Before mechanical and electronic computers, the term "computer", in use from the mid 17th century, meant a human undertaking mathematical calculations. Teams of people or human computers were used to undertake long and often tedious calculations. The work was divided so that this could be undertaken in parallel.

The approach was taken for astronomical and other tedious complex calculations. Perhaps the first example of organized human computing was by the Frenchman Alexis Claude Clairaut (1713–1765), when he divided the computation to determine timing of the return of Halley's Comet with two colleagues, Joseph-Jérôme Le Lepart and Nicole-Reine Étable.

Human computers were also used in the Manhattan Project to calculate the complex formulae related to atomic fusion, prior to the widespread introduction of computers. Following World War II, the NACA used human computers in flight research to transcribe raw data from celluloid film and oscillograph paper and then, using slide rules and electric calculators, reduce it to standard engineering units.

The term has also been applied to individuals with prodigious powers of mental arithmetic, also known as mental calculators.

References

• Grier, David Alan, The Human Computer and the Birth of the Information Age, Joseph Henry Lecture, Philosophical Society of Washington, May 11, 2001.
• Grier, David Alan, When Computers Were Human, Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-691-09157-9.

External links

• Early NACA human computers at work, photograph, October 1949.
• The Age of Female Computers, by David Skinner

History of computing | Early computers | Classes of computers