查尔斯·巴贝奇(Charles Babbage,1792—1871):科学管理的先驱者,第一台可编程的机械计算机的设计者
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巴贝奇出生于一个富有的银行家的家庭,曾就读于剑桥大学三一学院。
巴贝奇在1812/1813年初次想到用机械来计算数学表;后来,制造了一台小型计算机,能进行8位数的某些数学运算。1823年得到政府的支持,设计一台容量为20位数的计算机。它的制造要求有较高的机械工程技术。于是巴贝奇专心从事于这方面的研究。他于1834年发明了分析机(现代电子计算机的前身)的原理。在这项设计中,他曾设想根据储存数据的穿孔卡上的指令进行任何数学运算的可能性,并设想了现代计算机所具有的大多数其他特性,但因1842 年政府拒绝进一步支援,巴贝奇的计算器未能完成。斯德歌尔摩的舒茨公司按他的设计于1855年制造了一台计算器。使真正的计算机则至到电子时代才制成。
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巴贝奇在24岁时就被选为英国皇家学会会员。他参与创建了英国天文学会和统计学会,并且是天文学会金质奖章获得者。他还是巴黎伦理科学院、爱尔兰皇家学会和美国科学学院的成员。
他的主要著作有:
此外,还有以下一些论文:
发明分析机
1823年得到政府的支持,设计一台容量为20位数的计算机。它的制造要求有较高的机械工程技术。
于是巴贝奇专心从事于这方面的研究。他于1834年发明了分析机(现代电子计算机的前身)的原理。在这项设计中,他曾设想根据储存数据的穿孔卡上的指令进行任何数学运算的可能性,并设想了现代计算机所具有的大多数其他特性,但因 1842 年政府拒绝进一步支援,巴贝奇的计算器未能完成。斯德歌尔摩的舒茨公司按他的设计于1855年制造了一台计算器。使真正的计算机时至到电子时代才制成。 巴贝奇在24岁时就被选为英国皇家学会会员。他参与创建了英国天文学会和统计学会,并且是天文学会金质奖章获得者。他还是巴黎伦理科学院、爱尔兰皇家学会和美国科学学院的成员。
Babbage sought a method by which mathematical tables could be calculated mechanically, removing the high rate of human error. Three different factors seem to have influenced him: a dislike of untidiness; his experience working on logarithmic tables; and existing work on calculating machines carried out by Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz. He first discussed the principles of a calculating engine in a letter to Sir Humphry Davy in 1822.
Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers, although they were not actually completed, largely because of funding problems and personality issues. He directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanized. Although Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was very similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction based, the control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I/O unit.
In Babbage’s time, numerical tables were calculated by humans who were called ‘computers’, meaning "one who computes", much as a conductor is "one who conducts". At Cambridge, he saw the high error-rate of this human-driven process and started his life’s work of trying to calculate the tables mechanically. He began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions. Unlike similar efforts of the time, Babbage's difference engine was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of finite differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division.
The first difference engine was composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen tons (13,600 kg), and stood 8 ft (2.4 m) high. Although he received ample funding for the project, it was never completed. He later designed an improved version, "Difference Engine No. 2", which was not constructed until 1989-1991, using Babbage's plans and 19th century manufacturing tolerances. It performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum returning results to 31 digits, far more than the average modern pocket calculator.
The London Science Museum has constructed two Difference Engines, according to Babbage's plans for the Difference Engine No 2. One is owned by the museum; the other, owned by technology millionaire Nathan Myhrvold, went on exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California on 10 May 2008.The two models that have been constructed are not replicas; until the assembly of the first Difference Engine No 2 by the London Science Museum, no model of the Difference Engine No 2 existed.
Soon after the attempt at making the difference engine crumbled, Babbage started designing a different, more complex machine called the Analytical Engine. The engine is not a single physical machine but a succession of designs that he tinkered with until his death in 1871. The main difference between the two engines is that the Analytical Engine could be programmed using punch cards. He realized that programs could be put on these cards so the person had only to create the program initially, and then put the cards in the machine and let it run. The analytical engine would have used loops of Jacquard's punched cards to control a mechanical calculator, which could formulate results based on the results of preceding computations. This machine was also intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers, including sequential control, branching, and looping, and would have been the first mechanical device to be Turing-complete.
Ada Lovelace, an impressive mathematician, and one of the few people who fully understood Babbage's ideas, created a program for the Analytical Engine. Had the Analytical Engine ever actually been built, her program would have been able to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers. Based on this work, Lovelace is now widely credited with being the first computer programmer.In 1979, a contemporary programming language was named Ada in her honour. Shortly afterward, in 1981, a satirical article by Tony Karp in the magazine Datamation described the Babbage programming language as the "language of the future".
While the abacus and mechanical calculator have been replaced by electronic calculators using microchips, the recent advances in MEMS and nanotechnology have led to recent high-tech experiments in mechanical computation. The benefits suggested include operation in high radiation or high temperature environments.
These modern versions of mechanical computation were highlighted in the magazine The Economist in its special "end of the millennium" black cover issue in an article entitled "Babbage's Last Laugh".The article highlighted work done at University of California Berkeley by Ezekiel Kruglick. In this Doctoral Dissertation the researcher reports mechanical logic cells and architectures sufficient to implement the Babbage Analytical engine (see above) or any general logic circuit. Carry-shift digital adders and various logic elements are detailed as well as modern analysis on required performance for microscopic mechanical logic.
巴贝奇从小就养成对任何事情都要寻根究底的习惯,拿到玩具也会拆开来看看里面的构造。以后他又受了数学和其他科学的训练并考察了许多工厂。这使得他在管理方面提出了许多创见和新的措施。他的贡献主要有以下几点:
巴贝奇还指出,脑力劳动也同体力劳动一样地可以进行分工。他指出,法国桥梁和道路学校校长普隆尼把他的工作人员分成技术性、半技术性、非技术性3类,把复杂的工作交给有高度能力的数学家去做,把简单的工作交给只能从事加减运算的人去做,从而大大提高了整个工作的效率。