查尔斯·巴贝奇计划用蒸汽机驱动他的分析机，但19世纪30年代出现了电动机，它更小巧、清洁、安静且灵活。到了20世纪初，计算器和其他机器都开始采用电力驱动。霍勒ith的电动制表机利用了这一特性，而竞争对手的电力系统因为只用于动力而稍逊一筹。到了1930年代，发明家们意识到电动电路不仅可以提供动力，还能代表计算器处理的数字，从而自动化复杂的计算过程，这预示着计算机时代的到来。
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Chapter 6
Relay Calculators
Introduction
harles Babbage had planned to power his Analytical Engine
Cwith a steam engine-steam being the only feasible prime
mover available in the 1830s. In that same decade, however, others
were making discoveries that led to the electric motor: a source of
motive power more compact, cleaner, quieter, and most of all, much
more flexible than steam. By the early twentieth century, calculators
werejust one of many machines that were powered by electricity.
But electricity could do more than replace the steam engine or
human armas a source of power; it could also represent the numbers
themselves that a calculator handles. Electric circuits could replace
the cams, pins, gears, and levers that actually do the computation.
Hollerith’s electric tabulators took advantage of this property, and we
have already seenhow the rival Powers system, developed after 1911
to compete with Hollerith, suffered in comparison because it used
electricity only for motive power.
By the 1930s,a number of inventors recognized that the ability
(as well as the power) offered by electric circuits allowed one to build
a machine that could not only do arithmetic, but also direct a complex
ce- of calculations autom&@ly. T h i m e , had be&
Babbage’s d r e z and b
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