Frank Rowlett, a cryptanalyst breaking Japanese codes at the Navy Annexe in Washington in the 1930s, accidentally invented computers when he haywired some condi

Frank Rowlett, a cryptanalyst breaking Japanese codes at the Navy Annexe in Washington in the 1930s, accidentally invented computers when he haywired some conditional branch circuits into an IBM card sorter [1]. He was only trying to solve his problem, and was working in a classified area, so almost no has heard of him today. There is a relevant xkcd, of course [2]. [1] Frank B. Rowlett, The Story of Magic: Memoirs of an American Cryptologic Pioneer, ISBN 978-0894122736 (1998) [2] https://xkcd.com/664/ https://xkcd.com/664/