Pre-1940

Computing hardware has been an important component of the process of calculation and data storage since it became useful for numerical values to be processed and shared. more...

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The earliest computing hardware was probably some form of tally stick; later record keeping aids include Phoenician clay shapes which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, in containers. Something similar is found in early Minoan excavations. These seem to have been used by the merchants, accountants, and government officials of the time.

Devices to aid computation have changed from simple recording and counting devices to the abacus, the slide rule, analog computers, and more recent electronic computers. Even today, an experienced abacus user using a device hundreds of years old can sometimes complete basic calculations more quickly than an unskilled person using an electronic calculator — though for more complex calculations, computers out-perform even the most skilled human.

This article covers major developments in the history of computing hardware, and attempts to put them in context. For a detailed timeline of events, see the computing timeline article. The history of computing article is a related overview and treats methods intended for pen and paper, with or without the aid of tables.

Earliest devices

Humanity has used devices to aid in computation for millennia.

One example is a device for establishing equality by weight: the classic scales. Another is simple enumeration: the checkered cloths of the counting houses served as simple data structures for enumerating stacks of coins, by weight. A more arithmetic-oriented machine is the abacus. One of the earliest machines of this type was the Chinese abacus.

The Antikythera Mechanism, discovered in the early 20th century, was discovered in the wreck of a Greek vessel believed to have sunk in 65BC. The mechanism is believed to have been used in preparing calendars for religious observance and for planting and harvesting. It had 30 or more bronze gears and a pin-and-slot device connecting two gears varied the depiction of lunar movement. This technology was lost, however, and over 1,600 years would elapse before similarly complex computing machines were again created.

In 1623 Wilhelm Schickard built the first mechanical calculator and thus became the father of the computing era. Since his machine used techniques such as cogs and gears first developed for clocks, it was also called a 'calculating clock'. It was put to practical use by his friend Johannes Kepler, who revolutionized astronomy.

Machines by Blaise Pascal (the Pascaline, 1642) and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1671) followed. Around 1820, Charles Xavier Thomas created the first successful, mass-produced mechanical calculator, the Thomas Arithmometer, that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It was mainly based on Leibniz's work. Mechanical calculators, like the base-ten addiator, the comptometer, the Monroe, the Curta and the Addo-X remained in use until the 1970s.

Read more at Wikipedia.org