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[科普，笔记] 第一台计算机 The first computer （一）（关联：“自然运算”）

已有 156 次阅读 2025-7-13 22:12 |个人分类:先进的信息理论与技术|系统分类:科研笔记

[科普，笔记] 第一台计算机 The first computer （一） （关联：“自然运算”）

以下对应英文的汉语，来自机器翻译。

一、差分机 The Difference Engine

1832年，巴贝奇 Charles Babbage

二、分析引擎 The Analytical Engine

1910年完成，巴贝奇 Charles Babbage

分析引擎将是一台通用的、完全程序控制的、自动的机械数字计算机。

The machine was designed to consist of four components: the mill, the store, the reader, and the printer.

三、Ada Lovelace，第一位程序员 the first programmer

她后来成为世界上唯一一位对分析引擎使用的穿孔卡片上的指令进行排序的专家；也就是说，她成为了世界上第一位计算机程序员。

She went on to become the world’s only expert on the process of sequencing instructions on the punched cards that the Analytical Engine used; that is, she became the world’s first computer programmer.

四、早期商业机器 Early business machines

1820年，计算器成为商业工具（见前一节数字计算器），1874年，股份有限公司雷明顿军火公司出售了第一台商业上可行的打字机。

Calculators became available as a tool of commerce in 1820 (see the earlier section Digital calculators), and in 1874 the Remington Arms Company, Inc., sold the first commercially viable typewriter.

Herman Hollerith的人口普查制表师 Herman Hollerith’s census tabulator

在接下来的10年里，霍尔瑞斯完善了他的想法，于1884年获得了他的第一项专利，即一种打孔和计数卡片的机器。

Over the next 10 years Hollerith refined his ideas, obtaining his first patent in 1884 for a machine to punch and count cards.

五、其他早期商用机器公司 Other early business machine companies

在1892年，William Seward Burroughs与密苏里州圣路易斯的另外两位商人于1886年成立了美国算术公司，以制造加法机，并获得了第一批真正实用且商业上成功的计算器之一的专利。

in 1892, William Seward Burroughs, who along with two other St. Louis, Missouri, businessmen had started the American Arithmometer Company in 1886 in order to build adding machines, obtained a patent for one of the first truly practical and commercially successful calculators.

六、现代计算机的发明 Invention of the modern computer

Vannevar Bush微分分析器 Vannevar Bush’s Differential Analyzer，约1935年。

1930年，麻省理工学院（MIT）的一位名叫Vannevar Bush的工程师开发了第一台现代模拟计算机。

In 1930 an engineer named Vannevar Bush at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed the first modern analog computer.

霍华德·艾肯的数字计算器 Howard Aiken’s digital calculators

从1939年到1944年，艾肯与IBM合作开发了他的第一台全功能计算机，称为哈佛Mark I。这台机器和巴贝奇的机器一样巨大：长15米（50英尺），重4500公斤（5吨），由大约75万个独立部件组成，主要是机械的。

From 1939 to 1944 Aiken, in collaboration with IBM, developed his first fully functional computer, known as the Harvard Mark I. The machine, like Babbage’s, was huge: more than 15 meters (50 feet) long, weighing 4,500 kg (5 tons), and consisting of about 750,000 separate parts, it was mostly mechanical.

七、图灵机 The Turing machine

1936年发表的开创性论文《论可计算数及其在Entscheidungsproblem[‘Halting Problem]中的应用》中证明，不可能存在这样的通用数学求解器。

Turing interpreted this to mean a computing machine and set out to design one capable of resolving all mathematical problems, but in the process he proved in his seminal paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem [‘Halting Problem’]” (1936) that no such universal mathematical solver could ever exist.

创举 Pioneering work

阿塔纳索夫-贝里计算机 The Atanasoff-Berry Computer

第一台专用电子计算机可能实际上是由爱荷华州立大学（现为爱荷华州立大学）的物理学家和数学家约翰·文森特·阿塔纳索夫在1937年至1942年间发明的。

the first special-purpose electronic computer may actually have been invented by John Vincent Atanasoff, a physicist and mathematician at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University), during 1937–42.

第一个计算机网络 The first computer network

1940年至1946年间，贝尔实验室的George Stibitz和他的团队建造了一系列采用电话技术的机器，即采用机电继电器。

Between 1940 and 1946 George Stibitz and his team at Bell Laboratories built a series of machines with telephone technologies—i.e., employing electromechanical relays.

Konrad Zuse

Zuse从一开始就使用二进制。他所有的原型机器都是1936年制造的，为了简化构造，都使用了二进制表示。

Zuse worked in binary from the beginning. All of his prototype machines, built in 1936, used binary representation in order to simplify construction.

八、第二次世界大战期间的事态发展 Developments during World War II

巨人 Colossus

巨人是一系列重要密码破解机器中的第一台，也被称为Mark I，是在Thomas Flowers爵士的指导下建造的，并于1943年12月交付给伦敦北部政府研究中心Bletchley Park的密码破解行动。

The first in a series of important code-breaking machines, Colossus, also known as the Mark I, was built under the direction of Sir Thomas Flowers and delivered in December 1943 to the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park, a government research center north of London.

Z4 The Z4

在德国，Konrad Zuse于1943年开始在空军部的资助下建造Z4。

In Germany, Konrad Zuse began construction of the Z4 in 1943 with funding from the Air Ministry.

Zuse对数字使用浮点表示法——有效数字，称为尾数，与指向小数点的指针（称为指数）分开存储，允许处理非常大范围的数字——远远领先于时代。

Zuse’s use of floating-point representation for numbers—the significant digits, known as the mantissa, are stored separately from a pointer to the decimal point, known as the exponent, allowing a very large range of numbers to be handled—was far ahead of its time.

参考资料：

[1] 科普中国，2021-12-31，谁才是第一台计算机的发明人？| 秦曾昌

https://www.kepuchina.cn/article/articleinfo?business_type=100&classify=0&ar_id=163573

[2] 科普中国，2024-03-04，光子计算机

https://www.kepuchina.cn/article/articleinfo?business_type=100&classify=0&ar_id=482226

[3] Jacqueline Ruttimann. 2020 computing, Milestones in scientific computing [J]. Nature, 2006, 440: 399–402

doi: 10.1038/440399a

https://www.nature.com/articles/440399a#article-info

[4] Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing - CHM

https://computerhistory.org/exhibits/revolution/

[5] Live Science, Timothy Williamson, 2023-12-22, History of computers: A brief timeline

https://www.livescience.com/20718-computer-history.html