John napier
(Merchiston Castle, Scotland, 1550-1617) Scottish mathematician and theologian. A convinced Protestant, he bitterly criticized the Catholic Church and advocated the persecution of "papists, atheists and neutrals" in a letter addressed to the king, James I, in which he dedicated his theological work Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John.
Despite the notoriety that the more than thirty editions of this work brought him, Napier's name was to remain forever linked to the development of logarithms, a mathematical method devised with the aim of simplifying the numerical calculation that a enormous influence in all fields of applied mathematics. Napier took a little over twenty years to mature his initial ideas, which he finally published in 1614.
Shortly after, the English mathematician Henry Briggs traveled to Scotland and convinced Napier to modify the initial scale used by him; This is how logarithms of base 10 were born, the way in which they were imposed throughout Europe.
William Oughtred
English mathematician. (Born March 5, 1574 Eton, Buckinghamshire - died June 30, 1660 Albury, Surrey). He is an Anglican minister who was dedicated in life to Mathematics, Astronomy, Gnomonics and famous for having invented the Slide Rule.
He introduced the current multiplication and division signs and perfected Viète's method for the approximate resolution of equations. He wrote Keys to Mathematics and Circles of Proportion.
Work
His most important work focuses on mathematical research on algebra and arithmetic, among the works of Ougtred is:
- Clavis Mathematicae (1631) Arithmeticae in numeris et speciebus institutio, London, 1631.The Vey of mathematics, London, 1647.Circle of proportion, London, 1632; 3e ed., Oxford, 1660; Solution of all spherical triangles, Oxford, 1657. Trigonometry, London, 1657 Canons sinuum, tangentium, etc., London, 1657, etc.
Blaise pascal
Born June 19, 1623 in Clermond-Ferrand. Died on August 19, 1662 in Paris, France
Étienne, Blaise's father, had unorthodox ideas of education, so he decided to educate his son himself. He decided that Pascal would not study mathematics before the age of fifteen, and that all the mathematics texts were taken out of the house. However, Pascal, with curiosity fired by this, began researching geometry for himself at the age of twelve. He discovered that the sum of the angles in a triangle is equal to two right angles. When his father discovered this, he allowed him to read Euclid.
At fourteen, Pascal began attending the Mersenne meetings. Mersenne belonged to the religious order of the Minims, and his cell in Paris was a frequent meeting place for Fermat, Pascal, Gassendi, and others. At the age of 16, Pascal presents a sheet of paper at one of Mersenne's meetings.
It contained a number of descriptive geometry theorems, including Pascal's mystical hexagon.
Pascal invented the first digital calculator in 1642 to help his father. The device, called Pascalina, looked like a mechanical calculator from the 1940s.
Later studies in geometry, hydrodynamics and hydrostatics, and atmospheric pressure led him to invent the syringe and the hydraulic press, and to discover Pascal's pressure law.
He studied conic sections and produced important theorems in descriptive geometry. In collaboration with fermat, they founded the foundations of probability theory.
His most famous philosophical work is "Pensées", a collection of personal thoughts on human suffering and faith in God. The "Pascal's wager" ensures that belief in God is rational with the following argument:
"If God does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in Him, while if he exists, one will lose everything by not believing."
His last work was on the cycloid, the curve traced by a point on the circumference of a rolling circle.
Pascal died at age 39 in severe pain, from a malignant tumor in his stomach, which spread to the brain.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
Nationality: Germany, Leipzig 1-7-1646 - Hannover 11-14-1716
Born in Leipzig in 1646, the son of a university professor, he studied Philosophy and Law in Jena and Altdorf in his native town, obtaining his doctorate at the age of twenty. A scholar, his contributions touch the fields of history, law, language, theology, physics, and philosophy. At the same time that Newton discovered the infinitesimal calculus. Continuing the philosophy of Descartes, for whom there were two kinds of substances -corporal and spiritual-, for Leibniz there is only the second, which will also be simple, indivisible and acting, that is, the motor of action. It establishes that the world is composed of "monads", minimal units loaded with attributes, with the capacity to perceive and act. Each one of them is unique and reflects the universe itself, in turn configuring a small universe.Monads do not influence or interact with each other, but act independently and without communication. On the other hand, Leibniz postulates the theory of pre-established harmony, according to which God is the creator of the things in the universe, but it is the things that, endowed with movement, move by themselves.
Defender of God in his "Theodicy", criticizes Bayle's arguments according to which an imperfect world, in which evil exists, cannot have been realized by a perfect God and supreme good. Leibniz argues that while the world is not absolutely perfect, it is the most perfect of all possible, as a famous character in Voltaire's "Candide" puts it. The "Leibnizian metaphysical optimism" also asks questions about the origin of evil and the relationship between predestination and free will, concluding that God allows the existence of evil, although he does not want it, and that the destiny and freedom of the individual work jointly. In the field of mathematics, he made contributions to number theory, mechanical calculus, algebra, etc. He is the initiator of mathematical logic and topology.State the principle that mass times the square of the velocity remains constant. He died in Hannover on November 14, 1716, being the first German philosopher of universal repercussion.
Hernan Hollerith
(Buffalo, 1860-Washington, 1929) American statistician. He invented the statistical machines of punched cards or tokens, which achieved notable success in computing and classifying large volumes of information.
In 1879 he was hired as an Assistant in the United States Census Office.They faced a problem that seemed insoluble, since according to American laws they ordered a population census every ten years and in 1886 they were still dealing with the data of the 1880 census, with which it was evident that even working at the highest possible rate, the classification would not have been completed at the time of the next 1890 Census.
The only solution lay in the mechanization of counting and sorting operations. Hollerith, a statistician, was commissioned by the US Census Bureau to develop some techniques to speed up the process of census analysis.
Hollerith, connoisseur of the mechanism of punched cards used by the Frenchman JOSEPH MARIE JACQUARD (who in 1745 built a loom controlled by punched cards. The holes in the cards controlled the needles, making them weave into the fabric whatever the weft contained His cards were thin metal plates, joined end to end, forming a chain that fed the loom), he proposed that the data be punched into cards and tabulated automatically with the help of specially designed machines.
This proposition crystallized when a Sorting Machine was designed, which was based on an electrical type structure, adding counters and selection mechanisms. This machine could read 50 to 80 cards per minute, at the time of its creation. By 1890 the Hollerith Sorting Machine could sort from 200 to 300 cards per minute. With this new procedure, the 1890 census data was processed in its entirety in less than three years.
With Hollerith electronic data processing begins. In 1910-1911, hollerith's tabulating machines could process large amounts of data at high speed; This is so, thanks to Statistician James Power, who made Hollerith's machines increase in capacity and speed. Hollerith leaves the United States Census Bureau, and founds his own company, called the Tabulating machine Company (Compañía de Maquinas Tabuladoras). In 1924, the Tabulating machine Company was integrated with two other companies, to form what is currently the INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES COMPORATION (IBM).
In 1911, the Estadiographer James Power, who had stood out for advances such as the perfectionism of Hollerith's Machines, retired from the Census Bureau and created his own company called Power Accounting Machine Company, which later joined with two other companies to form the Remington Rand Corporation, this in turn became the UNIVAC, a division of Sperry Rand.
In 1930, Bell Laboratories built a calculator based on telephone switches, called Model I, which used the on-off principle to perform arithmetic calculations.
In 1937, Howard Aiken of Harvard University devised a gigantic mechanical calculator called MARK I, capable of performing long sequences of logical arithmetic operations. The Mark I worked with a combination of mechanical, electrical and electronic principles. This automatic calculating machine could combine established technology with Hollerith cards.
The Mark I machine was relatively slow, as its speed of operation depended on the speed of its many electronic components.
The IBM company undertook the construction of the Aiken calculator, being at Harvard University in 1944, when the first machine was presented.
Charles Babbage
(Teignmouth, 1792 - London, 1871) British mathematician and engineer, inventor of programmable calculating machines. Charles Babbage graduated from Cambridge University in 1814. Shortly thereafter, in 1815, he founded the Analytic Society with J. Herschel for the purpose of renewing the teaching of mathematics in England. In 1816 he was elected a member of the Royal Society and in 1828 he entered its university as a professor of mathematics.
In 1812, the British mathematician and engineer CHARLES BABBAGE (1792-1871), professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, concerned about the many errors contained in the calculation tables that he used in his daily work, built the functional model to calculate tables called: differential machine (Difference machine) based on the rotating wheel capable of calculating logarithms to twenty decimal places.
The differential machine, which many consider a forerunner of modern calculators, was capable of calculating mathematical tables. The analytical engine, also devised by Babbage, would have been a true programmable computer if the project had been adequately funded. However, neither machine was completed in Babbage's lifetime, although it would have been possible with the technology of the time.
The Difference Machine did not go on the market in an improved version, for this reason in 1833 Babbage decided to substantially improve the Difference Machine, but this time in the construction of a second machine, which he baptized with the name of Machine Analytics. The Analytical Engine was much more general than the difference machine and could be programmed to evaluate the wide range of different functions. Babbage could not complete any of his ingenious machines, as the British government, concerned about the lack of progress, withdrew the financial subsidy. It took a century for ideas similar to these to be put into practice. Many are the writers in the Informatics area, who define Charles Babbage as the father of informatics,since it laid the fundamental theoretical foundations on which current computers are based.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard
He was born on July 7, 1752 in the city of Lyon (France), and although he was the son of a modest textile worker, he had great aspirations for his future.
In 1801, having become an inventor and textile industrialist, Joseph Marie Jacquard made a fundamental contribution to the process of programmable machines by modifying a textile machinery, to which he added a system of perforated metal templates or molds, joined by straps, which allowed programming the stitches of the fabric, managing to obtain a diversity of patterns and figures.
The interest aroused by Jacquard's invention was so great that Napoleon Bonaparte himself was astonished when in 1805 he attended an industrial exhibition held in Lyon, to later award him with the medal of the Legion of Honor and a prize of 50 francs for each loom that was marketed during the 6-year period.
Despite the commercial impact of the Jacquard loom, which allowed a single man to do the work of several, the event raised fear of job loss for textile workers. The inventor received death threats and his popularity declined, but from 1806 his invention took over the market.
Jacquard ended his days working as a municipal councilor in the town of Oullins, not far from his hometown of Lyon, passing away on August 7, 1834 at the age of 82.
Starting with Jacquard's invention, machines and equipment programmed by perforated systems began to proliferate, becoming very fashionable, such as mechanical pianos, known as pianolas, dolls and other novel mechanical toys.
