history of computation - university of florida · abacus 2400 bc : babylonian 200 bc: ... 500bc:...
TRANSCRIPT
Pascal's Calculator: Pascaline
1642: French polymath Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator
Difference Engine
1786: J. H. Müller, an engineer in the Hessian army, first conceived of the idea of a difference engine.
1822: Charles Babbage designed his first mechanical computer, the first prototype of the decimal difference engine for tabulating polynomials.
1832: Babbage and Joseph Clement produced a prototype segment of his difference engine.
Analytical Engine
1834: Babbage conceived, and began to design, his decimal 'Analytical Engine'. A program for it was to be stored on read-only memory, in the form of punched cards.
Early Electro-mechanical and Electronic Computers
1941: The first program-controlled computer was invented by Konrad Zuse, who built the Z3, an electromechanical computing machine
1943: The first programmable electronic computer was the Colossus, built by Tommy Flowers.
Theoretical Models Deterministic finite automaton
− a finite set of states (Q)
− a finite set of input symbols called the alphabet (Σ)
− a transition function (δ : Q × Σ → Q)
− a start state (q0 Q)∈
− a set of accept states (F Q)⊆
Abilities
Turing Completeness: It can be used to simulate any single-taped Turing machine and thus in principle any computer.
Simulating a Universal Turing Machine
Lambda Calculus: Recursion