Chapter 1. Prelude: Computing from Ancient Times to the Modern Era
The human need to compute probably originated in prehistory when humans began to accumulate physical possessions. It soon became desirable to keep track of how many specific possessions (e.g., cattle) were owned by a family or tribe. Once simple addition and subtraction became possible, a related need was to record the information so it could be kept for long time periods and could be shared with others. Early recording devices were pebbles or physical objects, but it was eventually found that these could be replaced with symbols.
As humans evolved and began to settle in communities, other calculating needs arose, such as measuring the dimensions of bricks or marking off fields. ...
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