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VINTAGE OFFICE AUTOMATION




New technologies, historic roots

As state-of-the-art as desktop multimedia communications may seem, the historic roots of today's office technologies stretch back decades and even centuries.

Consider the first true calculator, the abacus, which has been performing fast and accurate mathematical operations for over 5.000 years. Or the first mechanical calculator, invented by a French teenager in 1642 to ease the strain of his father's work as a financial administrator. Ironically, the calculator was largely ignored by French bureaucrats, who viewed it, perhaps rightly, as a job threat. Fortunately, its inventor, Blaise Pascal, is well remembered today for his other pursuits in mathematics, physics and philosophy.

In the 1670s, German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz created the first mechanical device for multiplication and division with the explanation that "it is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculations." But it was a London mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage, who in the early 1800s first conceived of the principles on which modem computing is based. In the 1820s and "30s, Babbage designed but never completed the "Difference Engine," a sophisticated calculating machine, and the more advanced "Analytical Engine." Components of the'Analytical Engine were uncannily similar to those ultimately used more than 100 years later in early electronic computers - including a register memory and central processing unit (CPU). In addition, the Analytical Engine was designed to be programmable and accept algorithmic instructions via punched cards.

It was an American inventor, Herman Hollerith, who in the 1880s developed the punched-card machine that would be used to tabulate the 1890 U.S. Census - the first example of a large statistical problem being processed by machines, or what is known today as data processing, Hollerith's firm was eventually absorbed by a then-obscure office machinery firm that in 1924 would be renamed International Business Machines (IBM).

In the 1930s and 40s, electronic digital computers began to make their debut, beginning with the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer). It was soon followed by the Colossus in England and the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), developed by University of Pennsylvania scientists as the first general-purpose electronic computer. Originally developed under a wartime contract to compute ballistics trajectories, the ENIAC ushered in the modem era of digital computing. However, at the time, the market for such machines - which could weigh some 30 tons and contained thousands of vacuum tubes - was considered small. Less than 50 years later there would be more than some 180 million desktop personal computers in offices around the world.

Even today's on-line electronic information services have historic roots, after a fashion, in 19th-century Europe. There, in 1850, Paul Julius Reuter used a flock of horning pigeons to close a gap in the telegraph lines between Paris and Berlin. Reuter's communications "network" gave him a significant advantage over competitors who relied on more slowly moving trains, helping establish "Bureau Reuter" as a timely source for stock quotes and financial news.

Reuter's competitive edge lasted only until the telegraph system was completed. But it was long enough to launch the company that has since become the world's leading distributor of computerized information. (2 800)

 


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