Publisher Summary This chapter presents prehistory of computing in Central Europe authored by H. Zemanek. During 1680–1690, programmed weaving was introduced by a person named Broesel. The punched card loom device was a closed loop of a linen strip. The program consisted of little wooden bars that controlled the loom. Petzval was an applied mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer. He not only established the theory and the calculations, he got the lens made and in May 1840, gave the tables and many drawings to the Viennese optician Voigtlaender. In 1889, Hermann Hollerith got his patent for the punched-card system. A formal language developed by Torres y Quevedo used mainly letters, numeric, and punctuation, but also analog symbols, which could be, however, produced by a typewriter. Gustav Tauschek's first invention was a machine for engraving the loop patterns of money bills. Tauschek also invented a motor-driven sledge, and he worked on cryptographic problems as well.
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