ENIAC? Zuse Z3!
Zuse Z3? Babbage's Analytical Engine!
The Z3 was the first operational turing-complete computer (May 1941, a few years before ENIAC). Babbage's analytical engine was never actually built.
How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
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Re: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#12Re: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#13Time to correct the record: the World's first electronic, programmable computer was build by a German by the name of Konrad Zuse in May 1941 [1] called Z3 [2]. He designed a language for it called Plankalkül [3].
Eniac was announced in 1946. Incidentally Turing wanted to be build one in 1945, called Electronic Brain. His paper "on computable numbers" was published in 1936.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_%28computer%29 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl
Re: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#14Time to correct the record: the World's first electronic, programmable computer was build by a German by the name of Konrad Zuse in May 1941 [1] called Z3 [2]. He designed a language for it called Plankalkül [3]. Eniac was announced in 1946. Incidentally Turing wanted to be build one in 1945, called Electronic Brain. His paper "on computable numbers" was published in 1936. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse…
Re: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#15I just saw some ENIAC panels at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA and I'm hoping to visit the Moore School of Engineering in Philadelphia soon to see the parts they have. Now I'll have to visit Oklahoma and see the restored portion they have. (I've also got cousins there, so that's another reason to go.) I'm a big fan of ENIAC and the other early computers. As for "first", I don't think any computer should be called out as the first, each of them contributed something to the machines we have today.
Re: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#16http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
An although it is only a replica the Colossus at Bletchley Park actually functions, unlike the ENIAC restoration. Also of note is that by the end of the war the GC&CS had 10 working Colossi.
And the same museum at Bletchley Park (there are two) is building a functioning replica of the EDSAC, one of the first programmable, fully electronic computers:
http://www.tnmoc.org/special-projects/edsac
(Whether EDSAC was "the first" depends on how you define "computer", and what you think it means for a machine to be in operation, among other things, but it's one of several plausible claimants. The Z3, cited elsewhere here, was a programmable computer, but not fully electronic -- there was a lot of relay circuitry, which kept the clock rate down to about 10 Hz.)
From the title, I was honestly expecting the article to be about this project instead.
Re: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#17Time to correct the record: the World's first electronic, programmable computer was build by a German by the name of Konrad Zuse in May 1941 [1] called Z3 [2]. He designed a language for it called Plankalkül [3]. Eniac was announced in 1946. Incidentally Turing wanted to be build one in 1945, called Electronic Brain. His paper "on computable numbers" was published in 1936. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse…
The German wikipedia has a nice overview over early compuers.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Vergleich_mit_anderen_fr...
Name operating since Floating Point Binary Eletric Programmable Turingcomplete
Zuse Z3 May 1941 yes yes no yes yes
Atanasoff-Berry Summer 1941 no yes yes no no
Colossus 1943 no yes yes with rewiring no
Mark I 1944 no no no punch cards yes
Zuse Z4 March 1944 yes yes no punch cards yes
ENIAC 1946 no no yes with rewiring yes
ENIAC 1948 no no yes with a resistor matrix yesRe: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#18Eniac? Z3? It was Baby!
http://www.computer50.org/mark1/new.baby.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Mark_1
Disclaimer: University of Manchester Alumni
Re: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#19I always thought that the first machine that was really a "computer" in the modern sense (i.e. stored program) was the Manchester "Baby":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Small-Scale_Experime...
Re: How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
#20Sorry for not joining the positivity parade, but taking the control panels, repainting them and then wiring up the lights to blink in pretty ways seems substantially wrong in a number of ways...
I guess "resurrected" is being used in the "brain dead and slightly rotten body" zombie sense of the word :(