Re:Your Career in Computer Programming (2015)
by Animats on Thursday June 25, 2020 @04:34AM
(#23638276)
That machine you reference does seem to be the first machine that can both write and read to its input medium, the punch card, and from there, I suppose, it is history.
Machines that could both read and punch cards in a programmable way were fairly rare. Keypunches could make a copy of a card, and even copy only selected fields, but that was about it. IBM built devices that could read a card, multiply, and punch the result in the same card. (Also see the McClure Multiplying Punch, a mechanical monstrosity from Powers-Samas in England. This could not only multiply, it could so in pounds, shillings, and pence.)
As I've pointed out before, the early history of computing was a long, hard slog trying to make a storage device. Mechanical arithmetic was old; Pascal built a mechanical adder in 1645 (!) and Leibniz built a mechanical multiplier in 1694. IBM had an electronic multiplier in R&D before WWII. But the first computing machine with significant memory (a delay line) was built around 1947. It was clear by the late 1930s that cheap, fast memory would make computing a lot easier, but cheap DRAM was many decades away.
Machines that could both read and punch cards in a programmable way were fairly rare. Keypunches could make a copy of a card, and even copy only selected fields, but that was about it. IBM built devices that could read a card, multiply, and punch the result in the same card. (Also see the McClure Multiplying Punch, a mechanical monstrosity from Powers-Samas in England. This could not only multiply, it could so in pounds, shillings, and pence.)
As I've pointed out before, the early history of computing was a long, hard slog trying to make a storage device. Mechanical arithmetic was old; Pascal built a mechanical adder in 1645 (!) and Leibniz built a mechanical multiplier in 1694. IBM had an electronic multiplier in R&D before WWII. But the first computing machine with significant memory (a delay line) was built around 1947. It was clear by the late 1930s that cheap, fast memory would make computing a lot easier, but cheap DRAM was many decades away.