Big Ideas That Changed the World No. 2: Machines That Think!
A long time ago and I don't mean last month or last year but about three thousand years ago people had the idea to use pebbles and stones to calculate Arranged in columns in the sand the pebbles in each column were given a certain value one ten or one hundred for example The user kept track of the pebbles in each of the columns After ten pebbles were counted in the ones column a pebble would be added to the tens column When there were ten pebbles in the tens column a pebble would be placed in the hundreds column By moving pebbles into and out of the columns the user could do arithmetic a lot easier than doing it in their head 100 10 2 100 20 TOTAL 124 4
Eventually people stopped counting in the sand and placed the stones on wooden boards In time the stones were replaced with metal counters or beads and the board was reduced to just a frame called a counting board We know it as the abacus The ancient Greeks and Romans used the abacus as did the Medieval Europeans It's still widely used in Asia 5
The world had to wait 2,500 years for another big idea to show up the brainchild of the very brainy Blaise Pascal In 1642 Pascal a nineteen year old Frenchman was working beside his tax collector father Etienne
The two labored long into the night using counting boards to stay on top of the numbers 7
