Luke O Neill: Scientists are human beings like everyone else rte.ie - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from rte.ie Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Universe of Discourse : The Irish logarithm plover.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from plover.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
<p>WHEN Marconi sent the first wireless signal from the UK to Newfoundland in the early 1900s, via our own Brow Head, he inadvertently sounded the death knell of many small businesses in Crookhaven.</p>
Some names stand out when it comes to computers, like Charles Babbage, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, not forgetting Percy Ludgate who died 100 years ago next monthPERCY Edwin Ludgate was born on August 2nd 1883, in Townshend Street, Skibbereen the youngest of seven boys and one g
In 1834, Babbage proposed a more complex machine, his âanalytical engineâ. It used 50 digit numbers (50 cog wheels per number) on 2.5m diameter ring gears. Unlike his earlier designs it also had a memory system which could hold up to 1,000 numbers and, if constructed, would have been 150m long. Unlike his more limited âdifference engineâ, it could solve any computation problem.
Inspired by the patterns programmable by punched cards in Jacquardâs fabric loom of 1801, Babbage used punched cards to direct his machine. Ada Lovelace, now recognised as the worldâs first computer programmer, wrote of Babbageâs machine: âWe may say most aptly that the analytical engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leavesâ. He spent the rest of his life trying to raise funds for his invention, building a number of partial prototypes.