W. Stanley Jevons, Allan Marquand, and the origins of digital computing

While there are many works about the development of computers, there is surprisingly little that focuses on early initiatives in digital computing. This article describes and elaborates on some of the early developments in digital computing. The logical machine of W. Stanley Jevons, for instance, interested others. The most promising offshoot was the work of Allan Marquand, who conceived of an electromechanical digital machine as early as 1885. Marquand moved from mechanical to electromechanical devices. A similar progression occurred in subsequent, but unrelated work by Konrad Zuse, who also began by constructing a mechanical digital machine.