1. The strong will inherit the earth. 2. At the beginning there was the abacus. 3. One of the forerunners of the computer is the mechanical calculator. 4 The punched card is still very important for computers today. 5. The calculators Pascal and Leibniz built were reliable. 6. The mechanical calculator could multiply and divide as well as add and subtract. 7. the Jacquard loom was invented by Babbage. 8. "Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers". (L. Brandwein) 9. Blaise Pascal was a German mathematician, philosopher, and diplomat and Wilhelm von Leibniz was a French mathematician and philosopher. 10. The mechanical technology of the 17th century was not capable of manufacturing the parts with sufficient precision. 11. Electronic calculators eventually were perfected; they were used widely until they were replaced by mechanical calculators in recent times. 12. Early versions of the abacus consisted of a board with grooves in which pebbles could slide. 13. Until modern times, most information-processing machines were designed to do arithmetic. 14. An outstanding exception, however, was Jacquard's automated loom, a machine designed for hard figures but not for beautiful patterns. 15. Changing the punched cards changes the pattern the loom weaves. 16. The Jacquard loom is the descendant not only of modem automated machine tools but of the player piano as well.
