Desk Top Calculation

 

Desk top - commercial use

1875 - Frank Baldwin - Philadelphia - Factory to build the first desk top           calculator.  (Not keys or printing)

1885 - Dorr E Felt - Comptometer - First keyboard calculator (later a printing method was added)

1892 - Burroughs - Printing adding machine

1900 - 1910 wide acceptance of the adding machine

1920's Electric motors introduced to these devices.

 

Note: All of these plus the punch card accounting machines worked       exceptionally well in the business areas but scientific needs required something more sophisticated.  Science uses would require many manually repeated steps and sorts.  This led to the development of advanced programmed computer concepts using mechanical methods from 1920's through 1940's when ENIAC inaugurated the Electronic age in the computing area.

 

The word "computer", for centuries, referred to a person who did  calculations for a living.

We now refer to an ELECTRONIC COMPUTER

 

ELECTRONIC BRAIN was popular terminology in 1950's

 

 Return to Lecture Notes