COMPUTER
Ivy N. Yabut
I-St. Lucy
Ms. Garcia
ABACUS
The abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool used primarily
in parts of Asia for performing arithmetic processes. Today, abacuses are often
constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they
were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or
metal. The abacus was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern
numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in Asia,
Africa, and elsewhere. The user of an abacus is called an abacist.
NAPIER’S BONE
Napier’s Bone John Napier
NAPIER’S BONE
Napier's bones is an abacus created by John Napier for
calculation of products and quotients of numbers that was based
on Arab mathematics and lattice multiplication used by Matrakci
Nasuh in the Umdet-ul Hisab and Fibonacci writing in the Liber
Abaci. Also called Rabdology (from Greek ῥάβδoς [r(h)abdos],
"rod" and -λογία [logia], "study"). Napier published his version of
rods in a work printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the end of 1617
entitled Rabdologiæ. Using the multiplication tables embedded in
the rods, multiplication can be reduced to addition operations and
division to subtractions. More advanced use of the rods can even
extract square roots. Note that Napier's bones are not the same
as logarithms, with which Napier's name is also associated.
The abacus consists of a board with a rim; the user places Napier's rods in the rim
to conduct multiplication or division. The board's left edge is divided into 9
squares, holding the numbers 1 to 9. The Napier's rods consist of strips of wood,
metal or heavy cardboard. Napier's bones are three dimensional, square in cross
section, with four different rods engraved on each one. A set of such bones might
be enclosed in a convenient carrying case.
A rod's surface comprises 9 squares, and each square, except for the top
one, comprises two halves divided by a diagonal line. The first square of each rod
holds a single-digit, and the other squares hold this number's double, triple,
quadruple and so on until the last square contains nine times the number in the top
square. The digits of each product are written one to each side of the diagonal;
numbers less than 10 occupy the lower triangle, with a zero in the top half.
A set consists of 10 rods corresponding to digits 0 to 9. The rod 0, although it may
look unnecessary, is obviously still needed for multipliers or multiplicands having
0 in them.
CALCULATING CLOCK
Calculating Clock Wilhelm Schickard
The earliest known calculator, built in 1623 by the German astronomer and
mathematician Wilhelm Schickard. He described it in a letter to his friend the
astronomer Johannes Kepler, and in 1624 he wrote again to explain that a machine
that he had commissioned to be built for Kepler was, apparently along with the
prototype, destroyed in a fire. He called it a Calculating Clock, which modern
engineers have been able to reproduce from details in his letters.
ANALYTICAL ENGINE
Analytical Engine Charles Babbage
ANALYTICAL ENGINE
The analytical engine, an important step in the history of computers, was the
design of a mechanical general-purpose computer by English mathematician
Charles Babbage. In its logical design the machine was essentially modern,
anticipating the first completed general-purpose computers by about 100 years. It
was first described in 1837. Babbage continued to refine the design until his death
in 1871. Because of the complexity of the machine, the lack of project
management science, the expense of its construction, and the difficulty of assessing
its value by Parliament relative to other projects being lobbied for, the engine was
never built.
Some have said that the technological limitations of the time were a further
obstacle to the construction of the machine, but this has been refuted by the
"partial" construction of one of Babbage's machines by his son Henry, and now by
the construction of one of his simpler designs by the British Science Museum.
Indications are today that the machine could have been built successfully with the
technology of the era if funding and political support had been stronger.
