The beginning of Computers: The Life Story of Technology, talks about early computers. This goes back further then the actual machines in the 1950s, but to almost pre-historic times. Some of the earliest computers were the abacus and notches. The book also talks about counting sticks and bones, which the early banks used, to keep record of loans and accounts. Some thing I found interesting, were the different numbering systems of different countries. We use the Arabic number system which has a base of ten, but not every number system uses this. An example of a different system would be the Mayans, who have a base of twelve. Before the Arabic system was widely used, Roman numerals were very common. Officials did not want to use the Arabic numbers because they felt these numbers were too easy to forge.
Tally sheet are a paper way calculating. It has lots of rows and column for long digit numbers. Starting in 1840 to 1880m, the United States Government used these to form a population census. This would be useful because they are taking a survey of the amount of citizens in multiple categories such as gender, age, race, and location, along with other categories. Rows and columns are a theme throughout these precursors to the calculator. They are used in abacuses, notches, and even graphs. In 1880, John S. Billings suggested that this process was too much to be done manually, so he suggest for an automated machine. Between 1880 and 1890, Herman Hollerith made a prototype mechanical tabulating machine.
