The word program comes from the Greek word "gram" - "writing" and the prefix "pro", which here means "in advance". The general sense of the word "program" - destiny, something written for the future. In our case, a software mechanism determines the entire sequence of mechanical behavior of people. And not a single motion machine, even minor, cannot be changed without making amendments to the program!
Well, what happens if something changes in the external environment when using the machine? Well, let's say, if you try to hold the hand of the scribe, when he writes? Happen to one of two things: either the machine stops, or... . it is something Cracks and it will break. All these machines are not able to respond to environmental changes occurring in the course of their work. More precisely, they are all "dead", although it reproduces some of the movements, and that makes them look like humans.
At first glance it might seem that the "toys" by Pierre Henry Droz and have no relation to the development of technology and they could not remember. But this is not the case. Mechanical Draw people played a very important role in the overall process of human understanding of nature and laid the foundation for machines with programmed control.
At the beginning of the XIX century there spinning and weaving machines, machines with programmed control. In Europe, threatening to the time when Napoleon was conquering one country after another and the army needed a lot of tissues, a French inventor Joseph Marie Jacquard found a way that could affect the mechanisms of the hard work the loom. To do this, the inventor has used a set of pasteboard cards with a different arrangement of the holes.
That's the hole and was the symbol of the order of the machine is its software. Map was held under the probes. When the probes fell into the hole they fell, and with the help of special devices moved the threads on the loom. Since the fabrics were produced complex patterns.
The new map, the new program, and, hence, a new pattern. Change the sheet of cardboard cards is equivalent to replacing one hard-coded machine to others, the new design. It was already clearly a significant step forward in comparison with machine Draw. For there each mechanical man had his own program of action sequences and the transition to the new program was associated with alteration of the entire control mechanism. Indeed, hardly made sense to build a loom capable of producing only one characteristic of the design pattern of tissue: the pattern people quickly bored.