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2500 BCE
La tablilla Plimpton (Mesopotamia)
Plimpton 322 is a clay tablet from Babylon, which stands out for containing an example of Babylonian mathematics. It has the number 322 in the GA Plimpton collection at Columbia University. This table shows what are now called Pythagorean terns, that is, whole numbers a, b, c that satisfy a^2 + b^2 = c^2 -
2000 BCE
Ábaco (Mesopotamia)
The abacus is an instrument that serves to perform simple arithmetic operations. It consists of a wooden frame with parallel bars that run movable balls, also useful for teaching these simple calculations. The abacus is considered the oldest instrument of calculation, adapted and appreciated in diverse cultures. It is likely that its beginning was on a flat surface and stones that moved on lines drawn with dust. -
500 BCE
Calendario mesoamerico (Precolombia)
The Mesoamerican calendars are the calendars devised and used by the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. In addition to the control of the passage of time, Mesoamerican calendars were also used in religious ceremonies, in social rituals and in divination. -
Huesos de Napier (John Napier)
Napier's bones, also known as Napier rods or canes, were developed by the inventor of logarithms to perform multiplications, divisions and square roots. Napier's bones consisted of an individualized and particular version of the multiplication tables. -
Reloj calculador (Wilhem Schickard )
It was the first in history to be built. The calculator clock could perform, through fully mechanical methods, the four elementary arithmetic operations: add, subtract, multiply and divide. The machine incorporated the principle of strips of John Napier. The calculator clock had no influence on the development of subsequent machine calculators, since the invention remained unknown to the rest of the world. -
Regla de cálculo (Edmund Wingate)
The calculation rule is a calculation instrument that acts like an analog computer. It has several mobile numerical scales that facilitate the fast and convenient performance of complex arithmetic operations, such as multiplications, divisions, etc. Its scales have been modified in order to be adapted to specific fields of use, such as civil engineering, electronics, construction, aeronautics and aerospace, financial, etc. The most common scale is around 25 cm in length. -
Pascalina (Blaise Pascal)
Pascalina was the first calculator that worked on wheels and gears. The first name he gave his invention was "arithmetic machine." Then he called it "Pascalina wheel", and finally "Pascalina". This invention is the remote ancestor of the current computer. When one wheel turned completely on its axis, it advanced one degree to the next. The wheels represented the "decimal numbering system." With this provision "numbers between 0'01 and 999.999'99" could be obtained. -
Maquina de multiplicar (Sir Samuel Morgan)
Morland combined a basic sector with some gears to create a trigonometric calculating machine.
The sector was an instrument of calculation that was used from the end of the 16th century to the 19th century. It consisted of two rules of equal length graduated with scales and joined by a joint. It was used to obtain a graphical solution to problems of proportion, trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cubic roots. -
La Rueda de Leibniz -> 1ª Máquina de cálculos aritmético (Wilhelm Leibniz)
A Leibniz wheel or Leibniz cylinder is a cylinder-shaped drum, with a set of teeth of incremental length to which a counting wheel is attached. It was used as the calculation engine of a class of mechanical calculators. It became famous thanks to Thomas de Colmar when he used it on his Arithmometer, the first calculating machine1 that was mass-traded. -
Tarjeta perforada -> 1ª memoria (Joseph Jacquard)
The perforated card or simply card is a sheet made of cardboard that contains information in the form of perforations according to a binary code. These were the first means used to enter information and instructions to a computer in the 1960s and 1970s. Currently, punch cards have been replaced by magnetic and optical means of entering information. Many of the optical storage devices, are based on a method similar to that used by punch cards. -
1ª Máquina Analítica (Charles Babbage)
The design of the so-called "Analytical Machine", of a mechanical nature. To store 1000 numbers of 50 digits each Babbage, devoted almost all his life to the development of a mechanism capable of automatically developing the tables of numbers that were used at that time as instruments to facilitate calculations. Babbage knew that the available tables contained errors, usually because of how boring it was to manually perform the hundreds of thousands of calculations needed to make them -
1ª programadora de la máquina analítica (Ada Lovelace)
Lovelace wrote the first algorithm designed for the machine that the mathematician designed but did not build. It had planned to have a unit to read punch cards that were already used at that time. Three types of cards with different functions, including for storing data and performing arithmetic operations. When Lovelace found out about this project, contacted to collaborate with him. Lovelace technically described the machine, included the possibility of digitizing musical compositions. -
El álgebra de Boole y la codificación binaria (George Boole)
Boolean algebra in digital electronics, computer science and mathematics is an algebraic structure that schematizes logical operations. It was an attempt to use algebraic techniques to deal with expressions of propositional logic. It was later extended as a more important book -
1ª Máquina Tabuladora (Herman Hollerith)
The tabulating machine is one of the first computer application machines. The Hollerith machine was used to tabulate the census of that year in the United States, during the total process no more than two and a half years. The machine had a card reader, a counter, a classifier and a tabulator created by it. -
1ª Máquina Algebraica (Leonardo Torres Quevedo)
The financing of the Royal Academy of Sciences, thanks to the presentation of a report with the description of the machine that would allow solving algebraic equations. The objective of the machine was the continuous and automatic obtention of polynomial function values. Being an analog machine, the variable can go through any value. -
Máquina Enigma (Ejercito alemán)
Enigma was the name of a rotor machine that allowed it to be used both to encrypt and decrypt messages. It was patented in 1918 by the German company and was put up for sale in 1923 for commercial use. Being its use extended before and during World War II. Despite having some cryptographic weaknesses, decryption was also facilitated by procedural failures and use by German operators, such as not developing continuous modifications to encryption. -
1er Analizador Diferencial (Vannevar Bush)
The Differential Analyzer was a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel and disk mechanisms to perform the integration. It was one of the first advanced computing devices to be used operationally. The analyzer was invented in 1876 and was used in the development of the Rebound Pump, used to attack German hydroelectric dams during World War II. -
Máquina Universal de Turing (Alan Turing)
In computer science, a universal Turing machine is a Turing machine that can simulate an arbitrary Turing machine at arbitrary input. The universal machine essentially achieves this by reading both the description of the machine to be simulated and also the very input of its own tape. This model is considered by some to be the origin of the stored program computer - used by John von Neumann. It is also known as a universal computing machine, universal machine. -
1ª Computadora Electrónica y Digital Automática (John Atanasoff)
ABC was the first automatic electronic and digital computer that was used with numbers and letters and brought several innovations in the field of computing: a binary system for arithmetic, regenerative memory and distinction between memory and the functions of the first modern computer. It was built in the basement of 'Iowa State University', which was then called 'Iowa State College'. The process took two years due to lack of funds. -
Z1 (Konrad Zuse)
The Z1 was a mechanical computer. It was a binary calculator, electrically powered, with limited programming, which read instructions from a perforated celluloid film. The Z1 was the first freely programmable computer in the world that used Boolean logic and binary floating point numbers, however it was not reliable in the operation. It was destroyed in the bombing of Berlí. The Z1 was the first in a series of computers that Zuse designed. -
Z2 (Konrad Zuse)
The Z2 computer was designed from the Z1, since creating a mechanical machine presented some difficulties, and telephone relays were added to it. It was helped by a friend of his, and asked him to design the circuits to perform the three basic operations , AND, OR and NOT. Schreyer solved this problem without any inconvenience while Zuse worked on the logical part of the circuits. It was thought to achieve a speed a thousand times higher than that obtained through relay machines. -
Z3 (Konard Zuse)
The Z3, electromechanical technology, was built with 2300 relays, had a clock frequency of ~ 5 Hz, and a word length of 22 bits. The calculations were performed with purely binary floating point arithmetic. The original Z3 was destroyed in 1943 during a bombing in Berlin. A fully functional replica was built
