People and the machines
Daniel Gabana Arellano
Critical study
Abstract
The fast revolution of computing in the last few
years is very well known by almost everybody. Computers has changed our world
entirely and helped us in most of our tasks, solving problems and making our
life much easier. However, not everybody knows about the first computers made
and the people behind them. In this paper we briefly analyse the evolution of
computing, giving names and recognition to the people who developed and worked
on them for so many years. Moreover, we want to address the imminent lost when
this generation die, as nobody will inherit that knowledge. We try to persuade
the new generations to learn the history and evolution of computing. This way
we can contextualise the “information society” we living now, which could not
be understood without the influence of early computers.
Introduction
The field of technology is the most rapidly expanding
of the human kind. In almost 70 years, the evolution of computers has been hectic,
from computers that occupied a whole room to mobile phones as fast as a modern
computer that fit in the palm of your hand. However, this revolution has
changed not only the size and capabilities of these machines but the society
and communications as well.
When in 1991 the Internet was introduced, a new way
of information emerged and people communicated with each other using new
channels such as e-mails. New technologies brought many advances to our
everyday life, and nowadays this trend continue expanding and seems like it
will never end, making our life much easier and longer with new medical improvements.
The modern society where we live today is known as “information society” [3].
This society is deeply influenced by the use of computers and specially
Internet, which allow us to have access to any information at anytime. The
World Wide Web and the Internet of Things is changing the world even more,
connecting everything together.
First steps of computing
We can say computing was invented long time ago with
abacus, a calculating tool used by merchants in Asia, Africa or Europe to count
their money and keep track of the trades made [1]. There were multiple systems
after the abacus, all of them aiming to perform calculations faster, such as
the Difference Engine invented in 1822 by Charles Babbage [2]. Nevertheless,
these machines are different to what we consider today as a computer.
In 1936, the german Konrad Suze created the first
programmable machine called Z1. That same year, the english mathematician and
computer scientist Alan Turing proposed the first machine that established the
fundamentals of what we consider nowadays a modern computer. His machine
printed symbols in a paper tape, emulating a person following logical
instructions. The figure of Alan Turing is one of the most important in the
history of computing, but was not recognised as such until a few years ago.
However, it was during the World War II when
computers started taking a huge relevance. The importance of knowing the
enemy’s attacks before they occurred made the British government impulse the
development of computers. In 1943, a group of mathematicians and scientists
invented The Colossus [1], a room size programmable machine created to help the
British code breakers read the encrypted German messages, which contained
important information about their forthcoming attacks. This computer was
absolutely crucial for the British army and was destroyed after the war ends.
Luckily this machine is currently working in The National Museum Of Computing
(TNMOC) in Bletchley Park, England.
A few years later another important computer was
developed. It was the Harwell Computer, later known as WITCH (Wolverhampton
Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell) [1]. As it name says, it was
created to teach computing to university students. It was one of the first
relay-based computers made and probably the first using dekatrons as a memory
(similar to what we consider today as RAM). This computer is considered the
oldest original computer currently working and it is stored at TNMOC with the
objective of teaching children about history of computers.
There are thousands of important machines and
companies who pushed forwards the limits of computers. Most of them were
developed for a specific use such as controlling the temperature of a nuclear
plant or making music from a program loaded using a paper tape. Nonetheless,
the functionalities of computers have soon expanded, enabling users to perform
different tasks simultaneously and requiring fewer resources. At the same time,
the size of the components and the machines was reduced quickly as well as
their prices, making it progressively accessible to more and more people.
Behind the machines
The lack of awareness about the operation of these
computers made invisible the people who worked on them for several years. Their
work was essential to keep the machine operating. Most of the early machines
aforementioned such as Colossus or the WITCH, needed a constant maintenance and
a group of engineers exclusively dedicated to keep the machine working
twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. These works required specific
knowledge and long training just to run a particular computer.
The knowledge these workers had might be lost once
they die as there is none who wants to learn about these obsolete machines,
which are not useful anymore. It would be a sad to loose this knowledge. It
would mean that in fifty years time, nobody will know how to make this ancient
computers work and therefore they will end up in a storage or destroyed. Some
institutions like The National Museum Of Computing are trying to preserve and
transfer this knowledge to younger engineers, but obviously they are not
interested in learning something useless.
Women in computers
The world of computers has always been considered
dominated by the male gender. From Ada Lovelace to the female computer
operators taking care of the early machines, many women had been involved in
computing since the beginning. Ada Lovelace was a mathematician who helped
Charles Babbage with his analytical engine developing an algorithm processed by
the machine and is credited as the first woman computer programmer [2]. Even
though the number of women in this field has been relatively low, the
statistics shows the percentage of women entering in computer science has
declined precipitously in the last few years [4].
However, the socioeconomic factors in the different
countries are a crucial factor to decide whether they join the computing world.
The effect of culture in each country is very important as it determine the
decisions made in the family [5]. One of this culture factors is the general
belief that women should “marry well, upholding family honour” [5], which leaves
women out from university education. On the other hand, in countries like
United States, the number of women in computer science is higher as a result of
the number of female teachers [5]. However, most of the male students
The next generation
The new generation of computer engineers just care
about the software they produce. They do not even know how modern computer
works or how to repair them, probably because of the complexity of the circuit
boards. However, this is a natural evolution of the human being, as these old
machines are useless and replaced by better and smaller computers. The fast
changes in this field are making basic knowledge and skills obsolete, as they
are being automated by new technologies [6]. This evolution has two sides, one
bad and one good: it let the students research on the actual problems without
loosing time on the basics, but it makes them lazy as they work with a black
box, ignoring how the computer operates or how to fix them.
Nevertheless, we can educate the next generations to
have certain interest or curiosity about the history of computing and how those
machines used to operate. This way, maybe we can enhance the future technology
they will develop. But the truth is that the fast technology’s evolution is
constantly changing the field [6], forcing a reconfiguration of the education
in order to be up to date to the latest requirements. It is easier and more
useful to educate on how to create new software than hardware.
In the same way we preserve old paintings, we have to
preserve the first computers created. If we leave this knowledge die, nobody in
the future will know how these machines used to work, as they were quite
complicated to operate (for instance the Colossus). The challenge of passing
this knowledge to the young generation is hard to accomplish.
Bibliography
[1] Freed, L., and Ishida, S. (1995). History of Computers.
Ziff-Davis Publishing Co..
[3] Mahoney, M. S. (1988). The history of
computing in the history of technology.Annals
of the History of Computing, 10, 113-125.
[4] Blum, L. (2001). Women
in computer science: the Carnegie Mellon experience. women@ scs2, 2, 27.
[5] Galpin, V. (2002). Women in computing around
the world. ACM
SIGCSE Bulletin, 34,
94-100.
[6] Molnar, A. (1997).
Computers in education: A brief history. The journal, 24,
63-68.
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