history

[master Blacktop]

Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completes the first general purpose progammable calculator in 1941. He pioneers the use of binary math and boolean logic in electronic calculation.
Colossus, a British computer used for code-breaking, is operational by December of 1943. ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzor and Computer, is developed by the Ballistics Research Laboratory in Maryland to assist in the preparation of firing tables for artillery. It is built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering and completed in November 1945.

Bell Telephone Laboratories develops the transistor in 1947.

UNIVAC, the Universal Automatic Computer (pictured below), is developed in 1951. It can store 12,000 digits in random access mercury-delay lines.

EDVAC, for Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, is completed under contract for the Ordinance Department in 1952.

In 1952 G.W. Dummer, a radar expert from the British Royal Radar Establishment, proposes that electronic equipment be manufactured as a solid block with no connecting wires. The prototype he builds doesn't work and he receives little support for his research.

Texas Instruments and Fairchild semiconductor both announce the integrated circuit in 1959.

The IBM 360 is introduced in April of 1964 and quickly becomes the standard institutional mainframe computer. By the mid-80s the 360 and its descendents will have generated more than $100 billion in revenue for IBM.

[kc0arf]

Hello,

Your information is very incomplete. Be sure to look up Atanatsoff at Iowa State University for his computer (Atanatsoff - Berry). Also look at the calculation engines that Blaise Pascal and others developed. And what about the development of Binary counting and addition... they did not come as easily / intuitively as counting on base 10... based on fingers and toes.

But I am also wondering if you copied this from somewhere, because your text mentions a (pictured below). Where is this picture? I wonder if you copied this off of a website somewhere.

Let's see your source.

Christian

[Chainsaw]

Later in 1941, after an unfortunately-placed resistor supplied the incorrect voltage to a circuit, the first 'bug' was invented.

By January, 2005 the number of bugs in shipping software exceeds 100 billion worldwide.

(Foghorn Leghorn:"That's a, I say that's a joke, son")

[nanosani]

hehe .. and atleast 50 billion being Microsoft's .... :D

[master Blacktop]

no i just did this in my computer class in minnsota saint paul :cool:

[Real-tiner]

The computer bug got its name on the Harvard Mark IV when a cockroach got between two contacts of a relay, preventing them from closing. So they called the exterminators to "get the bugs out" and the name stuck.

I seem to remember a fully programmable computer made by IBM in 1937. The programming was done by inserting plugs into cards, not through instructions stored in memory. But it had all of the elements of programming, including decision making, loops, and subroutines. It was called an "accounting machine".

[kc0arf]

Hi,

I wonder if one might consider Edison's vote ticker machine a computer. He did a number of things before the lightbulb.

Christian

[alc6379]

Let's see your source. Christian

Very easy to find: http://www.geocities.com/basicsofcomputing/electronics.htm

skimmed from a Google search using an exact phrase in his post.

[bombe]

if i remember correctly, the ENIAC was the first computer. maybe not?!?!?!?

[Real-tiner]

ENIAC was the first computer where the program was stored in random access memory.

[Chainsaw]

That was the first AMERICAN computer, but the English claim to have an earlier WWII stored-program computer that was a code breaker and therefore "secret". It was called "Colossus" and has been reconstructed....

http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/lorenz/rebuild.htm

[Chainsaw]

Oh, I take that back, it was not a stored-program computer but then neither, apparently, was ENIAC. They both apparently used wires and switches.

[brain-nerd]

ENIAC was the first computer where the program was stored in random access memory.

if anyone is interested or as infatuated with brainerd or eniac as I am, I found that Brainerd's pocketwatch is listed on eBay. It has some kind of coding engraved in it. Too rich for my blood, but if I could afford it, it would be mine! VERY COOL. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1247&item=5165948022