History shows that the very first computers were invented long ago mostly as use for doing calculations. In prehistory early man would make these devices from clay tablets and then what is most likely referred to as the first computer, the Abacus. Invented in China around the fourteenth century the abacus allowed counting above ten digits. The Ancient Greeks also invented a “computer” for determining the movement of celestial bodies called the Antikythera Mechanism. Most likely made around 150BC it was found on the seafloor near Greece in 1902.

Fast forward to 1889 when Herman Hollerith invented his Hollerith Tabulator which was used to tabulate the 1890 US Census in remarkable speed, two years faster than the 1880 census which was counted using manual labor. Hollerith’s Tabulator saved the US government over Five million dollars because they didn’t have to pay humans to do the work.

“Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company would later merge with three other companies to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, renamed International Business Machines (aka IBM) in 1924.”

Moving forward, during World War II the Germans Enigma Machine was invented in order to encrypt and decrypt secret communicates in order to keep their military plans out of the Allies hands. It’s design was complex using rotors, electric relays, steppers and ratchets, which would translate whatever was typed on its keyboard into or out of code. Eventually the Enigma code was broken by the Allies due to the capture of and enigma machine and it’s tablets. Another interesting tidbit:

The first Enigmas were manufactured in the 1920s, and were heavily used by the German armed forces from the 1930s on. The army, navy and Luftwaffe each had specialized versions of the Enigma. Because the Allied code breaking effort remained secret until the 1970s, Enigma machines were still used by some countries — including the Franco government in Spain — until the 1950s.

Now we can see that computers have been around for a long time each serving it’s own special purpose and yet very important to the development of our super computers we use today. So remember the next time you pull out even a simple electronic calculator or even your cellphone that you could be pulling out an Abacus instead, heh. I hope you enjoyed this little history lesson.

[via Wired]