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From: lvc@cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.edu,sci.math
Subject: Re: Questions about the history of computing...
Keywords: Were there (non-trivial) programs before computers?
Message-ID: <8856@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 8 Aug 89 02:30:47 GMT
References: <9086@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <1487@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: lvc@cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani)
Organization: AT&T Network Systems
Lines: 21

>In article <9086@thorin.cs.unc.edu>, bts@evergreen.cs.unc.edu (Bruce Smith) writes:
> 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?  ...

Well, actually yes!  At least one mathematician, it was either Euler or Gauss,
paid an autistic savant to compute tables of logarithms.  It benefited both
the mathematican and the savant.  The mathematician had better things to do
than compute tables of logarithms, and the savant, well, he couldn't do much
of anything else.  I read the tables were used for years, and had several
decimal places of accuracy, and only minor and rare errors were ever found
in them.

Also there were programmable weaving looms years before Countess Ada Lovelace
and the Analytic Engine.  The programs were encoded by holes on cards.  I think
the looms were called Jaquard looms.  This is an example of software before
computers (feminists in the audience should note for future reference, the
first programmer was not a woman! :-)
-- 
Larry Cipriani, att!cbnews!lvc or lvc@cbnews.att.com