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From: bts@evergreen.cs.unc.edu (Bruce Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.edu,sci.math
Subject: Questions about the history of computing...
Keywords: Were there (non-trivial) programs before computers?
Message-ID: <9086@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 6 Aug 89 19:33:15 GMT
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
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When people talk about the history of computing or the history
of computer science, the discussion is usually about hardware.
Some AI folks talk about philosophical traditions and, some NA
folks talk about mathematics before computers.  What about the
history (more generally) of software before computers?

For instance, how did people produce tables of functions?  I'm
not asking whether they used Taylor series, but rather how did
they manage the computations.  Did someone shut a mathematician
in a closet and not let him out 'til it was finished?  Or, did
they hire an army of clerks and give each instructions on what
numbers to add, what numbers to multiply and to whom to pass on
their portion of the answer?

Other examples might include "ancient" business data processing,
etc.  Algorithms for simple arithmetic don't count (I think), as
once learned most people forget they're executing a program and
develop personal variations on the general methods.  I want to
focus on people "mechanically" executing non-trivial programs,
before computers.

I'd appreciate any (fairly simple) references on this subject.
Maybe about the level of Scientific American's history articles.
This is posted to a couple of education newsgroups, because one
reason for asking is to find material suitable for introductory
CS courses.  It's posted to sci.math, because this is probably
just as much a question in the history of (applied) mathematics.