Quantum Computation Is The Fundamental Of Them All

A Brief History of Computation and Why We Are Closer Than Ever to Decoding the Universe with Quantum, the Fundamental Form of Computation

Image generated with DALL-E 3

Computation has been crucial to human progress since higher-order intelligence emerged.

From using bones and sticks to track the number of sheep one owned to Google’s most advanced quantum chip, Willow, performing a computation in under 5 minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10²⁵ years, we have come a long way.

Take a look below.

Any guesses on what these could be?

Image from the Mathematical Association of America

Found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, these are Ishango Bones (likely mammalian bones) from the Upper Paleolithic Period of human history that were used to keep track of numbers and perform calculations.

This was slowly followed by the Abacus era with the Sumerian Abacus, being invented in Mesopotamia between 2700 and 2300 BC.

This type of Analog computing went on for thousands of years until one fine day in 1837, when a curious mathematician, Charles Babbage, proposed his idea of the Analytical engine, the first digital mechanical general-purpose computer.

Although he was the first, Babbage could never complete the construction of any of his proposed machines due to conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding.

Babbage’s plan for the Analytical Engine (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Fast-forward to a century later, 1946 was the year when the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, appeared.

This was the beginning of an era of classical computers that we still use today, and they changed computation forever by performing calculations at ease that humans had struggled to perform ever before.