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Telecommunications were the first application for nearly every principle and technology now used in computers. In the 1930s, Claude Shannon was trying to optim
by retrac 3y ago
Telecommunications were the first application for nearly every principle and technology now used in computers.
In the 1930s, Claude Shannon was trying to optimize the phone network's automatic switching fabric built out of millions and millions of relays when he, more or less by accident, proved that switching circuits are equivalent to Boolean algebra, in a deep sense, and so the appropriate arrangement of switches, can compute anything that can be computed.
The first major commercial application for the vacuum tube was not in radio, but in amplifying long-distance telephone links. They would quickly find use in frequency multiplexing telephone lines, too. [1]
Similarly, one of the first applications of vacuum tubes as a high-speed electronic switch was for multiplexing telegraph lines, and much of the initial research on high-reliability low-power tubes able to switched fully on without damage began, with the telephone and telegraph companies.
The first computers were built out of relays and vacuum tubes specially designed for telecommunications.
The transistor was invented at Bell Labs. The planned application was the telephone network. The very same year, the theory behind modern error correcting codes was developed at Bell Labs too. These find extensive use today in data storage in computers, but the original goal was arbitrarily accurate transfer of telegraph data over noisy links.
Digital transmission of photographs dates to the late 1920s too; they wanted to send images over extremely noisy long-distance telegraph links. So record the intensity of light over each spot of the image on paper tape. Then send the tape over the wire. And reverse on the other end. [2]
I've come to understand the computer revolution as really the story of the telecommunication revolution. Computers serendipitously came about with advances in telecommunications, enabled by the same technologies, and indeed, often driven by the needs of telecommunications. (One of the very first applications for a computer in an embedded context - dating to the late 1950s in experiment - the telephone exchange, of course.)
[1] https://long-lines.net/tech-equip/misc/Graybar103-0693.jpg https://long-lines.net/tech-equip/misc/Graybar103-0693.jpg
[2] http://www.hffax.de/history/html/bartlane.html http://www.hffax.de/history/html/bartlane.html
- Merrill 3y agoAt one time teletype switching was done in centers where the incoming line was connected to a tape punch. The operator tore the tape off the punch, read the destination address punched at the beginning of the tape, and put the tape on a tape reader connected to an outgoing line to another center closer to the destination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_relay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_relay IP routers now do this faster.
- trealira 3y agoI'd argue that they were also invented specifically to do specific mathematical calculations. Many predecessors of the modern computer were designed to do math. Some examples: The ENIAC was invented to do mathematical calculations for the army. Blaise Pascal invented a mechanical calculator to do arithmetic in 1642. Leibniz improved on his design and made his own version in 1673. However, not many of either version were made, as it was still cheaper to just do the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division yourself. Herman Hollerith invented a punch card tabulating machine and patented it in 1884. It was used to process the 1890 US Census. It could increment counters to do addition and multiplication, but its main purpose was to assist with processing large amounts of data using punch cards, the way SQL databases are used today. In 1930, Vannevar Bush invented a machine called the Differential Analyzer, which was an analogue computer that could solve differential equations by integration. You could store functions in it by adjusting gears. The purpose was to be able to automatically calculate things like the position of a projectile moving through the air after n seconds without having to calculate it by hand. Most of this I got from the book ENIAC, The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, which touches on all these predecessors to the computer.
- hinkley 3y agoThe idea of the Semantic Web dates to about 1945 and Vannevar Bush, in As We May Think. Douglas Engelbart (Mother of All Demos) cites Bush as a major influence. Bush was Claude Shannon's graduate advisor. I sometimes wonder how much crazy stuff these people didn't write down because they only knew how to make little bits of it happen with current tech.