5 ms·
Time 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].
by bachback 12y ago
Time 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_%28computer%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_%28computer%29
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl
- bachback 12y agosee also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculating_Space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculating_Space http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/digitalphysics.html http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/digitalphysics.html
- 1ris 12y agoThe German wikipedia has a nice overview over early compuers. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Vergleich_mit_anderen_fr.C3.BChen_Computern 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 yes
- masklinn 12y agoThe Z3 was electromechanical (it used relays) not electronic.
- terhechte 12y agoInterestingly, the Z3 was not meant to be Turing complete (by Zuse) (that is, he did not intend the functionality that Turing completeness describes. Living in Germany back then he did not know about Turing nor about the "on computable numbers" paper). Only in 1998 did people find out that the Z3 was indeed Turing complete. What's also impressive is that Zuse didn't know about Charles Babbage either.
- waterlesscloud 12y agoIn college, I had a very old professor from... I think it was Romania, or possibly Bulgaria. Anyway, one day he was saying he had worked for Konrad Zuse, and I blurted out "Wait, you worked for the N..." and stopped there, thinking better of it. He laughed and claimed it had been after the war. I did later learn not to spit out every thought that entered my head.
- vanderZwan 12y agoThe Germans also came up with the mouse around the same time as Doug Engelbart's team did, technically beating him to the punch: http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/misc/telefunken.shtml http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/misc/telefunken.shtml I'm kind of curious what other parts of computer history are overlooked because they happened outside of the anglosphere.
- DougMerritt 12y agoNot even close. That same site says that Englebart first constructed a mouse in 1963, 5 years earlier than that demo. http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/firstmouse.shtml http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/firstmouse.shtml Englebart's work wasn't secret; various other people may have constructed their own mice after 1963, and yes, that sort of thing is interesting.
- vanderZwan 12y agoAh, good catch. I didn't click beyond the site I linked - bit misleading in its wording then.