DATA: THE NEW CORPORATE RESOURCE - Fundamentals of Database Management Systems - page 7

Early Data Problems Spawn Calculating Devices
It was also in the seventeenth century that data began to prompt people to take
an interest in devices that could ''automatically'' process their data , if only in
a rudimentary way. Blaise Pascal produced one of the earliest and best known
such devices in France in the 1640s, reputedly to help his father track the data
associated with his job as a tax collector, Figure 1.4. This was a small box containing
interlocking gears that was capable of doing addition and subtraction. In fact, it was
the forerunner of today's mechanical automobile odometers.
In 1805, Joseph Marie Jacquard of France invented a device that automatically
reproduced patterns used in textile weaving. The heart of the device was a series
of cards with holes punched in them; the holes allowed strands of material to
be interwoven in a sequence that produced the desired pattern, Figure 1.5. While
Jacquard's loom wasn't a calculating device as such, his method of storing fabric
patterns, a form of graphic data, as holes in punched cards was a very clever
means of data storage that would have great importance for computing devices to
follow. Charles Babbage, a nineteenth-century English mathematician and inventor,
picked up Jacquard's concept of storing data in punched cards. Beginning in 1833,
Babbage began to think about an invention that he called the ''Analytical Engine.''
Although he never completed it (the state of the art of machinery was not developed
enough), included in its design were many of the principles of modern computers.
The Analytical Engine was to consist of a ''store'' for holding data items and a
''mill'' for operating upon them. Babbage was very impressed by Jacquard's work
with punched cards. In fact, the Analytical Engine was to be able to store calculation
instructions in punched cards. These would be fed into the machine together with
punched cards containing data, would operate on that data, and would produce the
desired result.

FIGURE1.4
Blaise Pascal and his
adding machine Photo courtesy of IBM Archives