The Growth of Computing in Social Work Services

Abstract

Computers have developed from calculating-machines, and because, through most of our history, ideas and plans have outstripped the capability of production engineering, it is easier to look back and find designs for computers than working models. It is usual to identify two of the great philosophers, Pascal and Leibniz, both from the seventeenth century, as the first conceivers of calculating-machines. Charles Babbage, in the nineteenth century, came nearer to a design for a computer. His Analytical Engine has a format similar to a modern computer, with a CPU (he called it a ‘Mill’) incorporating a memory. He also conceived the idea of putting information into the Engine via punched cards, and linking a printer to receive the output. However, there were no electronics in his day, so the design was entirely mechanical. He received a little government development money, but precision engineering techniques were not up to the job, and the Engine could not be built. ‘He was born one hundred years too soon.’ (Healey, 1976, p. 29.)