.

             .

             Punched Card Development:.

             Many of us are surprised to learn that the punched card industry is almost 200 years old. Furthermore, the first use of punched cards wasn"t for data processing, but rather for process control. Example:.

             .

             Jacquard:.

             Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), a French Weaver, in 1804 developed the first completly automatic loom, controlled by punched cards. Fearing that the machine would produce unemployment, workers attacked and destroyed his machine at Lyon. Aided by Napoleon, Jacquard rebuilt his machine, which os credited with promoting a thriving textile industry in France through the 1800s.

             .

             Electromechanical Computers:.

             The 1920s and 1930s saw ghreat pioneering work inthe continuive research for more effective computers. Several attempts were made to combine existing punched card machineswith more extensive computing devices. Example:.

             .

             Bush:.

             Dr. Vannevar Bush (1890- ) built a large-scale computer called a differential analyzer at the Massachusets Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1930. Unlike the Babbage machine, the Bush analyzer was analog. It mechanical torque-amplifiers to generate the power necessary to move long trains of mechanical gears. The principle is similar to that used on cargo hoists.

             Two copies of Dr. Bush"s analyzer were later produced under the WPA. One was used for ballistic calculations at the army"s Aberdeen Proving Gounds, and the other went to the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

             .

             Electronic Computers:.

             All computers described so far used gears, wheels, switches, and relays that required mechanical motion. The great breakthrough in developing computers came in 1940s when electrtonic components were first succsessfully employed. Example:.

             .

             Atanasoff and Berry:.

             In 1937, John V. Atanasoff, professor of mathematics at Iowa State College, conceived an electronic digital computer. Receiving a small grant from the college, he started building the computer with Clifford Burry, a graduate student.