«Patches», in computer terms, have almost 80 years old. Its original use was buried decades ago by the new technology, but we have maintained the term.
Software patches premiered in 1944, with the IBM Harvard Mark I electromechanical computer. Its origin in very curious.
«Patch» is a very descriptive word. We put a patch on a hole in the clothes, to cover it. And that is just what the computer patcheswith the software. But its adoption does not have to be with clothing. It is much more literal.
Where do computer patches come from
The computer Mark I It was created by IBM and Harvard University, in 1944. It was an electromechanical model inspired by the Babbage machine, which still used buttons, lever and gears. One of the first computers in history.
The Mark I had 760,000 wheels and 800 kilometers of cablean authentic monster 15.5 meters long, about 2.40 meters high and about 60 centimeters wide. It weighed five tons.
It was very slow to do his job, since it took between 3 and 5 seconds to complete a mathematical operation. But that was a prodigy for the time.
Depositphotos
The Mark I used perforated tapes to store data and applications. These paper tapes rolled on themselves, similar to cassette tapes, or the rolls of film movies. Although they were much bigger.
The tapes were drilled with holes that represented a bit or an instruction, according to their position. Yes, we are approaching the Origin of the «patch»… do you guess?
Since the software has existed, there have been bugs. The programmers discovered a failure in an application stored in a perforated tape, and had to correct it.
As explained by computer historian Dave Farquhar, they called him «patch», because he was literally that. They located the area of the perforated tape where the failure was, and They glued a piece of paper, or an adhesive tapeand drilled again.
Sometimes the patch occupied more space than the failure, so there was no choice but to cut the tape, and splices the correction at both ends. They called him «Patch» the programand so it has remained for almost 80 years.
After the tapes came the perforated cardswith the same concept, but more manageable. It was in the 70s of the last century when disks, magnetic tapes and hard drives began to be used, forever discarding perforated paper.
50 years have passed since the word «patch» lost its meaning in computer science, but by tradition and custom, we still continue to describe them to describe A software update that corrects bugs. Also in technology, where what was new today has gone out of fashion, traditions are respected.
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Tags: Culture, orders, retro, curiosities