108 OCTOBER 2019|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 380
When we think of computer
pioneers, our thoughts tend to be
drawn to the 1940s, and to names such
as Alan Turing and John von Neumann.
But it would be wrong to consider that
Victorian scientists and engineers
knew of little other than steam engines.
In fact, several of the basic principles
that laid the foundations of today’s
computers can trace their origins back
to the 19th century.Here we look at
some of these heroes of computing
and conclude by considering whether
aVictorian steampunk society could
have become areality after all.
BOOLEAN LOGIC
The concept of binary logic –working
on values of 1and 0, which we could
also think of as true and false –istaken
forgranted in modern-daycomputers.
Digital computers use logic gates as
their fundamental building blocks, and
microprocessors provide instructions
forcarrying out logical operations, so
the concept is familiar to programmers
as well as hardware engineers.
This type of binary logic is more
accurately referred to as Boolean logic,
which brings us to our first Victorian
pioneer,the mathematician George
Boole.Born in Lincoln in 1815, Boole
was the son of ashoemaker and had
little formal education. Yetin1849 he
was appointed the first professor of
mathematics at Queen’s College,Cork,
in Ireland, and it was here,just eight
years later,that he published the book
The Mathematical Analysis of Logic.
Boole introduced the concept of
combining logic values with AND and
OR operations, and while he never
envisaged aphysical device that
could carry out these operations, his
contribution can’t be underestimated.
Todaywe’dcall the devices that
computeBoole’s operations AND
gates and OR gates, and if we
also add the inverter intothe mix, we
have all the hardware that’s needed to
perform any computation.
DATA COMMUNICATION
Anaive view of the history of electrical
communication is that speech came
first and then later,much later,data
communication appeared on the scene.
In fact, exactly the oppositeistrue,as
evidenced by the familiar image of a
telegraph operator at arailroad station
that featured in many western films.
The first commercial electric
telegraph was invented in the 1830s by
Cooke and Wheatstone,
and first achieved
commercial success over
a13-mile path between
Paddington and West
Drayton on the Great
Western Railway. The
receiving device relied on
the movement of several
needles mounted on a
board to point to
particular letters or
numbers, but amajor
drawback was that it
required multiple wires,
one per needle.
But the development
that most paved the way
⬆Inpre-empting
the concept of
data compression,
Morse Code is more
sophisticated than
all those dots and
dashes suggest
⬇The use of punch
cards –inthis case
forcontrolling the
Jacquard Loom –
was well established
in Babbage’s time
Ph
oto
:S
tep
he
nC
Di
ck
so
n
