History of Data Processing

INTRODUCTION:

Data processing is a operations to manipulate the data in order to get some useful result so that one can make decision on the basis of these results.

Man has developed many devices to assists him in calculating and processing data. Basically there are three types of such devices.

MANUAL MECHANICAL DEVICES:

A manual mechanical device is a simple mechanism powered by hand. For example, Abacus, slide rule and manual mechanical devices.

ELECTRONIC DEVICES:

An electronic device is built by electronic components like transistor, IC printed circuit etc. Digital computers and calculators are electronic devices.

AGES OF DATA PROCESSING

The history of the data processing is divided into three ages according to the devices that were used.

THE DARK AGE (3000 BC- 1890 A.D):

The devices used during the Dark age were all manual mechanical.

1.            Abacus (3000 BC)

2.            Napier’s bones(1671)

3.            Ought red’s slide rule (1632)

4.            Pascal’s mechanical calculator (1642)

5.            Leibniz’s  calculator(1673)

6.            Jacquard’s loom(1801)

7.            Babbage’s analytical engine

8.            Babbage’s difference engine

CHARLES BABBAGES:

Charles Babbages an English mathematician, proposed the idea of the true computer. He proposed the idea that a computer must have three basic units. These units are as follows.

1.                  Control Unit.

2.                  Arithmetic Logic Unit.

3.                  Memory Unit

THE MIDDLE AGES (1890-1944):

The middle ages of data processing are said to have begun when Dr. Herman Hollerith completed a set of machines to help process the results of 1890 census. Using 3 by 5-inch punch cards to record the data he constructed a box to sort the data and a manually fed electromagnetic courting machine to tabulate the data. In 1911. Hollerith developed horizontal sort machine. This processed 275 cards pre minute. Until 1940 there was no major invention but performance, speed and capabilities of existing machines were improved.

THE MODERN AGE (SINCE 1944):

Mark-1:

The first electro-mechanical computer, mark 1, was completed in 1944.  This computer was built by Dr. Howard Aiken and his colleagues in seven years. It was a huge machine consisted of nearly 75000 components. The inside has seera miles of electrical wires and with electromechanical relays and mechanical counters for anathematic calculations. It used paper-tape input and punched card output. Calculations of 23 digits numbers took only “3” seconds.

History of Data Processing