Herman Hollerith is a US Computer Pioneer

In 1890 he invented a mechanical tabulating machine that used punched cards to record and process data. This gave rise to the Hollerith code that uses 12 bits per alphanumeric character. He founded the company that was to become IBM. Herman Hollerith was born in Buffalo, New York on February 29, 1960. He died on November 17, 1929. Both of his parents were immigrants from Germany due to political disturbances. His early education was tough, the consequences had him taken away from school and tutored by the family’s Lutheran minister.

Despite all that he was able to enroll in the City College of New York in 1875. He later became an engineering graduate of the Columbia School of Mines in 1879.

He had such an outstanding record that one of his teachers, Professor W P Trowbridge, was so amazed he asked Herman to become his assistant. After Hollerith graduated he became an assistant to Trowbridge, but he later joined the US Census Bureau as a statistician. In 1882 he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he began teaching mechanical engineering.

At this time he started examining how the Jacquard loom worked. He started noticing that the manual counting process was too slow and prone to make errors. Hollerith saw the potential in new improvements and invented an automatic computation method using holes punched in specially coded punch cards. John Shaw Billings, his supervisor, pushed him to develop his idea even further.

So in 1887 Hollerith won the contract for tabulating and counting the results of the 1890 census. Hollerith’s machine could read the location of the holes on each card, it could also make cross tabulations.

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His achievement was so globally impacting that it was leased by other governments around the world including, England, Italy, Germany, Austria, Canada, France, Norway, and Cuba. Another one of his successful inventions was the Tabulator, this was one of the earliest types of programming as it could do addition and subtracting. Herman’s accomplishments did not only affect people’s lives back then but it also had a great impact on ours, because he had a great impact the invention of the first digital computer since he invented computer punch cards.

What fascinated me the most about this inventor is that just by using his sense of observation and dedication he invented something that wouldn’t last a lifetime but it did the future generation and we still use his inventions just in a more advanced way. Charles Babbage is given credit for being “Father of Computers”, he earned this title after his invention of the Analytical Engine, as the first general-purpose computer concept. Unfortunately this computer wasn’t built during his lifetime. Henry Babbage, his youngest son, did complete a portion of the computer that could perform basic calculations. Although Babbage never completed his invention while he was alive his concept and ideas are what made him father of computing.

Grace Hopper coined the phrase “debugging” a computer, the incident happened in 1947 in the early years of computing, a team of Navy computer programmers ran by Grace Hopper ran into a problem, the spent hours trying to find out what the problem was until they opened up the computer and found a dead moth that was blocking the main circuit. Since then all computer malfunctions/problems have been referred to as “bugs”. There are many different types of computers out there who all belong to one of the 5 types listed. Computers are categorized by their size, Supercomputers are the most largest and most powerful computers out there, they are designed to process large amounts of data as well as solve one-trillion calculations in a matter of seconds, because of their high speeds and accuracy they are very much suited to solve high complex calculations.

They can perform a great amount of functions that include space exploration, sending astronauts into space, controlling missile systems, controlling systems for national defense, oil exploration, hosting complex websites, and support systems for organizations. Mainframe computers are also very large computers that usually fill up an entire room, they are used by large both private and government organizations like insurance and bank companies that need access to information, users connect to the mainframe through the many terminals wired to it. Some of the functions performed by the mainframe include supporting hundreds to thousands of users, they can also perform flight scheduling, reservations to even ticketing for an airline, now these computers can be really helpful. Mini computers are a lot smaller than mainframe computers, they are in fact much bigger, more powerful and more expensive than desktop computers. They’re typically used by small and medium businesses, they are also used by hospitals and school computer laboratories.

Micro computers are the most typical used computers, they are small computers designed to be used by one person at a time. They do range in size as some can fit on a desktop, briefcase, or even a shirt pocket. There two types of microcomputers, portable and desktop, desktops are designed to fit in one desk and consist of a system unit, monitor, keyboard and a mouse. Portable computers beneficial for sales-people, agents, and managers who may be off work and might need a system of computing and communication as they travel, many students have also started to use these as a home-computer. The last type of computer are embedded computers, are designed in a product to design a certain type of function, types of embedded computers include, most household appliances, cars, and any electronic devices, like washing machines, coffee makers, dishwashers, microwaves, answering machines, sewing machines, watches, DVD players, and television sets etc. cars also have embedded computers that notify them if there are any problems or something is needed for example, notifying the user of an under-inflated tire, oil filter that needs a change, controlling the use of airbags, diagnosing faults and other safety devices.

So why and when was the internet created? It all started when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first manmade satellite into orbit. That after scientists and military experts were concerned about what might happen in event of a Soviet attack on the nation’s telephone system. Only one single missile, they feared, could destroy the whole network of lines and wires that controlled long distance communication. In 1962 a scientist proposed a solution, a “galactic network” of computers that could talk to each other, a network where the government leaders could communicate even if the Soviets destroyed their telephone system. In 1965 another scientist developed a way of sending information from one computer to another, he called this “packet switching”.

This breaks down information into blocks or packets before sending it to another location. By the end of the 1970’s a scientist named Vinton Cerf developed a way where all of the world’s minicomputers could communicate with one another. This protocol changed the internet into a worldwide network. Through the 1980s scientists and researchers used this to send files and data from one computer to another. The internet was a work of dozens of scientists, engineers and programmers who developed all types of new features and technologies that would eventually merge to become what we know of today.

In 1991, the internet changed once again, a computer programmer from Switzerland named Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web it was not only a way to send files from one place to another but it was a “web” of information that anyone could retrieve, he created the internet we know of today. The internet was originally called ARPAnet and it’s original purpose was for the exchange of data between researchers. Another one of its purposes was for the purpose of having a defense network that could work during the nuclear war. Ever since then the internet has been changed several times, in 1992 a group of students and researchers developed browser called Mosaic, that later became Netscape, this provided users with a friendly way of to search the web, it allowed them to see words and pictures on the same page, to search using clickable links and use scrollbars, this is the internet we use today.