Prehistory and History of Computers

Prehistory and History of Computers

The origins of the computer are very recent (the early 1940's), and its history therefore covers a very short period of time (half a century only). It would be interesting to know instead how man, since the dawn civilization, has come to devise aids which helped him solve problems relative to doing calculations and keeping track of the results, at first through what nature could offer him, and then by gradually exploiting his mental faculties. As civilization developed, the increasing need to reckon and store information was what led man to think up convenient ways of recording and doing calculations, the early 'external' aids no longer depending on his memory or oral tradition. That's why we'll start with the 'prehistory' of the computers, from the very first forms of communication, expression, and language, to see how, throughout the centuries, the extraordinary human mind has come to 'create' calculating and recording aids, till in the early 1940's the computer was invented. It joined both functions 'calculating and recording', which made it an efficient and powerful tool, the dream come true of many 'pioneers' in computer science.

The Computers and the War

The computer was a product of the war. it was devised in the early 1940's for military purposes almost contemporaneously in the USA, England and Germany, and the date of its birth became the subject of a long court battle (in the USA), to decide which of its inventors was to be considered the winner of the 'race', since their work had been kept in strict secrecy during wartime, and none of them could be informed of what was going on elsewhere. Anyway, no US computer came out in time to be used on the battlefield: ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, was turned on for the first time in 1945 and was used to calculate ballistic tables and trajectories for guns and missiles. In Britain, the Colossus series, the programmable machines whose existence was kept secret till long after the war was over, was developed in 1943 and was used to break the top secret German ENIGMA code. It had 15,000 valves and used paper tape for the program. In Germany, the existence of an electronic, operational computer was revealed to the public only at the end of the war, and America only when a translation of its details appeared in the mid-1960's. It was built by Zuse, a German engineer, and called Z3. It was activated in late 1941, four years before ENIAC was started and two years before Alan Turing helped the British crack German coded messages.

PART 2

The Stock Exchange

The Stock Exchange is the centre where shares and bonds are bought and sold, and a place where companies can raise capital for investment and people can invest their savings either to get an income or to make capital gains (by selling shares).

A share or shock (in U.S.A.) represents a part of the company's capital, while a bond is a document issued by a government or company when borrowing money from the public.

An investor cannot buy and sell share by himself, he needs the assistance and advise of an intermediary, a broker-dealer who buys and sells shares on behalf of members of the public.

Brokers earn a commission for arranging the purchase and sale of shares.

There are two main types of dealers:

Bulls, who believe that the value of the shares will rise so they buy them in order to sell them lately at a higher price;

Bears, who believe that the value of the shares will fall so they sell them.

There are Stock Exchange in many major cities including New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Paris, London, Milan as well as in other important centres.

The London Stock Exchange was formed in 1801 and became the accepted place to buy and sell shares.

The structure of the stock exchange changed on a day know as the "Big Bang", in 1986, the main changes were:

Fixed commissions were abolished;

Free competition;

The introduction of the Stock Exchanged Automated Quotation -SEAQ-.

The New York Stock Exchange is the oldest  and largest of the stock exchanges in the United States and in the world. The New York Stock Exchange was organized in 1792 in Wall Street.