继电器计算机的工作原理（英文）.pdf

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Chapter 6

Relay Calculators

Introduction

harles Babbage had planned to power his Analytical Engine

Cwith a steam engine-steam being the only feasible prime

mover available in the 1830s. In that same decade, however, others

were making discoveries that led to the electric motor: a source of

motive power more compact, cleaner, quieter, and most of all, much

more flexible than steam. By the early twentieth century, calculators

werejust one of many machines that were powered by electricity.

But electricity could do more than replace the steam engine or

human armas a source of power; it could also represent the numbers

themselves that a calculator handles. Electric circuits could replace

the cams, pins, gears, and levers that actually do the computation.

Hollerith’s electric tabulators took advantage of this property, and we

have already seenhow the rival Powers system, developed after 1911

to compete with Hollerith, suffered in comparison because it used

electricity only for motive power.

By the 1930s,a number of inventors recognized that the ability

(as well as the power) offered by electric circuits allowed one to build

a machine that could not only do arithmetic, but also direct a complex

ce- of calculations autom&@ly. T h i m e , had be&

Babbage’s d r e z and b