Why Were Computers Invented?
The societal changes that motivated the invention of the first computers
Early computers may not have looked very different from calculators: They had no screens, mouse, or keyboard. Instead, they had multiple switches to input numbers or a punched tape reader and writer. Long lists of numbers could be read in sequence from a paper tape perforated with small holes to encode numbers. The same approach could be used to write out calculation results.
The key thing that separated early computers from mere calculators was that they could repeat operations conditionally. An early motivator to create computers was the need to perform numerous repeated calculations. My imaginary Calcutron-33 computer was developed to mimic behavior of early computer systems, while still following modern ideas around microprocessor design, such as having a RISC (reduced instruction set computer) inspired architecture.
The following Calcutron-33 assembly code program is an example of a program which repeatedly adds numbers read from input using the INP…
