Can you imagine a world without computers? Where each calculation had to be worked by hand? It wasn‘t long ago when this was reality. My friend, allow me to transport you back to a time when roomsized machines of spinning shafts and electrical relays plodded their way through math problems, digit by digit.
Long before the sleek laptops and smartwatches we enjoy today, these hulking contraptions laid the foundations of modern computing. They introduced many concepts we now take for granted – things like programming, memory storage, networking, and even hacking. Though eventually outdated by faster electronics, electromechanical computers marked a seminal leap forward from pencil and paper.
Join me on an adventure through computing history to better appreciate how far we‘ve come! Our story begins with a German engineer pondering his statistical calculations amid the backdrop of World War II…
Konrad Zuse Leads the Relay Computing Charge
Frustrated by tedious math problems at university in the 1930s, German civil engineer Konrad Zuse devised an electromechanical machine to automate the process. Using relay logic circuits from old telephone switches, he developed the world‘s first functional, programmable computer in his parents‘ living room.
Completed in 1938, the Z1 calculator could perform logical operations and floating point math. Programs were entered manually via perforated 35 mm film strips. It wasn‘t much by today‘s standards but represented an astonishing leap at the dawn of WWII. Within a year Zuse‘s improved Z2 was performing useful work.
Banks of telephone relays drive the arithmetic unit of Konrad Zuse‘s Z3 computer in 1941. (Wikimedia Commons)
By 1941, Zuse had a fully functioning electromechanical computer in operation. Driven by miles of relay wiring, his keyboard-programmable Z3 floated through complex calculations for German aircraft manufacturers. Its 2000 relays chomped through multiplications in under a second – a task requiring 20 minutes by hand!
But Zuse‘s promising computer was destroyed by an Allied bombing raid in 1943 along with his research records. Undeterred, he rebuilt the Z3 from photographs and diagrams after the war using salvaged electronics, completing his Z4 machine in 1950. The Z4 remained in commercial service until 1955 by various German industries.
Through perseverance and visionary problem solving, Konrad Zuse had single-handedly delivered the first functional, fully programmable computers. Almost all fundamental aspects of computing emerged from his efforts, establishing concepts still valued today.
Harvard Drafts IBM for Mathematical Monster Mark I
By 1937 Harvard mathematician Howard Aiken envisioned an electromechanical beast to accelerate naval research computations. He recruited computing heavyweight IBM for help designing and constructing the machine. The result was the Harvard Mark I – a colossal specialized calculator spanning over 50 feet long.
Driven by electric motors, 500,000 components linked driveshafts between calculation units, data handlers, and output devices. Operators could load customized paper tape programs directing the hulking Mark I through chains of arithmetic operations. It even supported basic conditional branch instructions for handling decision logic.
A computer operator processes output data from the mile-long Mark I relay machine circa 1944. (Wikimedia Commons)
Despite its room-filling size and $500,000 price tag, the Mark I wowed visitors at its 1946 unveiling. Working with electromechanical reliability at unprecedented scale, it crunched math tables and naval data for years. The blue uniformed female computers reviewing its results highlight the tight human-machine coupling required.
The Harvard Mark I sits as both a testament and swansong for elaborate electromechanical calculation. Almost all tech concepts that followed, from programming to distribution processing, modeled key principles established by the humming monster IBM built.
Stibitz Stumbles Upon the Power of Binary
Computing as we know it owes a great debt to an unexpected discovery at Bell Labs in 1937. Researcher George Stibitz was tinkering with relays when he accidentally realized they could serve as ideal on/off switches. With some wiring for logic, Stibitz fashioned the circuits into a binary adder using only the digits 1 and 0.
Testing various relay configurations, Stibitz confirmed his novel number system could reliably calculate complex problems with telephone equipment. Partnering with Sam Williams, they fabricated an early computer dubbed the Complex Number Calculator. Completed in 1940 at Bell Labs, it used hundreds of relays to perform arithmetic vital for phone research of the era.
But even more remarkable was its remote operation capabilities. Using just a teletype terminal and phone lines, Williams demonstrated remote control of the machine from New York in 1940. Telecomputing was born! Soon companies were reserving time slots on the innovative calculator. Mathematicians leveraged its number crunching might for particle physics and numerical analysis alike.
Stibitz continued refining the system until called upon for WWII efforts in 1942. But the era of switches and relays for computing was ending. Still, his stumbling insight that binary digits could particle physics and numerical analysis alike.
John Atanasoff Advances Electrical Computing
By the late 1930s physics professor John Atanasoff aimed to accelerate his tedious research equations with an all-electrical computer. Assisted by graduate Clifford Berry, he spent long nights at Iowa State College perfecting the specialized Atanasoff–Berry Computer, or ABC.
The duo worked through endless failed designs before settling on regenerative capacitor memory and vacuum tubes driving electrical relays. Unlike slow mechanical gears, the ABC‘s electronic clocks synchronized at up to 60 Hz for speedy calculations. Paper cards fed instructions and data to the parallel processing arithmetic unit – an innovation allowing calculation times to scale.
After hand-soldering the carefully tailored components, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer was tested in 1942. Despite its limited programmability, the specialized ABC operated reliably at electronic speeds. It remained in use for physics simulations even as electronics outmoded such fixed-program machines. The ABC pioneered critical computing ideas like digital electronics, binary math, and memory that define computers to this day.
Condon‘s Massive Relay Device Delivers Decades of Service
Designed in 1937 at Iowa State University, professor Edward Condon‘s computer aimed to statistically analyze cosmic rays. Nicknamed the Nimatron, technicians hand-wired over 2000 telephone relays according to Condon‘s diagrams – enough to stretch over two miles end-to-end! It took a full decade to construct and debug the one-of-a-kind research calculator.
The humming Nimatron featured mechanical wheels driving electrical displays in tandem – technology hybridizing old and new. Despite room-filling size and archaic displays, Condon‘s ingenious computer delivered vital particle simulations for years. Even as electronics surpassed relays, technician Robert Nelson vigilantly maintained the aging machine until it was retired decades later.
Condon‘s Nimatron utilized mechanical wheels and dials alongside telephone relays for nuclear particle statistics, circa 1937. (Computer History Museum)
Such perseverance highlights the immense challenges of early computing resolved through skill and determination. Relay machines like the Nimatron blazed trails across unfamiliar frontiers. That same human drive guides innovation today – merely with smaller components!
Clattering Relays Give Way to Humming Electronics
The computing pioneers profiled all pushed technology to its limits – yet their relay machines remained constrained by mechanical sluggishness and fragility. Bulldozing through those barriers, they wrestled mathematics itself into the service of automation. But as electronics matured postwar, limitations of switches and shafts became unignorable.
The iconic ENIAC electronic computer followed shortly, filling rooms with over 17,000 radio tubes buzzing through calculations far faster than possible mechanically. Transistors further compacted components exponentially while boosting speed and reliability. Computing crossed firmly from mechanical engineering into electrical engineering afterward.
But recall that for a brief window preceding electronics, relay computers laid all the foundations making later progress possible. We owe their designers immense credit for illuminating pathways we now stride confidently down. So next time your computer boots quickly, or you command it effortlessly, spare a moment‘s thought for these relay-driven machines that came before!
My friend, I hope you‘ve discovered some new appreciation for the electrical calculators driving innovation over 75 years ago. They established concepts core to modern computing – programming, memory, networking – that we now enjoy at fingertip speed! The next time you use your laptop or phone, remember it stands on the humble shoulders of these mechanical giants.