WEBVTT - The History of Programming Languages Part One 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:07.560 Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from stuff 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:14.320 works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:18.759 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, a senior writer with health 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.360 stuff works dot com. I hope you guys are doing 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:25.600 well today. I'm going to start tackling a subject I 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:30.880 have alluded to in previous episodes, the history of programming languages. 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:34.320 There's a lot of it, so this will be a 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.440 two parter at the very least, and part one we're 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:41.200 going to be laying the groundwork for programming languages. Long 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:43.680 time listeners know this is kind of my m O. 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:47.800 I like to really make sure that we have a 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.840 foundation before I go into a topic because I feel 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:56.360 like context is really important. And despite our love of 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.720 stories that have a beginning, middle, and end, typically history 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.040 is not so neat and tidy. We tend to have 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.319 lots of stuff bleed into other things and so it 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.760 gets a little complicated. So before we talk about the 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:13.360 history of programming languages itself, let's talk about why we 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:17.120 need programming languages in the first place. Well, when you 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:21.679 get down to it, computers process machine language, or a 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.240 type of machine language. Machine language in itself is a 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:30.640 descriptor it is the language that machines quote unquote understand 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:36.959 and what they are using in order to execute various operations. Uh, 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:42.039 the machine language of today is the binary code zeros 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.720 and ones. All those instructions that a computer carries out 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:50.960 essentially boiled down to chains of zeros and ones. So 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:55.440 in order to really understand programming languages, at least most 0:01:55.480 --> 0:02:00.000 of modern programming languages, we need to understand about binary 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:04.400 and as it turns out, the concept of using binary 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:09.600 arithmetic dates back quite a ways, well before the dawn 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:14.119 of the computer. The earliest scholarly work I could find 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:20.640 regarding binary arithmetic dates to seventeen o three, eighteenth century. 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:25.240 It was written by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The Leibniz was 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.720 a German mathematician and philosopher and one of the two 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:34.040 people to invent differential and integral calculus. Anyone know who 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:39.520 the other person was? Bueller, Bueller, I'm sure a lot 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:41.520 of you are shouting it out right now. It's actually 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:48.240 sir Isaac Newton. Newton and Leibniz were two co inventors 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.000 of calculus. They did it independently of one another. In 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.560 other words, neither of them were aware of the other 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.200 person's work, which is kind of cool when you think 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:02.360 about it. It's this this uh, an interesting moment in 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:06.400 history where you have two different brilliant people coming up 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.200 with the same idea simultaneously. And this is not the 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:11.360 only time this has happened. There have been quite a 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:15.160 few times in human history where people in different parts 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:17.120 of the world have come to the same sort of 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:21.280 amazing realization at around the same time without ever being 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:25.480 aware of the other person. As it turns out, they 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:31.200 both tried to lay claim to being the father of calculus. Uh. Really, 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:34.639 their followers were more rabid about it than they were. 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:39.320 And there's in fact, an entire fascinating story about the 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:43.560 battle for who should be given credit for inventing calculus. 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:46.400 But that's a story for another podcast. It's really not 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:48.120 a tech stuff story. You might be a stuff you 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.440 missed in history class story if you really want to 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.920 make some history folks go crazy about talking about, you know, 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:59.280 lots of maths. But let's go back to binary arithmetic. 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.360 The Leibnitz wrote about binary arithmetic in his memoir De 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:08.520 la Caademir Royal de san sees ha ha ha, And 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:12.720 I know my French is terrible. You shouldn't pop off 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:18.640 from Sabien and Maroisment. His work, though, was the first 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:24.279 to explain that arithmetic typically relies upon base ten. Makes sense. 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.919 You know your your typical person has five fingers on 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:31.320 each hand, five toes on each foot. Base ten makes sense. 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.599 You count one to ten with your fingers. So he 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:37.000 would say that base ten really ranges from the number 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.800 zero up to the number nine, and then you repeat 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:44.320 that sequence again, only you put a one in the 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:48.919 second column, you know, the really the tens column, and 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:50.840 then you start back at zero and work your way 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:52.200 back up to nine, and then you would put it 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:54.240 to there, and so on and so forth. So you 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.600 worked up to the one hundreds column and the one 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:02.400 thousand's column. But he says he found that the simplest 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.000 progression of all to be more useful in the science 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:10.000 of numbers. That simplest of progressions is between just two 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:14.960 numbers zero and one before it repeats itself. So the 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:18.800 number zero is zero, the number one is one. If 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:22.159 you wanted to represent the number two, you would write 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:26.880 one zero. So again it's kind of like going zero 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:28.720 to nine, and then you would go to ten. In 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:30.280 this case, you go to zero the one, then you 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.200 would go to what is effectively ten that represents the 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:37.000 number two. Three would be one, one or eleven if 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:39.960 we were using the decimal system, and a four is 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:44.000 one zero, zero or one, and so on and so forth. 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:46.480 Now by the time you get the thirty, you're looking 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:51.839 at one one, one, one zero, and a thirty two 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:56.040 is one followed by five zero, so it would be 0:05:56.080 --> 0:06:00.000 one hundred thousand in the base ten system. Leibnitz said 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.880 that this scheme allowed for geometric progression. So if you 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.080 were to take the binary digits for four, which is 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:10.239 one zero, zero, and then you took the binary digits 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.640 for two, which is one zero, and then as in 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:16.600 the number one followed by the number zero, and then 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:19.760 you took the binary digit that represents the number one, 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:22.719 which in this case is one, and you were to 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:24.920 add all of those together, you'd end up with one 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:29.760 on one that is the binary digit for seven, which 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:32.440 is also what you get when you add four and 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.800 two and one together in base ten. Leimnez says this 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:40.479 approach allows for lots of practical applications, such as weighing 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:43.080 a lot of different masses with just a few different 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:47.000 types of weights or in coinage to allow for many 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:50.000 different values with just a few coins, So he was 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:53.960 thinking of practical applications for binary arithmetic. He also said 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:57.400 that expressing numbers this way allowed for easy mathematical operations 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:02.000 such as subtraction, multiplication, and division. Leibnitz also said that 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.440 using binary just made sense. You didn't have to memorize 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.760 facts by rote as. Everything was evident through what he 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:12.720 called ordinary reckoning. So in other words, you wouldn't have 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:17.760 to memorize things like seven plus eight is fifteen, right, 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:20.960 You wouldn't have to memorize these sort of ideas, or 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.480 that four times six, you know, what is that? What 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.720 is four times six? I'm asking you know it's twenty four. 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.360 So you wouldn't have to memorize these and and have 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:35.000 it all by rote But that with the binary approach, 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.680 because you're only working with ones and zeros, there's none 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:42.360 of that memorization. It's all very intuitive. Now. Granted you 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.160 then have to work out what those ones and zeros 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:47.600 are representing in the base ten system. That's a little 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:53.360 more complicated, but it works. Leibnitz Is work predates computers 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:57.120 by centuries, and there's some evidence to suggest that binary 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.320 counting systems were actually being used by other culture ors 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:04.520 well before Leibniz came along. They weren't written in scholarly journals, 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:08.360 but they existed. Some researchers from the University of Norway 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:13.000 noted that on the island of Manga Manga Riva, and 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:15.760 I could be completely butchering the pronunciation of that, so 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:19.640 I apologize. It's a island over in the South Pacific 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.960 Islanders had been using a binary system to count between 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.600 the numbers twenty through eighty. So they used base ten 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.040 for all numbers leading up to twenty, and then between 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.439 twenty and eighty they used binary digits. And they were 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.160 doing this before the fifteenth century, so before the fourteen hundreds, 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.240 the islanders didn't have a written language, which meant that 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:43.480 whenever they had to do math, which they started having 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.720 to do they began to trade with other islanders and 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.520 other cultures well before the fourteen hundreds. It meant that 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:52.320 they needed to be able to do math in their 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:56.920 heads easily, and binary allowed for that as opposed to 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:02.240 something that's in the decimal ten system. But who considered 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:06.400 using binary as the basis for machine language? Where did 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:10.439 that come from, well, that would be much much later, 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.360 And in fact, there's some other elements of programming that 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.760 pre date the decision to go with binary as the 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:21.679 basic language for computers. So let's look at some of 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.440 those developments because that's kind of again what led to 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:30.079 the rise in programming itself. So to find the thread 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.240 of this story, we have to go back to eighteen 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:36.520 o one, so a century after Leibniz was writing about 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:42.240 binary arithmetic, and that's when Joseph Mrie Jacquard introduced the 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:47.080 programmable loom. We've talked about this in previous episodes of 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:51.520 Tech Stuff. The programmable loom was a real innovation back 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:56.280 in the nineteenth century. The programs consisted of wooden punch cards, 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:58.960 So you had these large pieces of wood with holes 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:02.719 punched in through in a certain pattern, and what you 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.160 would do is pass threads through the holes in the 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:10.840 cards when you were threading up your loom, and those 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:14.080 holes would essentially dictate what the pattern was going to 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.680 be when you finished. So if you wanted a specific pattern, 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.280 you just put the appropriate punch card, load that up 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:24.720 for your loom, pass the thread through, and then weave 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.080 on the loom. So that you would get the pattern 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.080 you wanted. You needed to change it up. You just 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:34.560 switched out the cards that you were using. Uh, so 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:38.800 different patterns would use different configurations of holes. You know, obviously, 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:40.920 if the hole is there, then a thread can pass through. 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:43.560 If there's no hole in that position, then a thread 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:47.480 cannot pass through. It's pretty pretty intuitive now if you 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:52.079 think about this in an abstract way. The punch cards 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.920 are like a series of two positions switches. The holes 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:59.000 are the on switch because they allow a thread to 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.280 pass through, and the areas where a hole could be 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.920 but there isn't a hole is an off switch because 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:09.160 you cannot pass a thread through a solid piece of wood. 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:15.319 So Jacquard's loom sped things up and really got things 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.280 moving in the weaving business. It also ended up putting 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:20.040 a lot of weavers out of work in the process, 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.640 and they got very upset. But it would take a 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:26.079 couple of decades before someone made the mental leap that 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:30.280 a punch card could be something that you could use 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:35.920 with abstract ideas, not just physical material like thread. That 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:40.520 someone was Charles Babbage who first proposed a mechanical device 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:43.640 called the difference engine. That was a device that was 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:46.120 meant to compute tables of numbers, and it was a 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:50.080 really complicated device with lots of gears and shafts that 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:53.079 could rotate in different directions, and it would have used 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:55.600 a lot of moving parts. But Babbage was never able 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.480 to actually finish it. It took longer than what he 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:05.840 had predicted, and ultimately the funding dried up as various 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:09.240 patrons got fed up with waiting around for Babbage to 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.920 finish the thing, and they ended up stopped. They stopped 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.920 paying him. But he began to work on a new 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:20.600 device that he called the analytic engine. And here's where 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.800 Jacquard's work came in. Babbage realized that those punch cards 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:29.680 that were physically either allowing or preventing thread to pass 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:33.080 through could act not just as gateways for physical material 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.640 like thread, but also for abstract notions like a problem 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:40.160 statement or information needed to work out a problem solution. 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:44.000 So by changing up what could and couldn't pass through, 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:50.240 you could run a problem through a mechanical calculator. Essentially. 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:54.520 Now with Babbage's design, we're not talking about electricity. Is 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:58.680 still gears, mechanical parts that have to connect with one another, 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.040 and all of it is based on physical motion. So 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.040 if you've ever worked with a loud computer that had 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:06.480 a bad fan or something, you have a hint of 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:09.000 what it must have sounded like to work on this thing. 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:13.559 Only the analytic engine involved more clanking, or at least 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:15.839 I hope it involved more clanking than your computer did. 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.960 If your computer is clanking, you probably should take that 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.080 in to get a bit of an adjustment, or if 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:24.720 you're really handy, take a look in there, your fan 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:28.120 is probably out of alignment. While Babbage was working on 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:32.680 that first analytic engine, he was also helped by the 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:39.120 world's first computer programmer. Her name was Aida Lovelace, the 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.800 Enchantress of Numbers, and I've done a full episode about 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.760 Lovelace before. I Think the Stuff you Missed in History 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:50.360 Class podcast has done an episode on Lovelace before. She 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:58.480 was remarkable, an incredible person, uh, someone who I think 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.640 needs more reck ignition for her contributions to computer science. 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:05.679 She envisioned a world in which not only could one 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:10.680 create a punch card program for a calculator to run 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:13.520 through and give you the solution to a problem, she 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:16.880 was able to make another mental leap on the same 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:21.360 level that Charles Babbage had made. Babbage's leap was, hey, 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:25.400 this card that could allow or prevent thread to pass 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.640 through could also be used in a more abstract way. 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:34.240 Lovelace's leap was this device that is intended to solve 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:39.400 mathematical equations and answer those sorts of problems, could also 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.600 be used to do all sorts of other things, things 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:45.560 that computers today can do. But no one at the 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:50.240 time was even imagining. She was such a forward thinker 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.320 that she was able to envision a world where you 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:59.160 could encode all sorts of information and use a device 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:03.240 like the Analytic Engine to process it information like music 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:09.440 or images. So the remarkable thing is, years before, decades 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:13.600 before anything like that would be possible, Lovelace was imagining 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.920 that actually coming to pass. And I really wonder what 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.960 she would think of the world today from a technological standpoint. 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:23.800 If she was able to look around and see the 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:27.400 sort of things that computers could do, she might feel 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:32.400 very much vindicated by this vision she had back in 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:37.480 the nineteenth century, where electronics were not a thing yet. 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:41.160 No one had really harnessed electricity in a meaningful way 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.080 at the time that they were working on the analytic engine. 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:51.600 So it's a really phenomenal thinker. I cannot imagine being 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:55.360 in a world where I'm able to project ahead that 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.640 far and think of something so abstract and to be 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:03.480 so right on the money. Really well. The next step 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:07.040 along the path to programming happened in eighteen nineties, so 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.800 we're getting to the end of the nineteenth century, and 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:13.680 that was a census year in the United States. So 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:17.480 in the US we hold a census every decade, and 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:20.920 the purpose of the census is to determine the representation 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.880 of states in the House of Representatives, that is a 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.000 group in Congress in the legislative branch that is dependent 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.520 upon state populations. So we have the Senate. Every state 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.680 gets to senators, but then we have the House of Representatives, 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.280 and the number that we have is dependent upon the 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.800 population of the various states, which means we occasionally have 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.480 to check and see what the populations are. If they 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:46.600 changed dramatically, then the number of representatives will again change 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:49.160 to reflect that. But the U s had hit a 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:52.440 problem by the end of the nineteenth century. There were 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:55.480 just too many dang people to count. It was just 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:58.320 taking really long to count them all by hand. So 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:02.880 in seventeen nine century earlier. They was also the very 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:06.359 first year that we held a census. It took nine 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:10.520 months to count up all the different responses for the 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:16.679 United States Census. By eight the census, the previous census, 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.000 the one that just happened before. They were trying to 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:22.040 figure out a new method. It took them seven and 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:26.159 a half years to tally all the results. Seven and 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:28.399 a half years to count up the results of the 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.119 previous census. That meant that you were two and a 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:33.959 half years away from having to do it all over again. 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:38.200 And so the Census Bureau held a contest, and they 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.720 called for inventors to come up with some way of 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:45.840 tallying the census responses much more quickly so that they're 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:50.640 not wasting so much time and money just counting how 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:56.720 many people are in each state. Enter Herman Hollerith, who 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.920 invented a solution in response to the US Census Bureau 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:04.840 and offered he won the prize that the bureau was offering. Holly. 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:08.320 Rith created what he called a card reader. So again 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:10.520 we get to punch cards, very similar to what was 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:14.640 being used by Babbage and then previously by Jacquard. This 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:18.760 red cards by sensing holes that were punched into the cards, 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:21.800 and it also had a gear mechanism to help keep 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:26.240 count of all the different things that needed to count 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.320 all the demographic information, and had a panel of dials 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.160 that would track the various counts so that you could 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:34.600 just look at the different dials and you would get 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:39.720 a summary of all the different responses. Each card had 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:42.359 positions on it that would indicate different data about the 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:47.080 citizen it represented, and his invention meant the eighteen nineties 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:50.240 census could be tabulated in three years, so less than 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.320 half the time of the previous census, the one that 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.440 had happened in eighteen eighty. It's still a good long 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:58.880 while to have to count that up, but much much 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:01.560 faster and more efficient it than the previous census was. 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:05.760 Hall Earth would go on to found a company called 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:09.480 the Tabulating Machine Company. That company, by the way, is 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:13.080 still around today, but its name has changed because the 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:18.720 Tabulating Machine Company would evolve into International Business Machines, which 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:25.000 today we know as IBM. So IBM had in its history, 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:30.720 the original purpose of it was to uh tabulate punch cards, 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:33.360 and those punch cards were originally used for the eight 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:36.960 nineties census in the United States. Kind of cool little 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:39.640 bit of trivia. So if you're ever at pub trivia 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.360 and they're asking where IBM came from, now you know. 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:45.080 And you also know that the person who's running the 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:48.600 trivia is a total geek who may also listen to 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:51.879 the show, So hey, shout out to you, Mr or 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:56.400 Mrs Trivia Master. Those punch cards would become an important 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:00.280 part of programming later on now. Arguably the first person 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:03.720 to build a general purpose computer was a man named 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:08.680 Conrad Zeussa who designed and built the Z one computer 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:13.439 in the late nineteen thirties. His device combined electronic and 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:17.359 mechanical parts, so it wasn't a purely electronic computer. It 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:19.879 still had some moving parts to it, and he had 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.439 decided to go with binary processing as the basis for 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:25.880 his computer. It makes it simple because you only need 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.000 to switch with two positions on or off for each 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:33.119 of your little processors and or gates if you prefer, 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:37.280 and he thought that made more sense than decimal processing. 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:42.720 And he used discarded film as his medium to send 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.800 commands to the computer. He wasn't using card stock, he 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.959 wasn't using paper tape, he didn't have access to it, 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.880 but he did use discarded film from various film houses 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:56.440 in Germany, and he would just punch holes in that 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:01.399 to be the instructions for his machine. His Z three machine, 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:03.600 which he built in nineteen forty one, might have been 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:07.560 the first general purpose programmable digital computer, but it was 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.679 destroyed during a bombing raid in World War Two. Only 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:14.520 his Z four device was able to make it through 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:19.359 the war, and for years Zeus's work remained in obscurity. 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:22.560 No one knew that he had made these things, and 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:25.640 he had done it again independently of anyone else. So 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:28.720 you would see the rise of computer science in other 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:33.720 countries disconnected from his work, and in turn, his work 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:37.800 was disconnected from their's. Again, another example of these two 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:43.000 different places with the same ideas coming into shape. He 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:46.120 arrived at his designs independently of all the other pioneers 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.040 and computer science. We'll talk a little bit about his 0:21:49.119 --> 0:21:53.199 programming language in our next episode, because while he was 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:58.400 creating a programming language earlier than almost anyone else, it 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:03.919 didn't become known to most computer scientists until the nineteen seventies. Well, 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:05.600 I've got a lot more to talk about in the 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:08.879 history of programming languages, but before I jump into the 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:12.560 next section. Let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:26.680 All Right, during World War Two we get the term computers. 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:31.679 But here's the interesting thing. Computers were not machines. For 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:34.400 the most part. In World War two computers the word 0:22:34.440 --> 0:22:39.159 computers referred to people. It applied to human beings, and 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:44.320 their job was to compute various equations, specifically relating to 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:49.359 artillery and gunnery when it first started. By World War two, 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:53.359 our war machines had reached incredible amounts of power and 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:56.040 you could fire upon positions that were well out of you. 0:22:56.640 --> 0:22:59.040 But it meant that you needed to understand exactly what 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:01.600 a shell was owing to do when you fired it. 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:04.960 In other words, based on the power of the gun, 0:23:05.440 --> 0:23:10.760 the weight of the shell, wind, other factors. If you 0:23:10.840 --> 0:23:14.560 fire at a certain elevation, if a certain angle from 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:17.720 the ground, where is that show going to go? It's 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:21.000 really important if you want to hit, say, an enemy 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:29.680 encampment versus just countryside or a town. Well, it meant 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:32.600 that they needed people who were really good at maths. 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:36.680 So the army started to hire math majors. But that 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:40.960 meant that they were looking primarily at women, because the 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:44.520 men were already drafted into the armed forces, and they 0:23:44.560 --> 0:23:51.160 were serving as soldiers and other frontline personnel. So women 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:56.360 were predominantly the computers of World War two. These were 0:23:56.359 --> 0:24:00.760 women who were studying mathematics, and we're breaking round in 0:24:00.800 --> 0:24:04.080 the areas of math. So they would work out all 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:06.760 of these different equations to figure out how things like 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:10.400 muscle velocity or wind effects or atmospheric drag and other 0:24:10.480 --> 0:24:14.840 factors affected shells, and they created what we're called firing 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:18.440 tables for various types of weaponry. But there was more 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:22.000 work than they had manpower or maybe I should say 0:24:22.000 --> 0:24:25.879 woman power to do. So they needed some way to 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:31.080 do this work more quickly and efficiently, especially where you're 0:24:31.200 --> 0:24:35.800 just taking small changes in a variable in order to 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:38.959 create another table, because otherwise you just have to run 0:24:39.000 --> 0:24:41.639 all those different equations again. If you could do something 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:44.520 where you could just make a small change and run 0:24:44.560 --> 0:24:48.160 that same problem and get the answer quickly, it would 0:24:48.840 --> 0:24:51.400 save a lot of time. So there was a need 0:24:51.440 --> 0:24:54.920 for computational engines that could do this work faster. Now 0:24:54.960 --> 0:24:59.359 over at Harvard, engineers built a machine called the Mark one. 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:03.359 This was the first programmable digital computer made in the 0:25:03.440 --> 0:25:07.920 United States, but one it was not a purely electronic machine. 0:25:08.359 --> 0:25:11.600 It had some mechanical parts to it, including a large 0:25:11.640 --> 0:25:14.359 central shaft that had to be turned by a an 0:25:14.400 --> 0:25:19.280 actual motor and about uh, you know, five horsepower, and 0:25:19.359 --> 0:25:22.800 it also had clutches and relays. It weighed five tons 0:25:22.960 --> 0:25:26.480 and had five hundred miles of wiring inside of it. 0:25:26.800 --> 0:25:29.360 The computer itself was eight feet tall and fifty one 0:25:29.400 --> 0:25:32.119 ft long, and it read instructions on a reel of 0:25:32.160 --> 0:25:35.359 paper tape with holes punched into it. So this was 0:25:35.400 --> 0:25:39.960