The text "The Age of Automation" is about employing automatic machines in our life. The author gives a definition of automation, speaks about its three main elements, about its role in making a series of decisions on the basis of limited information.
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How the First Computer Was Developed
The first suggestion that a machine for mathematical computation could be built was made more than a hundred years ago by the mathematician Charles Babbage. We now realize that he understood clearly all the fundamental principles of modern digital computers.
Babbage was born in Devonshire, England, in 1792. He did not receive a good education, but he taught himself mathematics so well that when he went to Cambridge he found that he knew more algebra than his tutor.
At that time mathematics in Cambridge was still under the influence of Newton and was quite unaffected by the contemporary developments on the Continent.
Babbage was outstanding among his contemporaries because he insisted on the practical application of science and mathematics. For example he wrote widely on the economic advantages on mass production, and on the development of machine-tools.
In 1812 he was sitting in his room looking at a table of logarithms which he knew to be full of mistakes when an idea occured to him of computing all tabuler functions by machinery. Babbage constructed a small working model which he demonstrated in 1822. The Royal Society supported the project and Babbage was promised a subsidy.
In 1833 he began to think of building a machine which was, in fact, the first universal digital computer, as the expression is understood today. Babbage devoted the rest of his life toan attempt to develop it. He had to finance the whole of his work himself, and he was only able to finish part of the machine though he prepared thousands of detailed drawings from which it could be made.
Babbage wrote more that eighty books and papers, but he was misunderstood by his contemporaries and died a disappointed man in 1871. He tried to solve by himself and with his own resources a series of problems which in the end required the united efforts of two generations of engineers.
After his death his son continued his work and built part of an arithmetic unit, which printed out its results directly on paper.