Our Past

Here’s how computers arose.… Ancient history The first programmable computers were invented in the 1940’s. Before then, people were stuck with the abacus, adding machine, and slide rule. During the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s, most computers used punched cards — whose history is weird. The cards were first used for weaving tapestries. Where the cards had holes, rods could move through the cards; those moving rods in turn made other rods move, which caused the threads to weave pictures. That machine was called the Jacquard loom. Charles Babbage Charles Babbage was a wild-eyed English mathematician who, in the 1800’s, believed he could build a fancy computing machine. He convinced the British government to give him lots of money, then bilked the government for more. Many years later — and many British pounds later — he still hadn’t finished his machine. So he dropped the idea and — can you believe this? — tried to build an even fancier machine. He didn’t finish that one either. You might say his life was a failure that was expensive for the British government.