Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1927 Basic Theory
The reason why I chose "Culture" instead of "Flying Fish" is because the project team has spent a lot of time on Curta and accumulated some experience. Compared with the keyboard-style "Flying Fish", it seems easier to imitate "Culture" .

The main components of the lever-type hand-cranked computer include the left and right digital disks, the driver, the stepping device, the stepping drum, the counting device, the shifting device, the counting device, etc. The manufacturing difficulties are still in the carrying device, the counting device, and the shifting device. In terms of the material strength of the mechanism, sometimes the rods, teeth, and gears are excessively worn, sometimes the torsion springs and pressure reeds are not elastic enough, and sometimes the tolerance of the eleven gears is too large, resulting in problems such as the number of strings, belts, and half. .The life of individual components is only about [-] times.The only solution is to refuel frequently and change parts.

Fortunately, the volume and weight are smaller than the enlarged version of Curta, and the lifespan is longer. After all, the mechanical structure is simpler. Although it is not so delicate, it is also simple and durable.A few samples have been produced so far, but they are still being tested and improved.

Most of the veterans actually brought enough calculators, and the manpower group of the computing center rarely used hand-cranked computers for calculation tasks. Originally, the demand for this thing was not very urgent, and the relevant design, manufacturing, and testing personnel, including the veterans, were Other projects are frequently seconded, and the overall efficiency of the project is not high.

However, the project has received explicit or covert support from the steampunk group with Duke Du as the spiritual leader, so it has been in the state of "research and development" and is a well-known fishing project in the machinery industry.

However, with the expansion of the occupied area, especially the future expansion of the occupied area to Guangdong and Guangxi, local governments can no longer continue the "central all-inclusive" system in Hainan, Taiwan and other places in the past.All kinds of finance, taxation and statistics are completed by a team dispatched by the Government Administration Council.Whether it is Hainan, Taiwan or Jeju, the economic scale and population weight are relatively low, and the number of calculations is not large. Basic statistics and analysis can be completed with a handful of modern equipment.

But now, starting from the special city of Guangzhou, all localities have to establish their own taxation and statistics agencies, and the demand for computing has suddenly increased.So the hand computer project suddenly accelerated.

Feng Nuo visited the imitation project of a hand-cranked computer once, and he had to admit that it was really difficult for him to make any contribution to this project-basically, people who don't understand fitters are useless.Occasionally, Feng Shan would take students to the Human Computing Center to visit the only few "Miracle of Senate Wisdom", and she also regularly gave hands-on computer practical lessons to students in the vocational technical school's computing training class.

It seems that he has to work on other aspects, Feng Nuo carefully pondered where his professional advantages are.He opened his notebook and started browsing through old posts.After a while, the words "punched card" appeared in the corner of the article. Feng Nuo's eyes lit up, and he faintly felt that he had seized a breakthrough.

Next, he consulted a lot of materials, flipped through the previous "Nature and Science", and gradually had a preliminary plan in his mind.

The soldiers and horses did not move, but the food and grass went first.Having been in the Senate for so long, Feng Nuo still knows the basic truth of preparing for public opinion in advance.He spent a few nights, scissors paste plus original, concocted two articles.One article "From the 1890 U.S. Census to the Rise of IBM Corporation - A Brief Discussion on the Historical Contribution of Mechanical Computers", and one article "The Origin of the Three Basic Devices of "Analytical Computers" and the General Computer Architecture".

The previous article naturally talked about the glorious history of mechanical computers, but the focus was on elevating the status of punched card computer systems, while stepping on hand-cranked computers.

"... There is no doubt that the combination of cards + mechanical processors is much more advanced than manual processing of information, and the advantages in numerical calculations are very obvious. As for complex tasks such as file classification and processing, mechanical computers can instantly kill the most diligent Administrator. In 1890, the computer first became popular. The census information of the United States was finally collected and processed by a punched card program-controlled computer originated from Babbage, and all tasks were completed in six weeks. For comparison, The previous 1880 census took seven years to process all the data, resulting in the final data being completely outdated. This victory marked the advent of the computer age. With the invention of the internal combustion engine, the electric motor and the advancement of the mechanical industry, mechanical Computers will also cover more fields.

"By the middle of the 20th century, IBM, established in 1911, had been producing mechanical computers on a scale of thousands of units per year to process billions of card information. With the strengthening of relays, a new generation of computing units was formed using precision hydraulic parts Computers are also coming soon, capable of performing hundreds of basic calculations per second...

First of all, you have to quote the supervisor's quotations as your own platform. Of course, if the mechanical computer is quickly compared to ENIAC, it will save you.

Next, Feng Nuo cited several examples of commercial tabulating machines in the operation of the US government and enterprises, and finally mentioned:
"In our era, the application of computers can be roughly divided into 8 fields, scientific computing and data processing, industrial control and real-time control, office automation and management information systems, computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM), Internet and communication , multimedia, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. Among them, the first three application fields of computers have been widely recognized in governments, enterprises, and academic institutions in the mechanical age."

"It is true that the origin of the computer is to perform calculations quickly and efficiently. However, even in the era of mechanical computers, scientific computing is only a part of the application of computers. What really makes computers flourish and become widely known is their applications in data processing, industrial control and office work. Important application in automation. This is something that the Senate must carefully consider in the planning of the computer industry.

"The reason for this is that compared with business applications such as data processing, scientific computing is not so much in the method of processing, as it is in the amount of data to be processed and the calculations to be performed on the data. difference between quantities.

"When computers are used in research fields such as aerospace, mechanics, meteorology, and nuclear physics, only a relatively small amount of data is used, but in order to obtain answers, thousands of operations need to be performed on these data. Relatively few data And a large number of calculations are typical scientific calculations.

"In contrast, in commercial, industrial and social applications, we often have a large amount of data, but we only need to perform a few calculations, such as census and statistics, such as salary calculation and payment, which are typical business nature data processing.

"For simple logarithmic or trigonometric calculations, a slide rule is a better choice."

"Scientific computing may be able to solve more difficult problems, but business data processing can solve more problems. This is the difference between Matlab and Excel. A few sets of Matlab are enough, and our existing equipment can still use dozens of Years; and the demand for Excel is endless, but we cannot divide the data processing capabilities of personal laptops into tens of thousands. It is self-evident which one is more urgent."

This metaphor is not bad, most of the veterans can understand it, and Feng Nuo is quite satisfied.He went on to write bluntly:

"Obviously, before the 1970s, mechanical computers not only completed a large number of computing tasks for science and engineering, but more importantly, they effectively supported the progress of society and industry and commerce in business processing and office automation. Necessary prerequisite for prosperous development. 'Stored program', 'instruction controller', 'input and output', 'data representation', 'data carrier', 'logic operation', etc. that appear in applications such as data statistics and analysis, industrial control, etc. Requirements are the key concepts that ultimately form the general-purpose computer architecture, and are the source of modern computers. Hand-cranked or electric mechanical calculators are just the prototype of computing components in this huge architecture.”

"Ultimately, the rise of IBM as the giant of computer manufacturing, rather than the maker of a fancy hand-held calculator, is certainly the best footnote to this conclusion."

This article is naturally going to be submitted to the "Weekly News".

The second article is intended to be submitted to "Nature and Science", focusing on explaining the various components of the punched card computer system. First, it should echo the article in "Weekly News", and second, it should show your technical ability and professional background. Thirdly, it should be implied that the mechanical design and manufacture of punched card computers is actually less difficult than hand-cranked calculators.

"A complete set of machinery and equipment used to calculate a large amount of data, formerly known as 'analytical computer', is widely used in government departments and large enterprises and institutions that have data statistics and repetitive business processing needs. The most obvious sign is the use of punched cards ( Punched Card) as the carrier of data. Each set of "punched card computer" includes several machines with different purposes. From the perspective of their functions, they can be divided into three categories: the first category is really used for grouping, induction and calculation The machines of the second class are generally called basic machines or main machines, such as sorting machines and tabulating machines (accounting machines); the second class is machines that prepare for all grouping, induction, calculation and printing of tables, generally called auxiliary machines or auxiliary machines, including hole rolling machines (punching machines), hole inspection machines, etc.; category 1 is also auxiliary machines, but they are designed for certain specialized operations and are only used to complete the process of machine aggregation Specific additional operations are called special performance equipment, including duplicators, card selection machines, decoding machines, etc."

"Punched card computers rely on mechanical design and transmission as programs, and rely on mechanical mechanisms and punched cards to temporarily store or permanently store information. According to the different formats of punched cards, they are also divided into different models. Although most of the later punched card computers use Electromagnetic power and control mechanism, but in essence it is still an out-and-out mechanical computer, or "electromechanical computer". Not only can it be designed as an all-mechanical structure, but it can also be operated by manpower, animal power or even a steam engine. "

(End of this chapter)