Pascal's Calculator

The French scientist Blaise Pascal developed a machine at the age of 19 that could add and subtract. He developed the first real calculating machine, which could add numbers by using wheels, gears and cylinders. All the mechanical calculators developed later were based these ideas.

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Punched Card

Herman Hollerith developed punched cards. He invented and used a punched card device to help analyze the 1890’s US census data. Herman Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company to sell his invention the Company became part of IBM. Even today these cards are extensively used in modified form as input devise.

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Slide Rules

William Oughtred

 Slide rule

English mathematician William Oughtred developed the slide rule. This machine could perform operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. It was widely used in Europe in 16th century. Slide rule an improvement over the logarithm tables as the final value could be straight away read on the scale.

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Napier's bones (Logarithms)

English mathematician John Napier built a mechanical device for the purpose of multiplication in 1617 A D. 'Napier' designed a set of rods that helped to make multiplication easier. The rods were arranged in a manner that made it possible to fit them together into a multiplication table. The rods were called Napier bones.




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What is a Computer ?

What is a Computer ?
I think the easiest way I can explain it is as a computer is electronic device that is designed to automatically accept input (data), stores and process them producing output (results). It can process both numerical and non-numerical (arithmetic and logical) calculations. For a common man computer is simply a calculator, which works automatic and quite fast. For a person who knows much about it, computer is a machine capable of solving problems and manipulating data. It accepts data, processes the data by doing some mathematical and logical operations and gives us the desired output.

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What is ABACUS

The first calculating device called ABACUS was developed by the Egyptian & Chinese people.

The word ABACUS means calculating board. It consisted of sticks in horizontal positions on which were inserted sets of pebbles. It has a number of horizontal bars each having ten beads. Horizontal bars represent units, tens, hundreds, etc.,

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