Before we can go any further with programming, first let’s
try to understand Computing and the Computer. I am stating
‘try’ because there are paradoxes.
The first use of the word "computer" was recorded in 1613,
referring to a person who carried out calculations, or
computations, and the word continued with the same meaning
until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th
century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning,
a machine that carries out computations.
The history of the modern computer begins with two separate
technologies, automated calculation and programmability, but
no single device can be identified as the earliest computer,
partly because of the inconsistent application of that term.
The fundamental difference between a calculator and computer
is that a computer can be programmed in a way that allows the
program to take different branches according to intermediate
results, while calculators are pre-designed with specific functions
such as addition, multiplication, and logarithms built in.
The Atanasoff–Berry Computer was the world's first
electronic digital computer, but not programmable.
In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the
textile loom by introducing a series of punched paper cards as
a template which allowed his loom to weave very complicated
patterns automatically. The resulting Jacquard loom was an
important step in the development of computers because the
use of punched cards to define woven patterns can be viewed
as an early, though limited, form of programmability.
Programmability is the ability of a device to carry out or
process instructions given to it. Instructions are the Program.
It was the fusion of automatic calculation with programmability
that produced the first recognizable computers. In 1837,
Charles Babbage was the first to design a fully programmable
mechanical computer.
