Week #1 Questions and Answers

1) What was unique about Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, compared to his original Difference Engine?

The Difference Engine was only capable of performing addition by the method of differences. The Analytical Engine was meant to be a multi-purpose computing machine, with its application decided by it’s user. Also, the Difference Engine was a series of sprocket wheels turned by cranks, where as the Analytical Engine was to be programmable through the use of punch cards inspired by the Jacquard Loom.

2) What role did Ada Lovelace play in the development of the Analytical Engine?

Countess Ada Lovelace essentially designed the “software” that would be meant to run Babbage’s Analytical Engine. She is widely considered the first computer programmer.

3) How was the ENIAC computer reprogrammed?

The ENIAC was reprogrammed by an exhaustive process of setting up to 6000 switches, and re-plugging hundreds of cables, all accomplished by manual human labor.

4) Name an innovation that helped make programming faster post ENIAC (see ep. 2)

The development of the EDSAC by Maurice Williams at Cambridge University. The EDSAC could store it’s programming. This made it so that the exhaustive efforts required to program the computer would only have to be done once and stored, rather than constantly having to reset switches and re-plug cables as the programmers of the ENIAC had to.

5) What is it about binary counting that makes it so well suited to computers?

As the Binary system only includes two numbers, 1 and 0, they can easily be represented by a two position switch. Switch on = 1 and switch off = 0.

6) In what ways did UNIVAC influence the portrayal of computers in popular culture in the 1950s? Give an example. (see ep. 2)

UNIVAC’s successful prediction of the 1952 American presidential election, and the subsequent publicity from media outlets firmly cemented the computer into the popular culture of not only America, but also the world. Media outlets printed varying headlines along the lines of ‘Machine Outsmarts Man’.

One example of UNIVAC’s newfound fame portrayed in popular culture was a Looney Tunes feature depicting Porky Pig and Daffy Duck feeding a set of punch sheet instructions into a player piano bearing the UNIVAC logo.

7) Codebreaking required the automatic manipulation of symbols to unscramble messages during WWII. What was the name of the rudimentary computer at Bletchley Park in England that unscrambled Nazi codes.

The rudimentary computer at Bletchley Park used to unscramble Nazi codes was called Enigma.

8) Alan Turing who understood the implications of such machines later went on to describe them as __________ machines.

Turing referred to computers as “computing machines”.

General Questions:

Write two paragraphs for each:

9) Describe when you first used computers and what types of tasks you performed on them.

Although I used calculators in the early 1970’s, the first true computer I used was a Commodore PET computer during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. I don’t remember whether that was in Junior High School, High School, or both. I cannot remember what specific model number that we used (Maybe CBM 4016), only that the machine had a built in keyboard and monitor with monochrome display (usually green). Our High School’s computer lab eventually added some Apple II+ computers, and one state-of-the-art Commodore 64. Programs were either written in BASIC, or loaded via cassette tape.

Scholarly tasks associated with using the computers were learning how to write simple programs in BASIC, such as how to randomly generate a number, or how to write a program that would ask for a student’s age and name or some other such information. Someone designed a computer dating program at our High School that measured compatibility through the answers to a long series of questions. Needless to say, Anne Marie Festa wasn’t at all impressed that the computer declared us compatible. We were also allowed to load simple games and play them, though I can’t think of the names of any of those games now.

10) How restricted do you think computers are in terms of what they can do compared to how they are most often used?

I think the discrepancy between what computers are capable of, and how they are most often used is quite vast. I think this is why so many “Black Hats” create “Zombie Armies” out of legions of other people’s computers. Such an army of enslaved computers could be quite powerful indeed as demonstrated by the gravity of recent denial-of-service attacks against various upper-echelon web domains.

How restricted computers are relative to what they are capable of resides in the expertise and ambition of their users. I remember watching a television program on the Science Network about the potential threat of advanced artificial intelligences rebelling against their human masters, and hypothetical responses to such a takeover attempt. It seemed unthinkable and at best unlikely event at first. Gradually the idea became a bit less farfetched to me and creepiness began to set in.