Who invented first computer

The idea was to reduce everything numbers, letters, pictures, sounds to strings of ones and zeros and use a recipe a program to solve the problems in very simple steps. The digital computer was born, but for now it was only an imaginary machine. At the end of the Second World War —during which he helped to decipher the Enigma code of the Nazi coded messages— Turing created one of the first computers similar to modern ones , the Automatic Computing Engine, which in addition to being digital was programmable; in other words, it could be used for many things by simply changing the program.

Although Turing established what a computer should look like in theory, he was not the first to put it into practice. That honour goes to an engineer who was slow to gain recognition, in part because his work was financed by the Nazi regime in the midst of a global war. On 12 May , Konrad Zuse completed the Z3 in Berlin, which was the first fully functional programmable and automatic digital computer. Just as the Silicon Valley pioneers would later do, Zuse successfully built the Z3 in his home workshop, managing to do so without electronic components, but using telephone relays.

On the other side of the war, the Allied powers did attach importance to building electronic computers, using thousands of vacuum tubes. The first computer that was Turing-complete, and that had those four basic features of our current computers was the ENIAC Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer , secretly developed by the US army and first put to work at the University of Pennsylvania on 10 December in order to study the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb.

Presper Eckert, occupied m2, weighed 30 tons, consumed kilowatts of electricity and contained some 20, vacuum tubes. ENIAC was soon surpassed by other computers that stored their programs in electronic memories. The vacuum tubes were replaced first by transistors and eventually by microchips, with which the computer miniaturization race commenced.

But that giant machine, built by the great winner of the Second World War, launched our digital age. Nowadays, it would be unanimously considered the first true computer in history if it were not for Konrad Zuse , who decided in to reconstruct his Z3, which had been destroyed by a bombing in The replica was exhibited at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, where it is found today.

Focused on making it work, Zuse was never aware that he had in his hands the first universal computing machine. It depends. The question remains today as open as this one: What makes a machine a computer? Developed for Busicom, a Japanese calculator maker, the had transistors and could perform up to 90, operations per second in four-bit chunks.

Federico Faggin led the design and Ted Hoff led the architecture. Under the direction of engineer Dr. Based on the Intel microprocessor, the Micral is one of the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computers. Designer Thi Truong developed the computer while Philippe Kahn wrote the software. Truong, founder and president of the French company R2E, created the Micral as a replacement for minicomputers in situations that did not require high performance, such as process control and highway toll collection.

In , Truong sold R2E to Bull. Designed by Don Lancaster, the TV Typewriter is an easy-to-build kit that can display alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set. The original design included two memory boards and could generate and store characters as 16 lines of 32 characters. A cassette tape interface provided supplementary storage for text. The TV Typewriter was used by many small television stations well in the s. Wang was a successful calculator manufacturer, then a successful word processor company.

The Wang makes it a successful computer company, too. Wang sold the primarily through Value Added Resellers, who added special software to solve specific customer problems. The first commercially advertised US computer based on a microprocessor the Intel , the Scelbi has 4 KB of internal memory and a cassette tape interface, as well as Teletype and oscilloscope interfaces. Scelbi aimed the 8H, available both in kit form and fully assembled, at scientific, electronic, and biological applications.

In , Scelbi introduced the 8B version with 16 KB of memory for the business market. The Alto is a groundbreaking computer with wide influence on the computer industry. It was based on a graphical user interface using windows, icons, and a mouse, and worked together with other Altos over a local area network. It could also share files and print out documents on an advanced Xerox laser printer. For its January issue, hobbyist magazine Popular Electronics runs a cover story of a new computer kit — the Altair Within weeks of its appearance, customers inundated its maker, MITS, with orders.

Chuck Peddle leads a small team of former Motorola employees to build a low-cost microprocessor. The and its progeny are still used today, usually in embedded applications. Southwest Technical Products is founded by Daniel Meyer as DEMCO in the s to provide a source for kit versions of projects published in electronics hobbyist magazines.

Of the dozens of different SWTP kits available, the proved the most popular. Tailored for online transaction processing, the Tandem is one of the first commercial fault-tolerant computers. The banking industry rushed to adopt the machine, built to run during repair or expansion.

The Video Display Module VDM marks the first implementation of a memory-mapped alphanumeric video display for personal computers. Introduced at the Altair Convention in Albuquerque in March , the visual display module enabled the use of personal computers for interactive games.

The fastest machine of its day, The Cray-1's speed comes partly from its shape, a "C," which reduces the length of wires and thus the time signals need to travel across them. High packaging density of integrated circuits and a novel Freon cooling system also contributed to its speed. Typical applications included US national defense work, including the design and simulation of nuclear weapons, and weather forecasting. Intel and Zilog introduced new microprocessors.

Five times faster than its predecessor, the , the Intel could address four times as many bytes for a total of 64 kilobytes. The Zilog Z could run any program written for the and included twice as many built-in machine instructions.

Designed by Sunnyvale, California native Steve Wozniak, and marketed by his friend Steve Jobs, the Apple-1 is a single-board computer for hobbyists. With an order for 50 assembled systems from Mountain View, California computer store The Byte Shop in hand, the pair started a new company, naming it Apple Computer, Inc.

In all, about of the boards were sold before Apple announced the follow-on Apple II a year later as a ready-to-use computer for consumers, a model which sold in the millions for nearly two decades. When connected to a color television set, the Apple II produced brilliant color graphics for the time. Millions of Apple IIs were sold between and , making it one of the longest-lived lines of personal computers.

Apple gave away thousands of Apple IIs to school, giving a new generation their first access to personal computers. The TRS proved popular with schools, as well as for home use. The TRS line of computers later included color, portable, and handheld versions before being discontinued in the early s.

The first of several personal computers released in , the PET comes fully assembled with either 4 or 8 KB of memory, a built-in cassette tape drive, and a membrane keyboard. The PET was popular with schools and for use as a home computer. After the success of the PET, Commodore remained a major player in the personal computer market into the s.

The success of the VAX family of computers transformed DEC into the second-largest computer company in the world, as VAX systems became the de facto standard computing system for industry, the sciences, engineering, and research. Shortly after delivery of the Atari VCS game console, Atari designs two microcomputers with game capabilities: the Model and Model The served primarily as a game console, while the was more of a home computer.

Atari's 8-bit computers were influential in the arts, especially in the emerging DemoScene culture of the s and '90s. The Motorola microprocessor exhibited a processing speed far greater than its contemporaries.

This high performance processor found its place in powerful work stations intended for graphics-intensive programs common in engineering. Intended to be a less expensive alternative to the PET, the VIC was highly successful, becoming the first computer to sell more than a million units. Commodore even used Star Trek television star William Shatner in advertisements.

About 50, were sold in Britain, primarily to hobbyists, and initially there was a long waiting list for the system. The machine was expandable, with ports for cassette storage, serial interface and rudimentary networking.

The DN is based on the Motorola microprocessor, high-resolution display and built-in networking - the three basic features of all workstations. Apollo and its main competitor, Sun Microsystems, optimized their machines to run the computer-intensive graphics programs common in engineering and scientific applications.

Apollo was a leading innovator in the workstation field for more than a decade, and was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in IBM's brand recognition, along with a massive marketing campaign, ignites the fast growth of the personal computer market with the announcement of its own personal computer PC. It featured a 5-inch display, 64 KB of memory, a modem, and two 5. Thousands of software titles were released over the lifespan of the C64 and by the time it was discontinued in , it had sold more than 22 million units.

It is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the greatest selling single computer of all time. Franklin was able to undercut Apple's pricing even while offering some features not available on the original. Sun Microsystems grows out of this prototype. Sun helped cement the model of a workstation having an Ethernet interface as well as high-resolution graphics and the UNIX operating system.

Lisa is the first commercial personal computer with a graphical user interface GUI. It was thus an important milestone in computing as soon Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh would soon adopt the GUI as their user interface, making it the new paradigm for personal computing. The success of the Portable inspired many other early IBM-compatible computers. Compaq's success launched a market for IBM-compatible computers that by had achieved an percent share of the personal computer market.

The Macintosh was the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphical user interface and was based on the Motorola microprocessor. The PC Jr. While the PC Jr. It also included more memory and accommodated high-density 1. By the early s, Dell became one of the leading computer retailers. It developed a very loyal following while add-on components allowed it to be upgraded easily.

The inside of the Amiga case is engraved with the signatures of the Amiga designers, including Jay Miner as well as the paw print of his dog Mitchy. At 4 million operations per second and 4 kilobytes of memory, the gave PCs as much speed and power as older mainframes and minicomputers.

The chip brought with it the introduction of a bit architecture, a significant improvement over the bit architecture of previous microprocessors. Unlike modern computers, it was programmed with a series of switches and plugs. Given our reliance on computers today, it is hard for us to imagine, but Turing had an extremely hard time convincing his contemporaries of the importance of his work.

Like so many early computer scientists he struggled to get the funding he needed. Note: The Colossus computer is not to be confused with the Bombe: an electromechanical device, also designed by Turing and used to decode Enigma, in His work did not stop at the end of WW2!

After the war, he worked at Manchester University where he played a key role in developing early computing technology and wrote several papers, that still define the way with think about computer science to this day. Although he might not be the man who invented computers, Turin is certainly the man who invented computer science! It lacked many of the functionalities of modern computers; it was designed for one specialist task and was not Turing complete.

It was fully reprogrammable and so, able to solve a complex number of problems. It could take several days to program because it was programmed via external switches and dials. The ENIAC took 20 seconds to complete its first calculation, a mechanical computer of the time would have taken 40 hours. By the time it was decommissioned, in , it had been used to solve problems as diverse as wind tunnels, random number generators, and weather prediction. The ENIAC contained 20, vacuum tubes, 7, crystal diodes, 1, relays, 70, resistors, 10, capacitors and 5,, hand-soldered joints.

It was 2. The ENIAC consumed a staggering kW of electricity, which led to a rumor that whenever it was switched on, lights dimmed in Philadelphia.

Several tubes needed replacing every day. Although relatively simplistic to other computers of the time, it was the first computer to store its program digitally not via wires and switches. Like the Machester Baby, it also used a stored program.

However, it did not run exclusively on transistors and contained several tubes in its clock. It was not, a commercial success. The computer was so successful that the company had to hire extra staff just to keep up with demand! Because of the versatility of this design, several enterprising individuals designed upgrades that users could add to their model. The IBM was the first, commercially successful, portable computer.

The IBM had a bit processor, took quarter-inch cartridge QIC magnetic tape drives and gave users the option to switch the screen between white on black and black on white. The Gavilan SC is the first portable computer with the familiar flip form factor and the first to be marketed as a "laptop.

This was the company's response to Apple's GUI. Commodore unveils the Amiga , which features advanced audio and video capabilities. More than two years later, only dot-coms had been registered. Its bit architecture provides as speed comparable to mainframes.

Facebook, a social networking site, launches. Google acquires Android, a Linux-based mobile phone operating system. Nintendo's Wii game console hits the market. They're usually each tailored to attack a particular algorithm," said study lead author Shantanu Debnath, a quantum physicist and optical engineer at the University of Maryland, College Park. This richness provides a vast design space for exploring novel and multi-value ways to encode and process data beyond the 0s and 1s of current logic-based, digital architectures.