Rebirth of the Tech Madman

Chapter 57 Computer and Zhouyi

On the way, Lin Fengjiao quietly glanced at Tang Huan, whose expression had eased, and then boldly opened his mouth, “It’s all my fault for bringing Hu Yinmeng over and causing a lot of trouble.”

“What does it have to do with you? It can only be said to be unlucky.” Tang Huan waved his hand disapprovingly.

Lin Fengjiao breathed a sigh of relief, his sweetheart didn’t mind.

Because Tang Huan planned to take Lin Fengjiao to the United States for a few days after the Golden Horse Awards, when he returned to his apartment, Lin Fengjiao began to pack up various items, such as scripts that he needed to read.

Soon, Jian Mingren, Shi Chongtang and others came to visit one after another.

Previously, through air-shipped parts and components from the headquarters of Philosopher in the United States, Jian Mingren assembled 50 finished products of Fangyuan, which enabled the official statistics department of Baodao to modernize the office on the occasion of the birthday of the big man, and all relevant parties have achieved results and face. , So the company’s public relations are more like fish in water.

“Relevant parties would like to invite you to go to the university to give a lecture tomorrow and introduce the latest cutting-edge computer technology.” Jian Mingren laughed.

Tang Huan pondered for a moment. The Formosa Boulevard incident will erupt next month. Any contradiction will be accumulated. There must be various signs now. He really does not want to spend too much time in non-commercial places during this period of time. Publicity.

“Is there anything to introduce? I don’t have the relevant information prepared if I say hello in advance.” Tang Huan declined.

“In fact, it’s just a pretense to build a relationship. In the past, just a casual talk. This is a very good opportunity to expand our brand. Apart from other benefits, it will at least help recruit some elite students to enter the company.” Jian Mingren is very good. enthusiastic.

Tang Huan heard this and felt that it was the same reason, so he nodded, “Okay, then I will brag about it tomorrow.”

Everyone chatted for a while, and when it was not early, they got up and left.

Since he was going to give a speech tomorrow, he had to prepare an outline, so Tang Huan asked Lin Fengjiao to help him get paper and pen.

“You lost your golden pen in the restaurant, let’s deal with it with another pen first.” Lin Fengjiao explained.

Tang Huan nodded, and began to conceive of the content of tomorrow’s speech. The computer looks sophisticated, but it is boring to talk about it, and I don’t know what level the college students here are. It really takes a bit of thought.

When he was almost busy, Tang Huan got up and walked gently into the bedroom, seeing Lin Fengjiao sitting on the bedside reading the script.

“Why don’t you sleep? The Golden Horse Awards will be presented tomorrow. It won’t work if you don’t have enough energy.” Tang Huan joked.

“Waiting for you to sleep together.” Lin Fengjiao smiled sweetly.

“Jiaojiao is so considerate.” Tang Huan hugged Lin Fengjiao into his arms and kissed her head down.

“You have said that you must have enough energy for the Golden Horse Awards tomorrow, so we will only do it once tonight.” Lin Fengjiao asked shyly.

“Okay, once, once, but until dawn.” Tang Huan laughed happily.

“I hate it.” After Lin Fengjiao complained, he was speechless.

……

The next day, after Tang Huan had breakfast, he went out to university after reading the newspaper, while Lin Fengjiao cleaned up the house.

Soon after, the phone rang. It turned out that it was from Hu Yinmeng, saying that he found a gold pen in the restaurant yesterday.

Lin Fengjiao was overjoyed when he heard it, “Why don’t you send it to the university? Tang Huan is giving a speech there. Maybe he will use it when signing.”

Hu Yin dreamed about it. Anyway, this year’s Golden Horse Awards didn’t have anything to do with her. There was no need to prepare anything specially. Going to the university was really not a hassle, so he agreed.

……

Tang Huan glanced at the crowded students in the audience, and couldn’t help but slandered in his heart, surely he couldn’t be so popular with others, it should be the organizer of the event.

Fortunately, he didn’t plan to talk about any boring technical topics last night, otherwise the crowd would fall asleep a lot, which would affect the mood too much.

Tang Huan glanced at his escort, and when he saw that the other party indicated that he was ready, he slowly said: “We Chinese like to talk about history, so I will just chat with you today about the development history before the advent of electronic computers. .”

It can be said that modern electronic computers originated from mechanical calculators.

In ancient times, the most famous calculator was of course the abacus invented by our ancestors, but like the four great inventions, it only made a brilliant start, and then gradually became a bystander in the long history.

In 1642, Blaise Pascal, who was under 19 years old, in order to reduce the burden of his father’s repeated calculation of tax revenue and expenditure, created a decimal mechanical calculator that can perform addition and subtraction, the Pascal calculator.

In the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris and the Zwinger Museum in Dresden, Germany, you can see the first two Pascal calculators manufactured. These machines later became the pioneers of early computer engineering.

……

When Hu Yinmeng arrived at the university, he found that he was late, and Tang Huan’s speech had already begun.

Seeing so many spectators on the scene, the female literary youth naturally had to scold the event organizer in her heart. She was so happy, and then hid in the corner to watch the excitement boredly.

……

In 1667, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz saw the Pascal calculator in the Paris Museum and was immediately attracted by it.

He believes that since mechanical calculators can perform addition, they should be able to perform multiplication.

In 1673, Leibniz finally invented the first multiplier. After continuous improvement, it finally became a real calculator that can calculate addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root calculation.

Everyone knows that without binary, there would be no modern computer, and it was Leibniz who proposed binary, studied the algorithm, and initially created logical algebra.

Leibniz is a rare generalist in history. He is known as the Aristotle of the seventeenth century and occupies an important position in the history of mathematics and philosophy.

In mathematics, Leibniz and Newton independently invented calculus, and the mathematical notation of calculus he used was more widely used, because the notation used by Newton is generally considered to be worse than that of Leibniz.

In philosophy, Leibniz’s optimism is also very famous, he can be regarded as the first European to come into contact with Chinese culture.

In 1689, Leibniz traveled in Italy, met missionaries who had returned from the Qing Dynasty, and saw the gossip of the Book of Changes re-arranged by scholars in the Song Dynasty.

In essence, the yin and yang gossip of “Zhouyi” contains a kind of binary thought. Leibniz’s invention of binary system is not affected by the influence of “Zhouyi”. It is necessary for the so-called face to be forced to find some pride.

I just want to explain that in the long history of computer development, our Chinese thoughts have also flashed wisdom in this field.

……

Hu Yinmeng held Tang Huan’s golden pen, while writing and drawing in the notebook casually, while occasionally looking up on the stage, as for the stunning gaze of the boy next to him, it was directly ignored by the female Wenqing.

The so-called speeches are performed in addition to speeches. All kinds of celebrities in the United States have to show up like this, and Hu Yinmeng is naturally no stranger to this.

Looking at Tang Huan and not taking the manuscript, she just stood on the stage and talked freely. A thought flashed through the female literary youth’s heart. This Tang Huan looked a little different from those stinky businessmen.

……

In the 19th century, Britain, known as the sun never set, had a large number of overseas colonies, and its navigation industry has always been valued by the ruling class.

As early as 1776, the United Kingdom issued a nautical watch for use by the military and commercial organizations.

However, the calculation of the nautical table is complicated and requires a lot of people to work together. The monotonous data calculation and the improper cooperation of the calculation personnel make the calculated results often incorrect and difficult to detect.

In the course of using it, more and more errors and loopholes were discovered in the navigation watch. There were even hundreds of ships hitting the rocks and sinking to the point where they had to be corrected.

In 1823, the United Kingdom issued a reward for finding someone who could correct the nautical watch. The mathematician Charles Babbage unveiled the list.

He believes that an automatic calculation machine can be made to replace humans to complete those complex tasks. The process from calculation to output is fully automated, so that calculation errors, transcription errors, proofreading errors, printing errors, etc. can be completely eliminated. Negligence.

Although this idea was ridiculed by many people, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, recognized its feasibility and invested £1,500 to develop an automatic computing machine for Babbage. Start-up capital.

In 1835, Babbage’s differential engine was successfully developed.

In the design, Babbage draws on the basic ideas of Pascal and Leibniz, and the innovation is that the differential engine uses three gear sets as the memory of the data involved in the calculation process.

This is the difference between a difference engine and a calculator. Instead of only completing one arithmetic operation at a time, you can perform polynomial calculations in accordance with pre-arranged steps.

After completing the differential engine with three memories, Babbage began to design the differential engine with seven memories.

However, in the manufacturing process, in order to pursue perfection, he repeatedly modified the design. The machining errors of many parts exceeded the technical ability at the time, and eventually ended in failure. The semi-finished product was sent to the museum.

Although the second differential engine was not manufactured, the idea of ​​modern computers began to sprout.

Babbage divides the differential engine into three parts: memory part, read and write data part and data operation part.

The three major components are divided and cooperated, and each performs its own responsibility. This idea has been adopted by designers of modern computers.

Tang Huan picked up the chalk, turned around and drew a schematic diagram on the blackboard.

……

After losing the research and development funding, Babbage continued to work and designed a more complex machine on the drawing-the analysis machine, proposed the concept of programming, and introduced punch cards.

Punched cards can be used not only to record data, but also to store instructions to control the machine.

When the machine is working, it reads the punched card and executes it in the order of instructions. This sequence of actions is the working program of the machine.

Punch different holes on the card, and the machine will have different working procedures.

When you want to complete different tasks, you don’t need to replace the machine itself, just design the perforation arrangement on the card. This is the software design concept of modern computers.

The structure of the analysis machine is more like a modern computer, but limited by Babbage’s own economic situation and technical processing capabilities at that time, the analysis machine has not been manufactured either.

Babbage’s design ideas on the analysis machine were considered ridiculous by the people at the time. How could a machine replace the human brain? It is absolutely impossible. Even when Babbage died in 1871, the Times laughed at his failure in the obituary.

After the death of 　　 Babbage, the design drawings and spare parts of his analysis machine were collected by the museum, and people forgot about it.

It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that it was discovered by the lucky Dr. Howard Aiken of Harvard University’s Computing Laboratory when he was looking up data for the design of computers.

Then people realized how correct and important Babbage’s computer design ideas are.

It is precisely because of the design concept of the difference engine and the analysis engine, and the actual manufacturing of some of the machines, the Babe Wizard is regarded as the pioneer of the computer.

But how many years have humans wasted? Tang Huan wrote the numbers 1871 and 1940 on the blackboard.

……

Hu Yinmeng subconsciously calculated on the notebook, then snorted, and just said it.

……

As human beings entered the electricity age from the steam age, some engineers and scientists began to consider replacing the gears and some transmission components in the mechanical computer with electrical components.

In 1884, Hollerith used the principles of electricity and binary arithmetic to invent an electric tabulating machine, which was first successfully applied in the U.S. Census.

In 1896, Hollerith established a watchmaking machine company. After the electric watchmaking machine was widely used in various statistics, it gradually developed into a new industry.

In 1911, due to health and poor management, Hollerith’s company merged with the Metrology Company and the International Timekeeping Company to become a chronograph and measurement company, namely . However, the following three years still suffered serious losses, so the board of directors invited it. Thomas Watson.

Watson borrowed from the bank to develop a new electric tabulating machine, coupled with excellent marketing, the company’s performance is booming.

In 1924, Watson changed the name of CTR to IBM and became the actual founder of Giant Blue.

Thanks to Watson’s promotion, electric tabulation machines were extremely popular in business computing, and even in the 1960s, they were still used by companies.

In 1939, Watson provided Howard Aiken with 1 million US dollars in cash and equipment grants, based on the Babbage analysis machine, using mechanical and electrical components to develop a general-purpose computer.

In 1944, the MARK-I, which was composed of multiple IBM electric tabulation machines, thousands of relays, and gears responsible for the memory function, was successfully developed.

In 1946, MARK-II composed entirely of relays was successfully developed.

At this point, the development of electromechanical computers has reached its peak.

After 　　, it is the era of electronic computers that everyone is familiar with. Characters such as Alan Turing and von Neumann have appeared one after another. The internal structure of computers has evolved from electron tubes and transistors to today’s integrated circuits.

……

Tang Huan smiled, “Don’t look at the many different parts of the computer, but the main design idea is still the same. Imagine in your mind that the ancestor Fuxi used tree branches to put out the eight symbols of yin and yang and gossip on the ground. Combining with each other for deduction, it seems that we are not so lagging behind either.”