Talk:History of computing
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Removed redirect on this talk page to related talk page Talk:History_of_computing_hardware. Tempshill 00:35, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It sounds like the intention of this page is "History of computing methods" and I recommend it be renamed accordingly. "History of computing" will sound to 99% of our user base like it is the "History of computers" article. Tempshill 00:35, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Second that; like it or not, one has to acknowledge the reception of a term in the real world. "H. of C. methods", or perhaps "H. of calculation" would be a much better title, I think. --Wernher 05:46, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- So 99% of our user base are laboring under an error. We should correct it. Michael Hardy 21:18, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- No offence, but I was anticipating this argument. It is of course a valid one ("ten million flies can't be wrong, etc" is always a dangerous path), and ideally an encyclopedia should strive to educate it's readers, but I think we should rather be discussing the best article title (and, BTW, not all computer scientists/engineers are hopeless introverts with no extra-curricular interests and a general historical overview :-] ). --Wernher 21:35, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I find that I know next-to-nothing about this topic, and apparently neither do those who originated the history of computing hardware. Otherwise, I would have added a lot more information here. When were the algorithms taught in grammar school for addition and multiplication invented, and how was it done before that time? Archimedes and Euclid should both appear here -- the latter for Euclid's algorithm; the former for The Sand Reckoner. Probably Briggs should be mentioned here. And maybe Fibonacci for introducing Arabic numerals into Europe. Michael Hardy 21:44, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
... and it should mention the existence and nature of human computers and their work in the time what it was taken for granted that the word computer refers to a person who computes. Michael Hardy 21:49, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- The following book is superb on this subject matter (although slightly Franco-centric regarding inventions):
- Georges Ifrah (1999). The Universal History of Numbers : From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0471375683.
- --Wernher
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Add navigation box
Hi, I added a navigation box on several articles in this series (similar to that used in several other histories (including the History of the United States articles), to help tie the articles together, I hope this will help readers to see the thread between the history of computing overall in the sense that Michael Hardy means and the more narrow and common use senses. I made this article the top-level. I hope this is useful. Perhaps some of the computing timelines could also be part of the navbox, but I thought I'd give people a chance to discuss what might be appropriate before hauling in a whole slew of new articles into the navbox. --Lexor 11:39, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Writing this article
So... who's interested in actually writing this article? Fredrik (talk) 20:57, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- I would be, if I knew anything. It was actually this article that caused me to realize that I don't. I know something of the history of mathematics, and I know that Euclid wrote about Euclid's algorithm, but I have no idea, e.g., how the ancient Greeks did multiplication, or when and how long division was introduced, etc. Michael Hardy 21:04, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Unless someone else does it before then, I may make it my project of the week end. I don't know a lot about the subject, but I can go to the library and study :-). Then someone can correct my mistakes. David Remahl 21:02, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Possible directions for enhancement
Michael Hardy's program for this article could be realized in several directions, but it seems as if the directions are actually articles in themselves:
- the arithmetic operations, once we have a positional number system, could characterize multiplication of M by N as repeated addition of M, N times; likewise, division of M by N as repeated subtraction of a trial subtrahend from M and its succeeding minuends, N times, until we arrive at the Egyptian fraction, bringing us to continued fractions etc., in the cornucopia that is mathematics, but that would serve to cover up the relationship of the the arithmetic operations to computing with minutiae.
- the algorithms, such as Newton's method, the Runge-Kutta methods, and dozens of similar specialized methods for each kind of mathematical structure, and again, we have a cornucopia to deal with.
- the fact that there are usually limitations to the algorithms, meaning that they cannot be applied blindly, requiring judgement and the eventual resort to heuristics
So, does anyone have any suggestions? Ancheta Wis 00:10, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
list of books
I started the section "books for futher reading" and I duplicated the list in history of computing hardware. (Someone has kindly added to the lsit.) There are more books that I'd like to add, but I don't want us to have to maintain the list in more than one place. (There are probably other articles that could use this list too). So would it be a good idea to make an article with just the list of books that can be linked from the other places? Or is there a better way to do it and eliminate the duplication? Bubba73 00:11, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)