Counter

A counter has been, since the predecessors to early mechanical computing devices, a mechanism which (as the name implies) counted monitored events.

They remain, to this day, an important element in digital electronic hardware.

History

The earliest mechanical counters predate their use in the Difference Engine of Babbage, the first digital computing device. The first electronic counter was invented in 1931 by C. E. 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 internal nature of the ENIAC), combined with the act that they could perform addition) the nature of counters.

External links

• Denis Roegel, 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)
• C. E. Wynn-Williams, 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
• C. E. Wynn-Williams, 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