COMPUTERS
See Also: THE INTERNET; THE LEONINE PAYMASTER; TESTED TO
DESTRUCTION
Algorithms
There
is an argument that computer algorithms can be traced back to Francis Galton s
work in the 1880s. He applied the work
of his cousin Charles Darwin to socio-political material. He believed that the process could direct the
development of society in a desirable direction. This could be done by eugenics, the breeding
of people. Because of the Non-Conformist
character of the college, the idea was taken up by many people who were
progressive in their outlook. Galton
founded a chair in eugenics. The first
person to hold this was his former student, the theoretical biostatistician
Karl Pearson (1857-1936). In order to
advance eugenics Pearson and the psychologist Spearman (1863-1945) sought to
quantify and categorise people. To
enable big data to be simplified they created the statistical algorithms.
Location:
University College, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT (purple, red)
Automata
Euphonia
Joseph
Faber (1786-1850) was an Austrian mathematician. He built created Euphonia, a machine that
sought to replicate human speech. It was
operated by a piano-like keyboard. In
1846 it was displayed in the Egyptian Hall.
It was able to sing God Save The Queen. People tended to speak to it directly rather
than to its operator.
Location:
170-173 Piccadilly, W1J 9EJ (purple, turquoise)
Merlin's
Mechanical Museum
John
Joseph Merlin (1735-1803).
As a
child Babbage visited Merlin s Mechanical Museum. There he was particularly struck by an
animatronic dancer. Over the years that
followed he contemplated how it might be developed further.
Knowledge
of museum s items is derived from a pamphlet that stated its contents.
Ultimately,
Babbage bought a dancer.
The
Amazing Mechanical Swan in Bowes Museum is a survivor from Merlin s work. It was exhibited in Cox s Mechanical
Museum. It is barely mentioned, which
may indicate that other items were more sophisticated.
Location:
11 Princes Street, W1B 2LJ (red, yellow)
Birkbeck College
Andrew
Booth (1918-2009) did a Ph.D. in crystallography. In 1946 he was appointed a lecturer in
physics at Birkbeck. J.D. Bernal
appreciated that computers might be able to speed up the calculation and
research that research in crystallography required. He sent Booth to the United States to study
the new technology.
Booth
realised that data storage had to be developed if computers were to become
viable. He concluded that magnetism had
potential. He built a rotating memory
drum that demonstrated the viability of the technology. He also devised the Booth multiplier
algorithm, as well as building one of the first electronic computers.
Booth
set up Birkbeck s Electronic Computation Research Laboratory. In 1957 the Laboratory metamorphosed into
being the Department of Numerical Automation, which was the first university
department in Britain to be dedicated to computing.
Location:
Malet Street, WC1E 7HX (orange, red)
The Computer Conservation Society
The
Computer Conservation Society was set up within the British Computer Society in
1989.
Website:
www.computerconservationsociety.org
I.B.M
Think
or
I.B.M.
starteed using Think as a corporate slogan in 1911. Herbert Chappell (1934-2019), a University of
Oxford graduate, attended a job interview with the company. During it, a placard on the wall that
declared Think was pointed out to him.
He was then asked to consider what it might mean. He replied Think or swim? He was not hired. He went on to become a successful conductor,
composer, and producer of music.
Location:
20 York Road, SE1 7ND
Website:
www.ibm.com/uk-en
Ada Countess of Lovelace
Ada
Countess of Lovelace (d.1852) was a gifted mathematician, who, through her
association with Charles Babbage, played an important figure in the early
history of computing. She was also the
daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Ada
Lovelace s tutors included Augustus de Morgan and Mary de Somerville. The latter introduced her to Charles Babbage.
Menabrea
had written a paper about Bernoulli Numbers.
Lovelace translated from Italian into English. She saw its potential and, with Babbage s
encouragement, added a series of notes to it.
The paper s length was tripled.
Babbage envisaged the (unbuilt) analytic engine as being capable of
generating sophisticated but ultimately self-contained numerically tables. In her additions she set out how symbolic
logic could be used to convert a sequence into formula that could be coded to
run on the engine. Algorithms could be
used to produce results that had not been specifically programmed to produce
In her
final years she developed a highly mathematical gambling system and engaged in
its potential. She drew together a group
of admiring wealthy men to form a syndicate.
She was still placing bets while she lay dying.
By the
mid-20thC Lovelace had long been an obscure figure. However, Alan Turing encountered her work and
soon appreciated her achievement. His
discovery led to her becoming a celebrated figure.
Location:
12 St James s Square, SW1Y 4LB (orange, yellow)
See
Also: JANE AUSTEN Unintended Marital Consequences
Mousey, Mousey
Doug
Engelbart s creation of the mouse was in large part derived from the tracker
ball, a device that was invented by Ralph Benjamin (1922-2019), an Admiralty
scientist. It enabled a cursor to be
moved on radar screens.
People Above Their Station
A
senior B.B.C. producer concluded that microelectronics was going to be
important to future life in Britain. One
lunchtime, he noticed David Allen, one of his underlings, having a pint in the
B.B.C. Club (it was the 1970s). He went
over to him and asked him to draw a proposal.
Allen was a member of the Corporation s Continuing Education Unit, which
had had a major success with its Moving On adult literacy
programme. As a result, two million
adults with literacy had sought either to learn to read or to improve their
reading skills. Initially Allen and his
colleagues assumed that they going to develop a show about do-it-yourself
electronics with time they came they realised it should be focused on computer
use, which at the time implied learning a level of programming. They concluded that BASIC was the best
language but soon appreciated that it was not one language but a series of
dialects that soon became mutually exclusive.
Therefore, they asked the companies that were active in the field for a
form that work across all the versions.
They were cold-shouldered.
Therefore, they decided that the show should be centred on a simple
computer that viewers could program with a particular version. The contract to build the B.B.C. Micro was awarded
to Acorn; the company was told that it should not expect to sell more 12,000
machines. The Computer Programme
launched in 1982 as a computer literacy programme for adults. However, it soon became popular and developed
a momentum of its owned. Sales for the
B.B.C. Micro soared, some of them being bought by schools that were acquiring a
computer for the first time. The
programme s audience included numerous teachers and teenagers. The Ministry of Education became aware of the
phenomenon and announced a programme that sought to place a computer in every
school, the schools being left free to choose which one they bought. Overwhelmingly, they opted for a B.B.C.
Micro. Over 1,000,000 were sold.
Location:
Ealing Underground Station, Ealing Broadway, W5 2NU. The Unit was based in an office that was
above the station.
The Post Office Research Station
Location:
Chartwell Court, Dollis Hill, 151 Brook Road, Dollis Hill, NW2 7DW
See
Also: DOLLIS HILL'S FINEST
ERNIE
The
size of the government debt prompted the Treasury to devise the Premium Bonds
scheme. This involved people buying
bonds that they could cash in for the same value. The government extracted the benefit of the
interest that the cash could generate between when people purchased their bonds
and when they sold. To attract people,
it was decided to exploit the fact that all of the bonds were numbered
individually to have the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill create a
machine that could winners by generating random. A team that included Tommy Flowers and Sidney
Broadlands was asked whether they could build such a machine. They were asked whether would object to
facilitate something that some people regarded as gambling. The group was happy that people could
retrieve their initial money and concluded that it was no worse than the stock
market. They savoured the fact that they
had only nine months in which to build the machine.
It
generated random numbers by means of random noise generated in a neon
cold-cathode tube.
The Science Museum
The
Science Museum has a collection of historic computers.
Website:
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/thinking-machines-stories-history-computing
David
Backhouse 2024