Who Is Herman Hollerith?

1. Herman Hollerith was born on February 29, 1860 in Buffalo, New York. He graduated from the Columbia School of Mines in 1879 after studying engineering among various other topics. Shortly after, Herman worked as an assistant to his former teacher at the U.S. Census Bureau. Working as a statistician, he revealed the problems of dealing with large amounts of data by hand. The 1880s census took seven and a half years to complete, and the 1890s census was expected to take much longer due to the rise of immigration. While at the Census Bureau, he met his future wife Lucia Beverley Talcott. Her father gave Herman an idea for a device to speed up the census count. Her father got the idea from an automated loom, called a Jacquard loom, which automated

several different repetitive tasks. Not long after, Herman became an instructor of mechanical engineering at MIT, but did not stay long as he did not like working with the students. He then assisted with experimentation of an electrically activated brake system for railroads, as well as acquiring a patent for a tabulator in 1884. Sin 1885, Herman’s machine was first used by the U.S. Navy. Shortly after his experimental work, he got a job with the U.S. Patent Office where he remained until 1890. The 1890 census was able to move much quicker, being completed in two and a half years as opposed to the likely 10 years that was expected. Herman’s invention saw expanded use in the United States, Canada, Austria, and Norway.

2.

The development of the abacus is still debated to this day. Some claim that it was developed in ancient China around 3000 BC. Some believe it was developed in ancient Mesopotamia around the same time. The time and place varies depending on what expert you ask. Regardless, it is a device made of wood and beads. The beads can go up and down on wooden cylinders covered by wooden rectangles on each side. Each bead has a specific value, and each column has a different division of ten, starting with one. Basic mathematics (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) are performed by moving appropriate beads to the middle of the abacus. The abacus was created to as a calculator for ancient man. It was small and easy to carry on one’s person. It was so successful that it spread from China to many other countries across Europe and Asia. There were different variations of the abacus depending on which country you were in. For example, the Russian abacus didn’t have the heaven and earth beads that the Chinese abacus had. Even the ancient Roman empire adopted use of the abacus. It was slightly different, in by you didn’t have cylinders with beads, but instead you moved counters on a smooth table. The Roman abacus was very much similar to the Greek abacus. The abacus was used world wise for nearly anything that dealt with counting, or calculation. It enjoyed much use in trade and commerce. The abacus remained the world’s main calculator for thousands of

years.

3.

Grace Hopper, referred to by some as the “Queen of Code,” was one of the first to program the first computers in the 40s and 50s. During World War II, Hopper left a teaching job at Vassar College to join the Navy Reserve. That's when she went to Harvard to work on the first programmable computer in the United States: the Mark I. The Mark I was the first digital computer to be programmed sequentially. Thus, Hopper experienced firsthand the complexities and frustration that have always been the hallmark of the programming field. The exacting code of machine language could be easily misread or incorrectly written. To reduce the number of programming errors, Hopper and her colleagues collected programs that were free of error and generated a catalogue of subroutines that could be used to develop new programs. By this time, the Mark II had been built. Aiken's team used the two computers side by side, effectively achieving an early instance of multiprocessing. Hopper's association with UNIVAC resulted in several important advances in the field of programming. Still aware of the constant problems caused by programming errors, Hopper developed an innovative program that would translate the programmer's language into machine language. This first compiler, called "A-O, " allowed the programmer to write in a higher-level symbolic language, without having to worry about the tedious binary language of endless numbers that were needed to communicate with the machine itself. Hopper died

on January 1st, 1992 after an award filled career.

4. The UNIVAC I, or Universal Automatic Computer I, was designed in 1948 by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who also designed the ENIAC. The machine was huge, weighing in at 29,000 pounds. The processor alone took up a space of 14.5 by 7.5 by 9 feet. The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer made by the United States. Designed for business and administration, the UNIVAC I was able to quickly calculate simple arithmetic and data transport operations. The UNIVAC I was the first computer in the United States to separate I/O from actual computation. The input that was used by the UNIVAC I was an operator keyboard and console typewriter. Then the output was printed on tape. The first UNIVAC was installed at the U.S. Government’s Census Bureau. Later, the fifth created UNIVAC was able to predict the winner of the ’52 U.S. presidential election, predicting that Dwight Eisenhower would come out the victor over Adlai Stevenson. Many businesses installed the UNIVAC I, including G.E., Westinghouse, and Pacific Mutual Life Insurance. It was not a cheap machine, initially being priced at $159,000, and then raising in price to around 1,250,000 or more. The UNIVAC I was initially created to replace punch-card accounting machines as a data processing computer. It soon became clear from a financial standpoint that the UNIVAC would need to be able to read punch cards as well, and thus a tape-to-card converter was created. The machine could read 7,200 decimal digits per second, which was a vast improvement to the punch-card account machines of prior years.

5. MS-DOS, or Microsoft Disk Operating System, is a text based operating system created by Microsoft in 1981. Initially, MS-DOS was called 86-DOS, and was written by Tim Paterson in 1980. 86-DOS took only six weeks to develop, and was a near clone of an older operating system that was used for an older processor. In 1981 Microsoft hired Tim Paterson and bought 86-DOS for $75,000. 86-DOS was then renamed MS-DOS, and licensed to IBM who used the operating system for the IBM PC. In one year, it became much more widely used, as Microsoft licensed the operating system to more than 70 other companies. This, and other factors led to MS-DOS being the dominant operating system throughout the 1980s. MS-DOS was implemented differently than the operating systems today, as every separate computer had its own unique version of MS-DOS. The operating system increased the speed of the programs on the PC due to direct control of the computer’s hardware. Over the years, Microsoft would continue to improve performance and add additional features. The operating system itself uses a command line, also known as a text-based interface. This made for very simple use of programs that were installed onto disk storage, but was still quite difficult for a brand new user. The popularity of MS-DOS fueled Microsoft’s success as one of, if not the biggest software companies world wide. The MS-DOS operating system continued as the dominant operating system until the development of the GUI, or graphical user interface operating system Microsoft Windows in 1985.

6. Linux is an open source operating system based on Unix. Most distributions of Linux are free to use, and are highly customizable due to it being an open source operating system. The operating system itself is not much different than other modern operating systems, as it has a graphical interface, and the ability to install software of your choosing (though slightly different than software for windows or mac). Each distribution is usually described as its own “flavor” of the operating system. The distributions range from desktop operating systems to server and mobile operating systems. Linux is comprised of the bootloader, the kernel, daemons, the shell, the graphical server, the desktop environment, and applications. In 1991 Linus Torvalds created the first distribution of Linux as an open source alternative to an academic operating system called MINIX, which was also based on Unix. Since its creation, Linux has been more of an enthusiast operating system in regards to desktop computers. It started seeing more wide success with the supercomputing community. NASA had begun replacing many of their expensive machines with clusters of household grade computers running the Linux operating system. Supercomputers today are still using Linux based operating systems. Lately many netbooks have gone with distributions of Linux as the operating system they are sold with, Google’s Chrome OS for example. By far the widest use of Linux is the Android OS used on many mobile devices. As of September 2015, Android boasted an astonishing 1.4 billion active users, making it the most used mobile operating system worldwide.

7. A mobile operating system is an operating system that is meant to specifically run on a mobile device. Mobile devices include smartphones, tablets, PDAs etc. Modern mobile systems usually use a touchscreen interface, have GPS capability, and include a camera. The mobile operating systems must take into account these specific functions that are not usually included in a desktop environment. Not only that, but they need to be very user friendly and easy to manage, especially if the developers want to draw in new users. The main way to acquire more programs on your mobile device is to use the mobile operating system’s app (application) store. Here you can find not only programs, but movies and books as well. Today, the two big players in the mobile operating system market are Android and Apple iOS. As previously mentioned, Android is the widest used mobile operating system in the world, but Apple iOS is also widely used worldwide and is only used on apple products. Apple’s iOS trades in customization for a very smooth and polished experience. Apple’s app store is much stricter on what it releases so Apple can make sure that the apps will not hinder the smooth and polished experience that Apple users have come to expect from the operating system. Android is much more customization friendly, as it is based on Linux. Many people have been able to customize their own operating systems based on the Android OS. Also, Android’s app store is less strict about what is posted, and there are many more apps available because of this.