decimal_orders_of_magnitude
>
>
> Sure, and if we had twelve fingers, we'd have duodecimal orders of
> magnitude (along with the rest of such a system), but you get my
> point, right? The same boneheads who talk about "making quantum leaps
> in our marketing plan" misuse "orders of magnitude" as a supposedly
> impressive synomym for "a lot".

But it is a lot. Whatever your base (making the not-unreasonable
assumption that it's integral and greater than one), relative to a
unit step size, a change of orders of magnitude is an exponential
change. And since the canonical base is ten, plural "orders of
magnitude" means "by at least a factor of a hundred, if not a
thousand". But in any case it's "much more than you'd expect by
simple steady increase."

Looking in Google Books, the recent hits all seem to be using it
correctly. Let's see what I find in the _NY Times_:

Compounding this problem, the salaries of imported civilian workers
are orders of magnitude higher than those of their Afghan peers.
Some employees of the United States Agency for International
Development, for instance, earn more than 300 times the monthly pay
of an Afghan teacher. [10/2/09]

Seems fine to me. 300 times the pay is, indeed, orders of magnitude
higher. It's not merely "more" but "so much more that you'd need to
use a log scale to make the smaller bar show up".

Samples taken to a depth of about two inches showed relatively low
arsenic concentrations, but those from depths of 3 to 10 feet had
concentrations that were two orders of magnitude higher. [9/22/09]

Just fine.

The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the
pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a
factor of 10. "We are talking about orders of magnitude," the
senior Western diplomat said. [9/7/09]

Okay, maybe plural "orders" is stretching it, but we're still in the
singular "order" range.

Lt. Col. Douglas A. Ollivant ... said Afghanistan may be "several
orders of magnitude" harder. It has none of the infrastructure,
education and natural resources of Iraq, he noted, nor is the
political leadership as aligned in its goals with those of
America's leadership. [8/23/09]

Not enough there to know whether or not he would have considered
"thousands of times" an equivalent phrase to use or to know what he
based the magnitude on.

The next one similarly says that "Going to Mars is orders of magnitude
more difficult than going to the Moon", but there's no way to know
whether or not the writer was realy invisioning a factor of hundreds
or thousands.

And so on. What I see mostly is either technically correct or the
same sort of situation in which one might reasonably use "hundreds (or
thousands) of times more" in a general "lots" sense.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |The look on our faces isn't confusion.
SF Bay Area (1982-) |It's disbelief.
Chicago (1964-1982) |
| Jon Stewart
evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[David Hatunen]

On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 15:55:23 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

>m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) writes:
>
>> Guy Barry:
>>> When was the term "computer" first used to describe a machine?
>>> Wikipedia seems to think that this was the first example (1936):
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_%28computer%29
>>
>> Nonsense; the article is about the machine, not the English word.
>> Konrad Zuse was German and as far as I know his work was completely
>> unknown in the English-speaking world, so it could not have affected
>> English usage.
>
>This probably depends on what you consider a "computer". U.S. Patent
>1,999,368 (filed 1932) is for a "fire control computer" that's very
>definitely a machine, but not the sort of thing we now think of by the
>word. It includes wheels, shafts, gears, cylinders, and the like.

These days a computer is considered to be a device that is
programmable and re-programmable in some way. There have been
calculating devices for a long time, but hey were not programmable in
this sense, and some have been either electromechanical or mechanical.
For instance, the good ol' wat-hour meter is an analog calculator that
does integration as the little weel moves back and foth over the
surface of the big wheel. Similarly for gun fire-control devices which
were, at least up until after WW2, analog calculators. But
fire-control devices were, in a sense, programmable.

The Babbage machine was a programmable mechanical computer.


Dave Hatunen, Tucson
Free Baja Arizona

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

At least the Analytical Engine. But I don't believe that it was
called a "computer".

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |The Elizabethans had so many words
SF Bay Area (1982-) |for the female genitals that it is
Chicago (1964-1982) |quite hard to speak a sentence of
|modern English without inadvertently
evan.kir...@gmail.com |mentioning at least three of them.
| Terry Pratchett
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Paul Wolff]

In message <38xd46...@gmail.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
<evan.kir...@gmail.com> writes

> co�perating with the yoke and pinion to push the pinion toward one

> of the arms of the yoke.
>
>so I don't think Microsoft has anything to worry about. Of course,
>that patent was a refinement of earlier work, so it had to be
>reasonably narrow. His earliest patent, number 575,570, granted in
>1897 is for the much broader
>
> The combination with a depressible operating-key of a type-writer
> and a depressible operating key of an adding or computing machine;
> of a plunger arranged above and adapted to be moved over said
> last-mentioned key, and a mechanism interposed between said plunger
> and the aforesaid type-writer key and capable of depressing the
> computing-machine key simultaneously with the depression of the
> type-writer key, substantially as and for the purpose set forth.
>
>Even that, however presupposes that key-based "adding or computing
>machines" existed and what was being claimed here was a system that
>allowed pushing a key on a typewriter to push a key on the adding
>machine.
>

I must say that the claim of the subsequent patent is (to my eyes)
seriously flawed. What's a master wheel, as opposed to any other sort of
wheel? What is a detail adding devices? How do you adapt a wheel to
successively engage a series of detail adding devices - surely it isn't
the wheel that is adapted, but some other mechanism. The pinion has no
function other than that of being pushable by a spring along the shaft
towards a yoke arm; and the yoke seems to be of no use whatsoever unless
you count value in having arms confining the pinion and engaging with a
total detail adding device. Patent void for inutility (in the old
British style), but of course the USA is different.
--
Paul

[David Hatunen]

On Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:08:18 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> The Babbage machine was a programmable mechanical computer.
>
>At least the Analytical Engine. But I don't believe that it was
>called a "computer".

I have no idea what Babbage called it, but a rose by any other name...

Wikipedia calls it a "programmable computer"

[Steve Hayes]

In my field, which is more the humanities, it could mean that, but it is more
likely to mean "I could have waited to publish this until I knew all the
answers, but I thought it would be selfish not to disclose some useful lines
of research that I don't have time to follow up, but other researchers may."

Or, to put it another way, "I'm writing this in a journal article, but there
may be a doctorate in it for someone who wants to look at it more closely."

[Guy Barry]

"Adam Funk" wrote in message news:e0s2u9x...@news.ducksburg.com...

>
>On 2013-02-03, Guy Barry wrote:
>
>> "Adam Funk" wrote in message news:qob0u9x...@news.ducksburg.com...
>>
>>>Oh, and ObAUE, there are how many of us left who actually know what
>>>"orders of magnitude" means?
>>
>> It has no fixed definition. Conventionally it refers to decimal orders
>> of
>> magnitude, but you can have orders of magnitude based on other number
>> bases - see here:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Non-decimal_orders_of_magnitude
>
>
>Sure, and if we had twelve fingers, we'd have duodecimal orders of
>magnitude (along with the rest of such a system), but you get my
>point, right? The same boneheads who talk about "making quantum leaps
>in our marketing plan" misuse "orders of magnitude" as a supposedly
>impressive synomym for "a lot".

Is that so bad as a metaphorical usage? "It's increased by orders of
magnitude" or "it's orders of magnitude greater" means that's it's gone up
by several factors of ten. While that may not always be literally true, it
strikes me as a reasonable way of conveying that it's increased by a great
deal.

--
Guy Barry

[Guy Barry]

"David Hatunen" wrote in message
news:do5ug8tsotn8ptm8r...@4ax.com...

>
>On Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:08:18 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
><evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> The Babbage machine was a programmable mechanical computer.
>>
>>At least the Analytical Engine. But I don't believe that it was
>>called a "computer".
>
>I have no idea what Babbage called it, but a rose by any other name...

Was it not the Analytical Engine then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine

There was an earlier version called the "Difference Engine".

--
Guy Barry

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-04, Guy Barry wrote:

> "Adam Funk" wrote in message news:e0s2u9x...@news.ducksburg.com...

>>Sure, and if we had twelve fingers, we'd have duodecimal orders of
>>magnitude (along with the rest of such a system), but you get my
>>point, right? The same boneheads who talk about "making quantum leaps
>>in our marketing plan" misuse "orders of magnitude" as a supposedly
>>impressive synomym for "a lot".
>
> Is that so bad as a metaphorical usage? "It's increased by orders of
> magnitude" or "it's orders of magnitude greater" means that's it's gone up
> by several factors of ten. While that may not always be literally true, it
> strikes me as a reasonable way of conveying that it's increased by a great
> deal.

I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
term don't.


--
Nam Sibbyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla
pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: beable beable beable; respondebat
illa: doidy doidy doidy. [plorkwort]

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Paul Wolff <boun...@two.wolff.co.uk> writes:

> In message <38xd46...@gmail.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
> <evan.kir...@gmail.com> writes

>>In any case, the patent was for (in the first claim)
>>
>> In a combined typewriter and adding machine, the combination with a
>> shifting carriage of numerical keys, a shaft mounted upon said
>> carriage, a master wheel mounted upon said shaft, operative
>> connections between the master wheel and the numerical keys, a
>> series of detail adding devices with which the said master wheel is
>> adapted to successively engage, a total detail adding device, a
>> pinion mounted upon said shaft, said pinion being adapted to rotate
>> with the shaft but capable of sliding movement thereon, a yoke
>> having arms which are pivoted upon said shaft, said arms engaging
>> with the total detail adding device, the said pinion being confined
>> between the arms whih are pivoted upon the shaft, a spring
>> co�perating with the yoke and pinion to push the pinion toward one
>> of the arms of the yoke.
>>

> I must say that the claim of the subsequent patent is (to my eyes)
> seriously flawed. What's a master wheel, as opposed to any other sort
> of wheel? What is a detail adding devices? How do you adapt a wheel to
> successively engage a series of detail adding devices - surely it
> isn't the wheel that is adapted, but some other mechanism. The pinion
> has no function other than that of being pushable by a spring along
> the shaft towards a yoke arm; and the yoke seems to be of no use
> whatsoever unless you count value in having arms confining the pinion
> and engaging with a total detail adding device. Patent void for
> inutility (in the old British style), but of course the USA is
> different.

You have to take into account that the claims follow a lengthy and
detailed specification, manditorily with drawings that identify each
of the things you talk about (even for software patents). The claims
are essentially "Given the context of what I've just described, I
claim ... as my invention". The "master wheel" is element labeled by
the number "20" in the accompanying drawings. It is "journaled in a
housing [element 21] that is mounted upon the carriage". It is the
wheel that "upon depression of a numerical key, will rotate an amount
corresponding to the value of that key" such that its motion "will be
transmitted through the pinoins 13 and 14 to the wheels 12 of the
registering devices with which said pinion may then be in mesh". Etc.
You can't mention anything in your claims that you haven't defined in
your specification without assuming the risk of it being interpreted
in according to the least preferable (to you) reading that could
reasonably be expected to occur to one with ordinary skill in the art
at the time you wrote it.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |Feeling good about government is like
SF Bay Area (1982-) |looking on the bright side of any
Chicago (1964-1982) |catastrophe. When you quit looking
|on the bright side, the catastrophe
evan.kir...@gmail.com |is still there.
| P.J. O'Rourke
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Sure. But the question was when the *word* "computer" was first
applied to machines (as opposed to people).

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |A handgun is like a Lawyer. You
SF Bay Area (1982-) |don't want it lying around where
Chicago (1964-1982) |the children might be exposed to
|it, but when you need one, you need
evan.kir...@gmail.com |it RIGHT NOW, and nothing else will
|do.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Bill McNutt

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Wow, such an altruistic field. Here it would be more "I could have
waited to publish this untill I knew all the answers, but that would
have meant waiting to next year's conference or submitting it to a
less-prestigious conference and my boss/advisor expects me to publish
something soon and this seemed to be enough to get past the
reviewers."

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |Voting in the House of
SF Bay Area (1982-) |Representatives is done by means of a
Chicago (1964-1982) |little plastic card with a magnetic
|strip on the back--like a VISA card,
evan.kir...@gmail.com |but with no, that is, absolutely
|*no*, spending limit.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | P.J. O'Rourke

[Paul Wolff]

In message <k3qo0x...@gmail.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum

Yes, I do know all that. It's still bad drafting technique to rely on
the description to fill the voids, especially when that description ends
with a statement that the invention is not limited to what is described.
If the claim had been drafted by a pupil of mine, I'd have sent it back
for remedial care and attention.

But I shouldn't be going on about this. As I said on the first circuit,
the USA is different. Japan is different too, and China, and, and.
--
Paul

[R H Draney]

Adam Funk filted:

>
>On 2013-02-04, Guy Barry wrote:
>
>> "Adam Funk" wrote in message news:e0s2u9x...@news.ducksburg.com...
>
>>>Sure, and if we had twelve fingers, we'd have duodecimal orders of
>>>magnitude (along with the rest of such a system), but you get my
>>>point, right? The same boneheads who talk about "making quantum leaps
>>>in our marketing plan" misuse "orders of magnitude" as a supposedly
>>>impressive synomym for "a lot".
>>
>> Is that so bad as a metaphorical usage? "It's increased by orders of
>> magnitude" or "it's orders of magnitude greater" means that's it's gone up
>> by several factors of ten. While that may not always be literally true, it
>> strikes me as a reasonable way of conveying that it's increased by a great
>> deal.
>
>
>I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
>they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
>term don't.

Within those parameters, I agree that this should be the penultimate rule, but
it's going to take a steep learning curve....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[James Silverton]

On 2/4/2013 1:03 PM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
> David Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> writes:
>
>> On Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:08:18 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
>> <evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> The Babbage machine was a programmable mechanical computer.
>>> At least the Analytical Engine. But I don't believe that it was
>>> called a "computer".
>> I have no idea what Babbage called it, but a rose by any other name...
>>
>> Wikipedia calls it a "programmable computer"
> Sure. But the question was when the *word* "computer" was first
> applied to machines (as opposed to people).
>

The OED gives a first reference for machine to:
�
1869 �M. Harland� Phemie's Temptation i. 12 [Phemie] plunged anew into
the column of figures... Her pen was slowly traversing the length of the
page, at an elevation of a quarter of an inch above the paper, her eyes
following the course of the nib, as if it were the index of a patent
computer.
�
For an electronic device:
�
1946 G. Stibitz in Moore School Lect. (1985) 12 If the computer is such
that new formulas are easily set up in it, it may be economical to use
it in the solution of 5 or 10 problems.
�

--
Jim Silverton (Potomac, MD)

Extraneous "not" in Reply To.

[Mark Brader]

Guy Barry:
> Was it not the Analytical Engine then? ...

> There was an earlier version called the "Difference Engine".

No, there wasn't. That was a different invention incorporating some
of the same ideas. Neither one was completed by Babbage; in the case
of the Difference Engine this was largely because he distracted himself
too much by focusing on the Analytical Engine.
--
Mark Brader "All I can say is that the work
Toronto has been done well in every way."
m...@vex.net --William C. Van Horne, 1885-11-07

My text in this article is in the public domain.

[John Varela]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2013 19:45:56 UTC, m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:

> "Lanarcam":
> > Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642
>
> Wrong. Wilhelm Schickard invented the mechanical calculator in 1623.
> Pascal's "first" was that he was the first person to sell calculators
> commercially.

The Antikythera mechanism was built about 2,000 years ago.

--
John Varela

[John Varela]

On Mon, 4 Feb 2013 12:33:30 UTC, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com>
wrote:

> I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
> they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
> term don't.

Probably the most commonly misused term is "massive", as in "a
massive crater".

--
John Varela

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

James Silverton <not.jim....@verizon.net> writes:

> On 2/4/2013 1:03 PM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>> David Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> writes:
>>
>>> On Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:08:18 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
>>> <evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> The Babbage machine was a programmable mechanical computer.
>>>> At least the Analytical Engine. But I don't believe that it was
>>>> called a "computer".
>>> I have no idea what Babbage called it, but a rose by any other name...
>>>
>>> Wikipedia calls it a "programmable computer"
>> Sure. But the question was when the *word* "computer" was first
>> applied to machines (as opposed to people).
>>
> The OED gives a first reference for machine to:

> �
> 1869 'M. Harland' Phemie's Temptation i. 12 [Phemie] plunged anew into

> the column of figures... Her pen was slowly traversing the length of
> the page, at an elevation of a quarter of an inch above the paper, her
> eyes following the course of the nib, as if it were the index of a
> patent computer.

> �

Is it clear that that's a machine? A lot of the early patented
"computers" were more like slide rules (often circular slide rules) or
tables, where you moved an indicator to the correct value here and
then read off the result over there (or maybe there were a few such
steps), and it sounds like one of those is being described here.

> For an electronic device:
> �

> 1946 G. Stibitz in Moore School Lect. (1985) 12 If the computer is
> such that new formulas are easily set up in it, it may be economical
> to use it in the solution of 5 or 10 problems.

> �

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

How many centuries have to elapse before a common metaphorical sense
ceases to be "misuse". When this came up in 2010, I found that the
OED cited "massive" applied to physical things back to the early
fifteenth century and in terms of immaterial things ("grand or
impressive in scale; substantial in import or effect") to the late
sixteenth. I'd think that more than 400 years would suffice.

Of course, the "technical" sense of "massive" would be "of a particle:
haveing non-zero mass, not massless". I agree that few people use it
in that sense. Even, to my experience, physicists, who should
presumably know better.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |The Irish fear nothing
SF Bay Area (1982-) | and no one.
Chicago (1964-1982) |They keep fightin'
| 'til everyone's dead.
evan.kir...@gmail.com |I'm not sure where this
| metaphor's goin'.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ |I just felt like it
| had to be said.
|
| _Legally Blonde_

[Steve Hayes]

Or heart attack.

[Steve Hayes]

Perhaps I've been too much influenced by reading an article in a journal
called "Theoria to theory", which advocated the publication of half-baked
ideas. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any of
the philosophies currently in use. Nil illegitime carborundum, which is hot
dog Latin for 'Don't let the bastards grind you down'". It gave some examples
of partly-baked ideas: (1) The reason brain cells do not repair themselves is
that it is better to forget than to remember what ain't so; (2) a definition
is often a retrospective administrative decision; (3) The best mathematical
thinking is like Zen Buddhism: it consists in catching what you are half
thinking.

It also suggested that people often have half-baked ideas that they don't have
time to bake themselves. Any research often opens up other things that can be
researched, and explanatory footnotes often deal with matters that deserve an
article, paper, or sometimes even a thesis of their own.

[David Hatunen]

On Tue, 05 Feb 2013 03:10:13 +0200, Steve Hayes
<haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

>Perhaps I've been too much influenced by reading an article in a journal
>called "Theoria to theory", which advocated the publication of half-baked
>ideas. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any of
>the philosophies currently in use. Nil illegitime carborundum, which is hot
>dog Latin for 'Don't let the bastards grind you down'". It gave some examples
>of partly-baked ideas: (1) The reason brain cells do not repair themselves is
>that it is better to forget than to remember what ain't so; (2) a definition
>is often a retrospective administrative decision; (3) The best mathematical
>thinking is like Zen Buddhism: it consists in catching what you are half
>thinking.
>
>It also suggested that people often have half-baked ideas that they don't have
>time to bake themselves. Any research often opens up other things that can be
>researched, and explanatory footnotes often deal with matters that deserve an
>article, paper, or sometimes even a thesis of their own.

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_scientist_speculates.html?id=e3pEAAAAIAAJ

[Mark Brader]

"Lanarcam":
>>> Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642

Mark Brader:

>> Wrong. Wilhelm Schickard invented the mechanical calculator in 1623.
>> Pascal's "first" was that he was the first person to sell calculators
>> commercially.

John Varela:

> The Antikythera mechanism was built about 2,000 years ago.

And it was a remarkable achievement. But not a calculator in the sense
we're talking about here.
--
Mark Brader | "...people continue to wish that C were something it is not,
Toronto | not realizing that if C were what they thought they wanted
m...@vex.net | it to be, it would never have succeeded and they wouldn't
| be using it in the first place." -- Steve Summit

[Mark Brader]

Adam Funk:
> Probably, although I don't see any good reason for all the
> capitalization we do; it's a convention that I follow, but I think the
> fran�ais & italiani have a more sensible approach.

You mean Fran�ais. That's the one usage where they *do* capitalize
the word -- it's lower case for the adjective and the language.

Italian I don't know about.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "But I want credit for all the words
m...@vex.net I spelled *right*!" -- BEETLE BAILEY

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On 5 Feb 2013 00:13:13 GMT, "John Varela" <newl...@verizon.net> wrote:

Is that misuse?

The word was around for a long time meaning of great "size or bulk"
[OED] before physicists adopted it as a scientific term with a much more
restricted meaning.


--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-04, R H Draney wrote:

> Adam Funk filted:

>>I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
>>they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
>>term don't.
>
> Within those parameters, I agree that this should be the penultimate rule, but
> it's going to take a steep learning curve....r
>

Bingo!

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-22/


--
Some say the world will end in fire; some say in segfaults.
[XKCD 312]

[Adam Funk]

Good point, just as "stone" meant "rock" before it meant "14 pounds".

I'm inclined to add that the non-grammatical sense of "passive"
preceded the grammatical sense, but the OED suggests it's a close
call:

a1398 for the general sense:

That is acted upon or is capable of being acted upon from outside;
that is the object of action; affected by external force; produced
or brought about by external agency.

a1450 (►a1397) for the grammatical sense.

I'm not sure what the wedge before the last date means. I'd expect
the Latin word to have had the non-grammatical sense first, but I
can't prove it.


--
There's a statute of limitations with the law, but not with
your wife. [Ray Magliozzi, Car Talk 2011-36]

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-05, Mark Brader wrote:

> Adam Funk:
>> Probably, although I don't see any good reason for all the
>> capitalization we do; it's a convention that I follow, but I think the

>> français & italiani have a more sensible approach.
>
> You mean Français. That's the one usage where they *do* capitalize

> the word -- it's lower case for the adjective and the language.

oops


--
It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by
first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste
of the nation. (David Sarnoff, CEO of RCA, 1939; in Stoll 1995)

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:54:56 +0000, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com>
wrote:

>On 2013-02-05, Peter Duncanson [BrE] wrote:
>
>> On 5 Feb 2013 00:13:13 GMT, "John Varela" <newl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 4 Feb 2013 12:33:30 UTC, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
>>>> they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
>>>> term don't.
>>>
>>>Probably the most commonly misused term is "massive", as in "a
>>>massive crater".
>>
>> Is that misuse?
>>
>> The word was around for a long time meaning of great "size or bulk"
>> [OED] before physicists adopted it as a scientific term with a much more
>> restricted meaning.
>
>
>Good point, just as "stone" meant "rock" before it meant "14 pounds".
>
>I'm inclined to add that the non-grammatical sense of "passive"
>preceded the grammatical sense, but the OED suggests it's a close
>call:
>
>a1398 for the general sense:
>
> That is acted upon or is capable of being acted upon from outside;
> that is the object of action; affected by external force; produced
> or brought about by external agency.
>

>a1450 (?a1397) for the grammatical sense.

>
>I'm not sure what the wedge before the last date means. I'd expect
>the Latin word to have had the non-grammatical sense first, but I
>can't prove it.

I think that "a1450 (?a1397)" means that a1450 is the date of the
document cited but that the material in it is quoted from an earlier
document dated 1397. The earlier document no longer exists so can't be
quoted from directly.

The entry in the online OED is heavily revised from the version in the
Compact OED which gives the date of that quotation as 1388.

[Adam Funk]

How does that compare to _Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening
Gown_?


--
But the government always tries to coax well-known writers into the
Establishment; it makes them feel educated. [Robert Graves]

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-05, Peter Duncanson [BrE] wrote:

> On Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:54:56 +0000, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com>
> wrote:

>>I'm inclined to add that the non-grammatical sense of "passive"
>>preceded the grammatical sense, but the OED suggests it's a close
>>call:
>>
>>a1398 for the general sense:
>>
>> That is acted upon or is capable of being acted upon from outside;
>> that is the object of action; affected by external force; produced
>> or brought about by external agency.
>>
>>a1450 (?a1397) for the grammatical sense.
>>
>>I'm not sure what the wedge before the last date means. I'd expect
>>the Latin word to have had the non-grammatical sense first, but I
>>can't prove it.
>
> I think that "a1450 (?a1397)" means that a1450 is the date of the
> document cited but that the material in it is quoted from an earlier
> document dated 1397. The earlier document no longer exists so can't be
> quoted from directly.

I figured it was something along those lines, but I also figured
someone here would know.

> The entry in the online OED is heavily revised from the version in the
> Compact OED which gives the date of that quotation as 1388.

Hmm, it's a controversial word.


--
It would be unfair to detect an element of logic in the siting of the
Pentagon alongside the National Cemetery, but the subject seems at
least worthy of investigation. --- C Northcote Parkinson

[John Varela]

On Tue, 5 Feb 2013 04:56:55 UTC, m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:

> "Lanarcam":
> >>> Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642
>
> Mark Brader:
> >> Wrong. Wilhelm Schickard invented the mechanical calculator in 1623.
> >> Pascal's "first" was that he was the first person to sell calculators
> >> commercially.
>
> John Varela:
> > The Antikythera mechanism was built about 2,000 years ago.
>
> And it was a remarkable achievement. But not a calculator in the sense
> we're talking about here.

It was as much a calculator as those fire control computers
discussed elsethread.

--
John Varela

[J. J. Lodder J. J. Lodder]

Mark Brader <m...@vex.net> wrote:

> "Lanarcam":
> >>> Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642
>
> Mark Brader:
> >> Wrong. Wilhelm Schickard invented the mechanical calculator in 1623.
> >> Pascal's "first" was that he was the first person to sell calculators
> >> commercially.
>
> John Varela:
> > The Antikythera mechanism was built about 2,000 years ago.
>
> And it was a remarkable achievement. But not a calculator in the sense
> we're talking about here.

It was (in modern terms) a mechanical analog computer.

What else would you want to call it?

Jan

[Peter Moylan]

On 05/02/13 23:48, Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2013-02-04, R H Draney wrote:
>
>> Adam Funk filted:
>
>>> I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
>>> they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
>>> term don't.
>>
>> Within those parameters, I agree that this should be the penultimate rule, but
>> it's going to take a steep learning curve....r
>
> Bingo!
>
> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-22/

I've just noticed the structure of that URL. What's the difference
between the Dilbert comic strips and the Dilbert non-comic strips?

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

[Mark Brader]

"Lanarcam":
>>>>> Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642

Mark Brader:
>>>> Wrong. Wilhelm Schickard invented the mechanical calculator in 1623.
>>>> Pascal's "first" was that he was the first person to sell calculators
>>>> commercially.

John Varela:
>>> The Antikythera mechanism was built about 2,000 years ago.

Mark Brader:

>> And it was a remarkable achievement. But not a calculator in the sense
>> we're talking about here.

John Varela:

> It was as much a calculator as those fire control computers
> discussed elsethread.

I agree -- neither were those. An analog computer is not a calculator
as I use the term. I also concede that others might disagree. In any
case these did not perform the function that Pascal and Schickard's
machines did, and that *is* what I mean by a calculator.
--
Mark Brader | "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
Toronto | I said I didn't know."
m...@vex.net | --Mark Twain, "Life on the Mississippi"

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-05, Peter Moylan wrote:

> On 05/02/13 23:48, Adam Funk wrote:
>> On 2013-02-04, R H Draney wrote:
>>
>>> Adam Funk filted:
>>
>>>> I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
>>>> they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
>>>> term don't.
>>>
>>> Within those parameters, I agree that this should be the penultimate rule, but
>>> it's going to take a steep learning curve....r
>>
>> Bingo!
>>
>> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-22/
>
> I've just noticed the structure of that URL. What's the difference
> between the Dilbert comic strips and the Dilbert non-comic strips?

I was expecting a 404 or other HTTP error, but

http://dilbert.com/strips/non-comic/1994-02-22/
or
http://dilbert.com/strips/pants/666

for that matter, comes up with the most recent comic. Now that's
exception-handling.


--
Master Foo said: "A man who mistakes secrets for knowledge is like
a man who, seeking light, hugs a candle so closely that he smothers
it and burns his hand." --- Eric Raymond

[Skitt]

Adam Funk wrote:
> Peter Moylan wrote:

>> Adam Funk wrote:
>>> R H Draney wrote:
>>>> Adam Funk filted:

>>>>> I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
>>>>> they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
>>>>> term don't.
>>>>
>>>> Within those parameters, I agree that this should be the penultimate rule, but
>>>> it's going to take a steep learning curve....r
>>>
>>> Bingo!
>>>
>>> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-22/
>>
>> I've just noticed the structure of that URL. What's the difference
>> between the Dilbert comic strips and the Dilbert non-comic strips?
>
> I was expecting a 404 or other HTTP error, but
>
> http://dilbert.com/strips/non-comic/1994-02-22/
> or
> http://dilbert.com/strips/pants/666
>
> for that matter, comes up with the most recent comic.

As does just plain dilbert.com


> Now that's exception-handling.
>
Not only now. It's been that way for a long time. ;)

--
Skitt (SF Bay Area)
http://home.comcast.net/~skitt99/main.html

[Dr Nick]

R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> writes:

> LFS filted:
>>
>>On 01/02/2013 13:06, Adam Funk wrote:
>>> ISTR we've done this topic before, but I just came across this
> nifty
>>> example:
>>>
>>> A valuable aid in checking calculations is an instrument known as
>>> the _slide rule_, which enables the computer to multiply and divide
>>> numbers by logarithms by a purely mechanical process. It is really
>>> the equivalent of a table of logarithsm.
>>>
>>> (Breed & Hosmer, _The Principles and Practice of Surveying_, volume
> 1,
>>> 1927)
>>>
>>>
>>
>>In much the same way that a typist ised to be called a typewriter, as
>>cited in OED
>>
>>1895 How to get Married 86 The marriage of the type-writer and her
>>employer is so frequent that it has passed into a joke.
>
> Q: "And what happened to the pickle slicer?"
> A: "Oh, she was fired too."

Two minds with but a single thought (although I was thinking "bacon
slicer" as that's the version of the joke I know). Google shows "pickle
slicer" in all the top hits, but as we don't get pickle slicers over
here I suspect it got mutated many years back.

[Dr Nick]

Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> writes:

> On 2013-02-04, Guy Barry wrote:
>
>> "Adam Funk" wrote in message
> news:e0s2u9x...@news.ducksburg.com...
>
>>>Sure, and if we had twelve fingers, we'd have duodecimal orders of
>>>magnitude (along with the rest of such a system), but you get my
>>>point, right? The same boneheads who talk about "making quantum
> leaps
>>>in our marketing plan" misuse "orders of magnitude" as a supposedly
>>>impressive synomym for "a lot".
>>
>> Is that so bad as a metaphorical usage? "It's increased by orders
> of
>> magnitude" or "it's orders of magnitude greater" means that's it's
> gone up
>> by several factors of ten. While that may not always be literally
> true, it
>> strikes me as a reasonable way of conveying that it's increased by a
> great
>> deal.

>
>
> I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
> they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
> term don't.

Some of us are probably over scrupulous. A couple of days ago I found
myself saying "and it's increased by an ord.. several fold since then".

[Peter Brooks]

On Feb 9, 3:01 pm, Dr Nick <nospa...@temporary-address.org.uk> wrote:

I wonder what sort of pickles would need slicing - big gherkins?
Pickled onions?

I'd not be surprised to hear that the Saudis sliced pickled people,
but they'd use a sword for that.

[Dr Nick]

I'd have thought cucumbers into the ready-made slices that you get in
nasty burgers and which adhere so well to ceilings (that being the only
possible use for them). A cucumber slicing machine would work well in
the context of the joke - better than a bacon slicer in fact.

[Peter Brooks]

On Feb 9, 7:21 pm, Dr Nick <nospa...@temporary-address.org.uk> wrote:

For such a feeble joke it has remarkably high coverage on the
internet.

I've looked up the slicers - I see they're mainly the sort of thing
that were sold at agricultural shows by a spiv with a well-rehearsed
patter for the 'ladies'. They were mainly useless objects, but the
sales were made on the grounds that, even if they didn't do anything
particularly well, they did do lots of things. I remember them making
a particular point about how well the sliced tomatoes - but that
probably was only for the first few uses, after which the cheap, soft
steel of which they were, no doubt, made, blunted.

[Dr Nick]

Peter Brooks <peter.h....@gmail.com> writes:

> I've looked up the slicers

I hope no-one was putting anything in the other end at the same time.

> - I see they're mainly the sort of thing
> that were sold at agricultural shows by a spiv with a well-rehearsed
> patter for the 'ladies'. They were mainly useless objects, but the
> sales were made on the grounds that, even if they didn't do anything
> particularly well, they did do lots of things. I remember them making
> a particular point about how well the sliced tomatoes - but that
> probably was only for the first few uses, after which the cheap, soft
> steel of which they were, no doubt, made, blunted.

That sounds like "an automatic vegetable slicer that works when you see
it on television but not when you get it home". In the context of the
joke I'm thinking something much more industrial.

I'm also wondering why on earth I'm taking this so seriously.

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Hence the Amazing Ginsu knife ("In Japan, the hand can be used like a
knife. But this method doesn't work with a tomato.")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abLB7aTmnE4

"The Ginsu is so sharp it can cut through a tin can and still slice a
tomato like this. It can chop wood and still remain razor sharp."

The kind of thing the joke refers to, though, is something like this
commercial unit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8Mvj8cZWAxc#t=13s

Big dill pickle (or whatever else you want) goes in the opening at the
top, pickle spears come out the hole at the bottom.

I'm trying to envision the sort of "bacon slicer" that would make the
joke work.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |I am a Jew because the faith of
SF Bay Area (1982-) |Israel demands of me no abdication
Chicago (1964-1982) |of the mind.
|
evan.kir...@gmail.com | Edmond Fleg

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Peter Young]

On 9 Feb 2013 Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

> I'm trying to envision the sort of "bacon slicer" that would make the
> joke work.

Second attempt to reply; the first attempt was rejected by the news
server, for no obvious reason.

Something like this?

http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/D-302FV_Bacon_Slicer

Ouch!

Peter.


--
Peter Young, (BrE, RP), Consultant Anaesthetist, 1975-2004.
(US equivalent: Certified Anesthesiologist)
Cheltenham and Gloucester, UK. Now happily retired.
http://pnyoung.orpheusweb.co.uk

[R H Draney]

Dr Nick filted:

AUE: encouraging stammering since 1996....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[Adam Funk]

I've never made sliced pickles, but I imagine the procedure is to
slice then pickle. Is that right?


--
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
[Ambrose Bierce]

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-02-09, Dr Nick wrote:

> Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> writes:

[orders of magnitude]

>> I don't think people should use a technical term metaphorically unless
>> they know what it really means, & I suspect many casual users of the
>> term don't.
>
> Some of us are probably over scrupulous. A couple of days ago I found
> myself saying "and it's increased by an ord.. several fold since then".

Thank you. Whenever someone misuses a technical term, a kitten misses
the jump, falls in the toilet, & cries.


--
A lot of people never use their intiative because no-one
told them to. --- Banksy

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Peter Young <pny...@ormail.co.uk> writes:

> On 9 Feb 2013 Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> I'm trying to envision the sort of "bacon slicer" that would make the
>> joke work.
>
> Second attempt to reply; the first attempt was rejected by the news
> server, for no obvious reason.
>
> Something like this?
>
> http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/D-302FV_Bacon_Slicer

That was my image, too. (I'd just call it a "meat slicer".) But it
misses the notion of a guy having a reason to think about sticking his
member in it that you get with the pickle slicer, which at least has
a correctly shaped hole and method of insertion.

> Ouch!

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |I like giving talks to industry,
SF Bay Area (1982-) |because one of the things that I've
Chicago (1964-1982) |found is that you really can't
|learn anything at the Harvard
evan.kir...@gmail.com |Business School.
| Clayton Christensen
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Harvard Business School

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Pretty sure not. Pickle then slice. Unless you're making sunomono,
in which case you slice first, but that's because you're not going to
let it sit for very long.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |It is error alone which needs the
SF Bay Area (1982-) |support of government. Truth can
Chicago (1964-1982) |stand by itself.
| Thomas Jefferson
evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Peter Young]

On 9 Feb 2013 Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter Young <pny...@ormail.co.uk> writes:

>> On 9 Feb 2013 Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I'm trying to envision the sort of "bacon slicer" that would make the
>>> joke work.
>>
>> Second attempt to reply; the first attempt was rejected by the news
>> server, for no obvious reason.
>>
>> Something like this?
>>
>> http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/D-302FV_Bacon_Slicer

> That was my image, too. (I'd just call it a "meat slicer".) But it
> misses the notion of a guy having a reason to think about sticking his
> member in it that you get with the pickle slicer, which at least has
> a correctly shaped hole and method of insertion.

But the joke relies on just that sort of misunderstanding. The machine
doesn't have the wherewithal, but the person does. Maybe it's just
Goon Show type British humour.

[Mike L]

On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 19:50:44 GMT, Peter Young <pny...@ormail.co.uk>
wrote:

>On 9 Feb 2013 Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>> I'm trying to envision the sort of "bacon slicer" that would make the
>> joke work.
>
>Second attempt to reply; the first attempt was rejected by the news
>server, for no obvious reason.
>
>Something like this?
>
>http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/D-302FV_Bacon_Slicer
>
>Ouch!

Remember the hand-cranked ones? There used to be small versions for
the domestic use of people who couldn't slice bread straight.

--
Mike.

[Mike L]

On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:18:02 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> writes:
>
>> On 2013-02-09, Dr Nick wrote:
>>
>>> Peter Brooks <peter.h....@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Feb 9, 3:01 pm, Dr Nick <nospa...@temporary-address.org.uk> wrote:
>>>>> R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> writes:
>>
>>>>> > Q: "And what happened to the pickle slicer?"
>>>>> > A: "Oh, she was fired too."
>>>>>
>>>>> Two minds with but a single thought (although I was thinking "bacon
>>>>> slicer" as that's the version of the joke I know).  Google shows
>>>> "pickle
>>>>> slicer" in all the top hits, but as we don't get pickle slicers over
>>>>> here I suspect it got mutated many years back.
>>>>>
>>>> I wonder what sort of pickles would need slicing - big gherkins?
>>>
>>> I'd have thought cucumbers into the ready-made slices that you get in
>>> nasty burgers and which adhere so well to ceilings (that being the only
>>> possible use for them). A cucumber slicing machine would work well in
>>> the context of the joke - better than a bacon slicer in fact.
>>
>> I've never made sliced pickles, but I imagine the procedure is to
>> slice then pickle. Is that right?
>
>Pretty sure not. Pickle then slice. Unless you're making sunomono,
>in which case you slice first, but that's because you're not going to
>let it sit for very long.

Or beetroot, kim-chi, or sauerkraut. Those delicious fermented
(lactic-acid?) pickled cucumbers are cut first, too.

--
Mike.

[Joy Beeson]

On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:18:02 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Pretty sure not. Pickle then slice. Unless you're making sunomono,
> in which case you slice first, but that's because you're not going to
> let it sit for very long.

Bread-and-butter pickles are sliced first -- but then they aren't so
much pickled as preserved in vinegar syrup, and if they aren't sliced,
the preservative won't penetrate.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

[Peter Brooks]

On Feb 11, 7:46 am, Joy Beeson <jbee...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
> On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:18:02 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
>

> <evan.kirshenb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Pretty sure not.  Pickle then slice.  Unless you're making sunomono,
> > in which case you slice first, but that's because you're not going to
> > let it sit for very long.
>
> Bread-and-butter pickles are sliced first -- but then they aren't so
> much pickled as preserved in vinegar syrup, and if they aren't sliced,
> the preservative won't penetrate.
>

You pickle bread and butter?

..and I thought that pickled sandwiches were those you found out that
you'd eaten on the train last evening. Pickled sandwiches being
similar to pickled racing tickets in that way.

[Cheryl]

No, no, they're those rather nasty sweet pickled slices of miniature
cucumbers. I don't like them much, but they're extremely common in North
America, so someone must like them.

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/bread_and_butter_pickles/


--
Cheryl

[Guy Barry]

"Lewis" wrote in message news:slrnkhi1q8....@mbp55.local...
>
>In message <ans2g0...@mid.individual.net>

> Cheryl <cper...@mun.ca> wrote:

>> No, no, they're those rather nasty sweet pickled slices of miniature
>> cucumbers. I don't like them much, but they're extremely common in North
>> America, so someone must like them.
>

>I wonder if anyone really does like them, or if they just think they do
>because they're on so many hamburgers? I don't like them either, and
>neither does the wife. I like real pickles though.

I'm very fond of pickled gherkins (as they're usually called here), and
quite often buy jars of them. The minuscule slice that usually gets added
to a hamburger is hardly worth bothering with, though.

--
Guy Barry

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Lewis <g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> writes:

> In message <ans2g0...@mid.individual.net>
> Cheryl <cper...@mun.ca> wrote:

> I wonder if anyone really does like them, or if they just think they do
> because they're on so many hamburgers? I don't like them either, and
> neither does the wife.

I put them on turkey sandwiches with lots of white horseradish and
just a bit of mayo. I find that the slightly sweet taste nicely
complements the bite of the horseradish.

> I like real pickles though.

I like all kinds of pickles, including sweet pickles (which are
sweeter than bread-and-butter pickles). Different kinds go better
with different foods.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |It is one thing to be mistaken; it is
SF Bay Area (1982-) |quite another to be willfully
Chicago (1964-1982) |ignorant
| Cecil Adams
evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Cheryl]

On 2013-02-11 11:28 AM, Lewis wrote:
.
>
> I wonder if anyone really does like them, or if they just think they do
> because they're on so many hamburgers? I don't like them either, and

> neither does the wife. I like real pickles though.

I like a lot of pickles, but tend to shy away from sweet pickles. I do
like dill pickles, pickled beet, quite an assortment of homemade
pickles, and piccalilli - there's a type that's imported from the UK and
quite pricey here, but I like it much more than the North American
varieties.

--
Cheryl

[Mike L]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:30:38 +0000 (UTC), Lewis
<g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:

>In message <238Ss.9492$gq....@fx22.fr7>

>I think my issue with the pickle slices on burgers are that they lack
>the essential quality I look for in a pickle, crispness. If a pickle
>doesn't have a crunch to it, then it's little more than sour lettuce.

Chopped pickled gherkins go well in a mixed salad. Isn't it
interesting, though, that for most NAmE users "a pickle" conjures up
the image of a pickled gherkin? I'd say that few if any BrE users
would have seen the "Is that a pickle in your pocket..?" joke when it
first appeared. Pickled things are generally called "pickled
[things]".

Meanwhile, as I've wailed before, uncountable "pickle" to most Brits
means that boring brown vinegary vegetable jam named after Richard
Branson or somebody. That's in spite of the existence of other sploshy
pickles.

In BrE "a pickle" can mean "trouble", of the "another fine mess" kind;
or a messy or naughty child.

--
Mike.

[Robin Bignall]

Or that yellow, mustardy stuff -- Piccalilly. Or a relish.

>In BrE "a pickle" can mean "trouble", of the "another fine mess" kind;
>or a messy or naughty child.
--

Robin Bignall
Herts, England (BrE)