Chapter 395 Computer (2)

"Thank you for your contribution to the Empire. Your achievements can be said to have opened the door to the third industrial revolution." The first industrial revolution was the steam technology revolution, the second industrial revolution was the electric technology revolution, and the third industrial revolution was the computer and information technology revolution.

Yannick came to the computer research and development department of Area 51, shook hands with everyone one by one, and personally awarded the Imperial Medal, which represents the highest honor of the country, to the four responsible persons. The four people are von Neumann, Konrad Zuse, Turing, and Tommy Frolls. Yannick originally planned to bring over American Mocheri and Ekaterki, but unfortunately the two did not know what to do; the two accidentally drowned while fishing in the lake a few years ago.

Von Neumann and Turing need no introduction; Konrad Zuse was later hailed as the father of digital computers, and the computer he invented was the famous Z series computer.

In the 1930s, Konrad Zuse worked as a structural design engineer at the Hanshi Aircraft Manufacturing Plant and studied for a degree in civil engineering. As the amount of engineering calculations increased year by year, he was interested in designing and manufacturing powerful computers suitable for engineering calculations. After long-term exploration and research and unremitting efforts, he invented a series of automatic computers named "Z" and relied on them to handle complex engineering calculation problems.

In order to make the machine more efficient, Chu Ze even designed a programming language Plankalkuel, which made Chu Ze one of the pioneers of computer language.

And Tommy Frolls is a British computer expert comparable to von Neumann.

As mentioned above, Eniac is the world's first electronic computer, and Britain also has a "Kolossus" that claims to be the world's first electronic computer, and it was launched two years earlier than Eniac.

However, the number of tubes in the Eniac computer is nearly ten times that of the "Kolossus"; "Kolossus" is not universal, and is generally believed to be used to deal with the decryption of the German High Command's strategic encryption system, while Eniac has universal computing characteristics; 10 of the 12 "Kolossus" were immediately destroyed after the war, and the remaining two were also destroyed in the 1960s, without leaving a single drawing; while Eniac is accessible to the world.

Nevertheless, "Kolossus" did make a lot of contributions to the war.

"Lorenz Cipher Machine" was the main encryption machine used for communication between senior German generals including Little Mustache in the late World War II. It was very difficult to decipher the code encrypted by it. Little Mustache believed that "Lorenz Cipher Machine" was invincible until his death. The main purpose of the British to develop the "Kolossus" computer was to decipher the code encrypted by the "Lorenz Cipher Machine". It takes 6 to 8 weeks to decipher this code using other means, but it only takes 6 to 8 hours to use the "Kolossus" computer. Therefore, since it was put into use, a large number of high-level military secrets of the German army were quickly deciphered, and the Allies were even more powerful.

The person in charge of the development of the "Kolossus" computer was Dr. Tommy Felaus; a few years ago, he was also "kidnapped" to Germany by Yannick and worked for Germany.

In addition to the medal, they can also receive a scientific award established in the name of Dr. Albert.

The excitement of the four people was beyond words, and Dr. von Neumann was a little choked with excitement. "This is all thanks to your wise leadership." His words were not simply flattery. During the development of the computer, Yannick helped them solve many problems based on the knowledge of later generations. They admired Yannick from the bottom of their hearts.

This is the advantage of the time traveler. For Yannick, as long as he took out the most superficial ones from later generations, they would be new ideas one by one, and they were absolutely correct. The fittest survived, and those mistakes had long disappeared in the long river of history.

After the award ceremony, several responsible persons demonstrated the operation of the first computer to Yannick.

Because the first computer in this time and space is mainly based on transistors and supplemented by electron tubes, it is much smaller in size than the first computer in the original time and space, and occupies only 20 square meters.

"Turn on!" As Dr. von Neumann gave the order, the assistant next to him pressed the power button.

"Buzz!" The machine made a low roar and started.

"Stabilizer No. 1, running normally, stable power supply!"

"Stabilizer No. 2, the voltage is very stable, there is no change..."

Turing and other responsible persons personally operated the machine, and communicated the values ​​on the instrument from time to time.

The first computer ENIAC in the original space-time includes a control part, a high-speed storage part, an operation part, and an input and output part. It uses decimal. The operation part can perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square root operations by direct counting instead of using logic circuits. Its accumulator has the functions of addition and storage. The output uses IBM's punch card machine, which can input 125 cards and output 100 cards per minute. The input and output can overlap and have buffering capabilities. ENIAC also has a read-only memory ROM, which realizes program control through ROM, accumulator and program panel, and changes the program by changing the panel plug-in. The basic circuits in ENIAC include "gates" (logical AND), buffers (logical OR) and triggers, which are standard components of later computers. Except for the function of not storing programs, it almost embodies or includes all the main concepts and components of modern computers. ENIAC has a main frequency of 100 kHz, an addition time of 0.2 ms, and a multiplication time of 8ms.

After Eniac was born, von Neumann proposed a major improvement theory, mainly in two points; one is that electronic computers should be based on binary operations; the other is that electronic computers should work in a "stored program" manner, and further clearly pointed out that the structure of the entire computer should consist of five parts: arithmetic unit, controller, memory, input device and output device. The proposal of these theories by von Neumann solved the problem of computer operation automation and speed coordination, and played a decisive role in the subsequent development of computers. Until later generations, most computers still work in the von Neumann method.

Although Yannick is not a programmer, he has written simple codes such as "hello world" and has a certain understanding of the principles of programming.

Programming is to tell the computer what to do. Computers are essentially a bunch of small electronic switches that are either on or off. The principle of programming is to make the computer do something by setting different combinations of these switches. Programming language Computers use a simple language that only contains 1 and 0, where 1 means "on" and 0 means "off". Trying to talk to a computer in its own language is like trying to talk to a friend in Morse code. Programming language is like a translator between you and the computer.

Yannick explained the principles of programming to these people, and as an expert in this field, they quickly understood the meaning and worked out the corresponding assembly language.