https://gunkies.org/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=CounterCounter - Revision history2026-05-15T04:16:35ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.30.1https://gunkies.org/w/index.php?title=Counter&diff=35630&oldid=prevJnc: A good place to hold links to papers on early ones2024-12-07T19:34:15Z<p>A good place to hold links to papers on early ones</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>A '''counter''' has been, since the predecessors to early mechanical [[computing device]]s, a mechanism which (as the name implies) counted monitored events.<br />
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They remain, to this day, an important element in [[digital]] [[electronic]] [[hardware]].<br />
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==History==<br />
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The earliest mechanical counters predate their use in the [[Difference Engine]] of [[Charles Babbage|Babbage]], the first digital computing device. The first electronic counter was invented in 1931 by C. E. Wynn-Williams, <!-- Charles Eryl Wynn-Williams --> for use in his experimental work in nuclear physics. In World War II, high-speed counters were needed for use in electronic cryptanalytic devices (first in the so-called 'Heath Robinsons', and later in the [[Colossus]]), so Wynn-Williams' counters were adopted. The 'accumulators' of the [[ENIAC]] later had (because of the [[serial computer|serial]] internal nature of the ENIAC), combined with the act that they could perform addition) the nature of counters.<br />
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==External links==<br />
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* Denis Roegel, [https://annals-extras.org/anecdotes/writing/denis-counters.pdf Carries Stripped to the Bone: Episodes in the History of Coaxial Modular Digital Counters], [[Annals of the History of Computing]], Vol. 39, No. 3, July-September 2017, pp. 55-64 - early mechanical counters (both digital and analog)<br />
* C. E. Wynn-Williams, [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.1931.0102 ''The Use of Thyratrons for High Speed Automatic Counting of Physical Phenomena''], Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A, Volume 132, Issue 819, July 1931, pp. 295-310 - the first electronic digital counter<br />
* C. E. Wynn-Williams, [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.1932.0083 ''A Thyratron "Scale of Two" Automatic Counter''], Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A, Volume 136, Issue 829, May 1932, pp. 312-324<br />
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[[Category: Basics]]</div>Jnc