[Verba] Meeting Summary Oct11 & Oct 18

[Stuart D. Gathman]

 	October 11

Last week, someone asked for a history of computing.  I don't think they 
wanted to go back two centuries, but we did.  We looked briefly at the
Jacquard loom [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom], then at 
Charles Babbage application of the cards to calculation.  An emulation
of the Analytical Engine [http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/contents.html]
makes clear that Babbage over designed his project.

Scaling back the precision and store would have provided a useful machine that
could solve the pressing problems of the day (errors in navigation tables) at
far less cost.  But Babbage convinced himself that his brilliant creation would
be the first and last ever built - and so had to be large enough for all time.

As a result, it was never built at all - except as historical recreations
today.  Babbage insisted on 50 decimal digit numbers, with 100 digit products
and 1000 (50 digit) numbers in the store.  This was several times larger than
the first electro-mechanical computers - and all had to be powered by steam!
His son built a portion of the engine, and actually used it for some
computations.

In the absence of the Engine to print accurate log and trig tables for
navigation, the American, Nathaniel Bowditch, was a calculating
super hero.  He was able to calculate in his head, and correct the tables. 
He also invented log trig tables and simple tax form like procedures
that made complex navigation computations accessible to sailors who could
only add and subtract.  His tables have been checked by computer, and
were completely accurate.  The historical novel, "Carry on Mr. Bowditch",
provides an entertaining account of his life.

 	October 18

Clearly, we should keep the lectures to email from now on.  The hands
on time in class is too precious.  Please ask any background questions
on this mailing list.  Today, we broke out the micro-economic simulation
written by Rebecca and Jilian last year.  This provided working code
that was enthusiastically hacked by the class.

With everyone working on the same code independently, it is a good time to
learn about CVS and SVN next week.

I've put a copy of our class directory on the web at:

http://gathman.org/verba

Today's changes by individuals are in subdirectories for your class login.

-- 
 	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.