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)
Guys, the phrase "History of Computing" is generally used as a broader alternative to "the history of computer hardware" to include the history of CS, software, the computer business, computer use in science, administration, engineering, etc. Computing is what you do with a computer. So that includes the history of mathematical applications, but a whole lot of other stuff as well. For example, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing has been published for more than 25 years now. As someone said above, you're really trying to swim against the tide here. Blame the people who continued to call the things "computers" back in the 1950s even after they started to do more than just compute with them. There should be a page of the history of automatic mathematical calculation, but to avoid confusion call that one "History of Computation" or "History of Scientific Computation" or "History of Scientific and Technical Computation."
I agree that this page should be moved to "History of Computation" and "history of computing" should redirect to "History of computer hardware". I think this because I just got to this page wanting an article on the history of the use of the Computer. Tomgreeny 00:16, 26 September 2006 (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

Contents

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

I think this would be a good project for Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science which could use more members and advisors. Also Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics. There is a lot of Computer and math stuff that could use better formatting and referencing. I'm just a learner in these topics, but I think you need a sense of History to gain some perspective. CQ 21:10, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Ill write this once i work out how to use wikipedia.. damn computers!

[edit] 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)

[edit] Mention of people

In the history of computing, there are key people, John von Neumann, and Grace Murray Hopper, and Donald Knuth, just to mention a few. Could we have a brief section in this article mentioning and linking to bios of people like them? MathStatWoman 23:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Excluding hardware is absurd

Excluding computing hardware is absurd, simply because computing hardware can be used for...computing. I'm fine with a general page that lists both human and hardware computing history (keeping the additional page focused on hardware), but this page doesn't breakout any hardware history, and even the human history is very limited. Superm401 - Talk 22:21, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Many links to other langage are wrong.

Most of inter-wiki links to other langages talks about computer science but this article is not about computer science. I'm removing some I can understand but not all... 152.81.12.56 07:36, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Still unhappy with this article

As noted above, the title is misleading. Most sources consider the term "history of computing" to mean "the history of computer software and hardware." The misleading title has caused several serious problems:

  1. It appears at the top of the nav box for the history of computer software and hardware, suggesting that it is the main article on this subject. (It isn't.)
  2. The category "history of computing" uses the term in the standard way, but it uses this article as the lead article. This article doesn't even belong in that category, but rather in the history of mathematics.
  3. It makes external links to a number of sites which use the term in the standard way, rather than the quirky way this article does.
  4. Inter-language links (as noted above) are often wrong.
  5. Links into this article are often intended for history of computer hardware or history of computer science

I have no problem with an article that discusses the history of mathematical algorithms used for "computing" but all the above problems need to fixed. I will fix each of these if there are no objections. I notice that the discussion of the problem seems to have petered out about three years ago. ---- CharlesGillingham 18:05, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Y Done ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 02:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)