Answers to Questions about the Evolution of Computer Control

The following answers are brief and intended as guidelines only. Student answers may vary with the sources they use.

1.   Who invented binary arithmetic and when? What makes binary arithmetic more useful for processing electronic data than our base-10 system?

ANS: Gottfried Liebniz in 1701. The numbers consist of combinations of 1 or 0, which mean electricity on and electricity off.

2.   In early manufacturing, what was the term for the worker who directed the different threads used to create a design in fabric? What controlling device did Joseph Marie Jacquard use that changed the system and helped lay the foundation for the first computers? How did human weavers react to his new loom?

ANS: The threads were guided by a draw-boy, a child hired to do the work. Jacquard used punch cards to direct the threads that created designs. Weavers, afraid of losing their jobs, rioted and destroyed many machines; they threatened to kill Jacquard.

3.   Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine is sometimes called the first computer. What task was it designed to perform?

ANS: It was a calculating machine designed to complete and print very accurate mathematical tables.

4.   How did Herman Hollerith and the 12th U.S. census in 1890 influence the development of computers? Why was it important that the census be accurate? What large company can trace its beginnings back to Herman Hollerith?

ANS: The population had grown so much that a counting machine was necessary to do the job. Herman Hollerith invented one that did the job in less than half the time it had taken to count the previous census manually. The census had to be accurate in order to apportion congressional representatives correctly. Hollerith’s company became part of IBM.

5.   What was the job of Colossus, the first punch-card computer to process data using an electronic digital (number) code?

ANS: It was built by the British to break German code during World War II.

6.   What was the name of the first all-electrical computer that used wires and switches to transfer data? 

ANS: ENIAC

7.   Whose idea was it to store computer data in binary code? What was the name of the first computer to use binary code? When was it built?

ANS: John von Neumann; EDVAC; 1950