Contains some good images of early calculating machines,
including Pascal's and Leibniz's, not to mention
Buffalonian
Herman Hollerith's census tabulator.
Campbell-Kelly, Martin (2010),
"Be Careful What You Wish For:
Reflections on the Decline of Mathematical Tables",
Communications of the ACM
53(4) (April): 25–26.
... and many more good sites locatable by doing a Google search
on "Charles Babbage" (just click on his name above).
This is the paper in which Simon and Newell predicted
that (among other things) a computer would "be the world's
chess champion" (p.7) within 10 years, i.e., by 1968. I
once asked Simon about this; our email conversation can
be found
here.
Interesting historical comments by the developer of the
resolution method of automated theorem proving on the development of
computers and the related history of logic.
"Anybody who uses the Internet should read E.M.
Forster's The Machine Stops. It is a chilling, short story masterpiece
about the role of technology in our lives. Written in 1909, it's as
relevant today as the day it was published. Forster has several
prescient notions including instant messages (email!) and cinematophoes
(machines that project visual images).
—Paul Rajlich"
A description of how computers work, written, for radio
engineers who may never have seen one(!), by the creator of one of the
earliest, if not the first, AI programs: Samuel's checkers player.
Comes close to defining a computer "as an information or
data processing device which accepts data in one form and delivers it in
an altered form" (p.1223).
A computer is "an information-processing machine, varying in
size from the very large system to the very small microprocessor,
operating by means of stored programs which can be modified, and using
various auxiliary devices to communicate with the user." (p.85)
§§1-4 are a good summary of issues
related to the nature of computationalism,
observer-dependence (as opposed to what Searle
calls "intrinsic" computationalism), and universal
realizability (or "pancomputationalism").
§1, "The Problem of Physical Computation:
What Does Distinguish Computers from Other Physical Systems?",
contains a good survey of various theories of what a computer
is.
Note: Weinberg's review of Wolfram 2002
contains links to a follow-up letter to the
editor and to two diagrams of Wolfram's
cellular automata.
For convenience, here are those links:
"Indeed, computational algorithms are so powerful that they can
simulate virtually any phenomena, without proving anything about the
computational nature of the actual mechanisms underlying these
phenomena. Computational algorithms generate a perfect description of
the rotation of the planets around the sun, although the solar system
does not compute in any way. In order to be considered as providing a
model of the mechanisms actually involved, and not only a simulation of
the end-product of mechanisms acting at a different level, computational
models have to perform better than alternative, non computational
explanations."
From §1.3.4 of
Perruchet, Pierre; & Vinter, Annie
(2002),
"The Self-Organizing Consciousness",
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
25(3) (June): 297-388.
or