Meeting Minutes
Torch Club of the Fox Valley
11 January 2018
Atlas Coffee Mill & Café
Notes taken by: Sofia Wilson, Secretary
Attendees: Karen Bachhuber, Jim Baumbach, Sue Bennett, Dave Debbink, Marcia Debbink, Paul Flanagan, Jean Hedges, Walt Hedges, Jean Jepson, Barbara Kelly, William Kelly, Jude Kuenn, Richard Schoenbohm, Jan Smith, Robert Swain, Helen Thiel, Peter L. Thiel and Sofia Wilson
Guest: Lisa Campbell
BUSINESS MEETING
Meeting called to order at 6:35pm.
- Guest Introductions – Peter and Helen Theil introduced their daughter, Lisa Campbell, who was visiting from Utah.
- Webb Shaw, a most wonderful gentleman, has passed and will be greatly missed. Bill Kelly will discuss with Katie about her wishes for the club’s contribution in his memory. Books donated to the library or a donation to the Michael J Fox Foundation were discussed as options.
- Meeting minutes from 12/14/17 were accepted; motioned, seconded and approved.
- Treasurer’s report: 1/5/17 balance is at $3,732.49. Membership List passed around for review. Report was accepted, motioned, seconded and approved.
Old Business:
- Donation on Behalf of Janet Cloak – Barbara K. passed around the Thank You letter from the Appleton Public Library as well as another one of the books that were donated on behalf of Janet. Recommended everyone read the Silence by Barbara Germiat, one of the books donated.
New Business:
- February 8th Meeting Menu – It was suggested by Sue to have a Buffet Style meal. Paul is going to discuss the details, including the consideration of special diet needs, with Sue and get back to the group.
- Moving March 8th Meeting Date – Due to the Café being closed March 8th, the meeting will instead be held on March 15th.
Announcements:
A. Barbara K. – The Rotary Club will be having a Tour of the Appleton Exhibition Center on January 23rd. Guests can come along on the tour. Those interested should discuss with Barbara. She was able to tour the facility with Bill on the opening, and found it astounding with nice art work and big spaces.
B. Jan – Art After Dark at the Bergstrom Mahler Glass Museum in Neenah Next Thursday, January 18th.
C. Jude – Live at the Met, the History of the Met will show Saturday, January 13th at 11:55a and January 17th.
D. Karen – Friday January 12th, at Lawrence University at 6p will be a presentation on Photography in Cuba.
Business segment adjourned at 6:50pm for dinner.
Walt Hedges and Paul Frieberg – History of Calculation
- Development of the Modern Calculation
- Story of Atanasoff’s evening ride and his recognizing binary math and vacuum tubes were the key to develop the first electronic computer.
- An elegant and simple solution to the matter of calculation.
- Father of the modern computer.
- 1930s at Iowa State University.
- We go back in time
- We do not know when or how humans first developed the ability to count.
- However, primitive peoples all had a sense of numbers. One report that there is archeological evidence of counting back 50,000 years.
- We probably started with fingers.
- Shepherds would use pebbles to keep track of their sheep; 10 pebbles would mean they let 10 sheep out; if one pebble was left when the sheep returned; the shepherd knew he had to go look for one sheep.
- Needed to start recording numbers
- Babylonians
- This system first appeared around 2000 BC;
- First known positional numeral system, in which the value of a particular digit depends both on the digit itself and its position within the number.
- Calculus derives from a word meaning "pebble" in Latin.
- In ancient history, stones or pebbles were used for the main form of calculation.
- Odometer of Vitruvius (15BC) was based on chariot wheels of 4 feet This engaged another gear with holes along the circumference, where pebbles (calculus) were located, that were to drop one by one into a box.
- The distance traveled would thus be given simply by counting the number of pebbles.
- The Romans used pebbles or small rocks strung on sticks to calculate things, these machines were called abacuses.
- The period 2700–2300 BC saw the first appearance of the Sumerian abacus
- China, Europe, Russia, Greece, and North America all have reports of various types of abacus.
- The Abacus was introduced to Europe around 1000 AD, but died out with the use of Hindu-Arabic numerals and the use of pencil and paper.
- The Abacus was introduced to China around 1200 AD and Japan around 1400 AD. We think of the Abacus as “Eastern” due to the country’s pictographic languages being hard to cipher with paper and pencil methods.
- The difference between the Abacus and the Soroban – Both are used the same way for base 10 calculations, but the abacus is also used for base 16 weights and measures calculations in China.
- For instance, Native Americans used kernels of corn. There are no records but we do have reports from Jesuit priest on the use of the device among Native Americans. In short, the abacus was a sophisticated aid for the Native Americans and other peoples.
- Extra: Still used in Russia, Africa, and China. Today, it is an aid for blind people.
- Antikythera Mechanism – It is the world’s first known analogue computer based on Greek math and astronomy. It was created around 87 BC. It could predict lunar phases and solar and lunar eclipses on a 19-year lunar cycle. Had an over 37 gear complex structure. The Antikythera Mechanism was re-discovered in the discovery of a shipwreck in 1901, and was decoded in 2008. There is a theory that is was designed by Archimedes.
- 1550- story of Napier and his bones
- Best known for the invention of logarithms and the invention of the Napier’s Bones. Bones because the better sets were constructed from horn, bone, or ivory.
- Simply a multiplication table on a set of rods (bones)
- Walt demonstrated for the group - Simple multiplication example.
- Napier was very religious. He used the Book of Revelations to predict the end of the world as 1688 or 1700. He regarded this as his most important work.
- Extra: It was rumored that Napier dabbled in the black arts and traveled with his black spider; and had a black rooster at his house. He was contracted for his “arts” to find treasure.
- The main computational problems of the time involved astronomy, navigation, and horoscopes led to development of trigonometry.
- The idea of logarithms is to reverse the operation of exponentiation that is, raising a number to a power. For example, the third power (or cube) of 2 is 8, because 8 is the product of three factors of 2:
- 18 years to compile the table of logarithms; Book published in 1614 had 75 pages of explanation and 90 pages of tables.
- Slide rule 1630-1650- status symbol in 1950s- clipped to belt. Important because you did not need the logarithmic tables.
- Edmund Gunter first graphed log scales and used dividers to add logs.
- Reverend William Oughtred invented the slide rule in 1622. He was the bane of his bishop, who always got complaints about his boring sermons. Rev. Oughtred thought slide rules were unimportant toys.
- The slide rule quickly faded as the hand-held electronic calculator came into use in the
- Extra: this is an example of the velocity of technology.
- Around 1642, mechanical achievements started
- The first adding machine invented by Blaise Pascal (1623 to 1642). Here is a modern example of his invention in the counter shoppers use in a supermarket.
- The calculator had spoked metal wheel dials, with the digit 0 through 9 displayed around the circumference of each wheel. To input a digit, the user placed a stylus in the corresponding space between the spokes and turned the dial until a metal stop at the bottom was reached, similar to the way the rotary dial of a telephone is used. This displayed the number in the windows at the top of the calculator. Then, one simply redialed the second number to be added, causing the sum of both numbers to appear in the accumulator.
- The key to this machine is the capability to automatically carry from one digit to the next.
- Story: Pascal’s father did not want to throw people out of work.
- Joseph Marie Jacquard –
- He did not attend school and instead worked in his father’s weaving shop. He learned to read at age 12.
- He and his son fought on both sides of the war.
- in 1804, he invented the Jacquard machine. It is a device fitted to a power loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelassé.
- The patent he filed for the loom provided him with a pension from Napolean for the rest of his life. His invention put so many workers out of work, he was often accosted, beaten and thrown in the river.
- Why is this important? The Jacquard head used replaceable punch cards to control a sequence of operations. It is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware.
- The ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming and data entry.
- Charles Babbage knew of Jacquard looms and planned to use cards to store programs in his difference engine/analytical engine.
- Considered by some to be a “father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage's analytical engine.
- The Analytical Engine marks the transition from mechanized arithmetic to fully-fledged general purpose computation. It is largely on it that Babbage's standing as computer pioneer rests.
- The major innovation was that the Analytical Engine was to be programmed using punched cards. The engine was intended to use loops of Jacquard’s punched cards to control a mechanical calculator, which could use as input the results of preceding computations.
- Countess Ada Lovelace, 1815 -1852, who corresponded with Babbage during his development of the Analytical Engine, is credited with developing a program that would enable the Engine to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers.
- She is often described as the first computer programmer though no programming language had yet been invented.
- Ada met Charles Babbage when she was 17 years old and he was 41 years old. Over 80 letters have been found between the two friends.
- Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron. Her mother left Lord Byron with her after discovering his affair with his half sister. Ada received a high level of education due to her mother’s wealth and status. Ada had a brilliant mind that loved technology.
- In the late 19th century, Herman Hollerith took the idea of using punched cards to store information a step further when he created a punched card tabulating machine which he used to input data for the 1890 U.S. Census.
- Census story- electric calculators
- 1880s- took 20 years to analyze the census
- 1890- took 10 years to analyze the census – punch cards
- Used until the 1950s and then computers
- Extra: A large, punched-card-based data processing industry developed in the first half of the twentieth century, dominated by the International Business Machine corporation (IBM), with its line of unit record equipment.
- Later computers executed programs from higher-speed memory, though cards were commonly used to load the programs into memory.
- Punched cards remained in use in computing up until the mid 1980s.
- First portable mechanical calculator
- The Curta was conceived by Curt Herzstark in the 1930s in Vienna, Austria. By 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum
- His work on the pocket calculator stopped in 1938 when the Nazis forced him and his company to concentrate on manufacturing measuring instruments and distance gauges for the German army.
- The concentration camp was liberated in 1945. His calculator was made until 1971.
- Jack Kilby, the inventor of the integrated circuit.
- In 1965, he went to the design department with a challenge: Build a device to replace the slide rule, pocket sized, with buttons, a display an is battery powered. 18 months later a prototype was created.
- This development was done with intention of winning a military contract; to illustrate that TI could produce enough LSI chips.
- The electronic hand held calculator hit the market in 1971. By 1972, 5 million had been sold. By 1976 over 100 million had been sold.
- End of the story- the court case
- Eventually, Atanasoff was identified as the true inventor of the computer after a landmark legal decision. Honeywell v. Sperry Rand (1973)
- Very Dramatic story with mystery and intrigue. Walt highly recommends you read about it.
- Thoughts to Ponder?
- In most countries, students use electronic calculators for schoolwork.