A century of Invention – The first Computer

There’s been cited as calling in the computing world when discussing what was the first computer invented.

For years, the accepted pioneer on the digital age was the ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And InventHelp Inventions Store Computer, perhaps because the story associated with the development was one worthy for tabloids and television.

As World War II was coming to a close, the Army had run less than mathematicians and were willing to recruit women. Six women were accepted to work on “Project PX” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, under John Mauchly and K. Presper Eckert. The women’s job were to program firing tables and ballistic trajectories using ENIAC. Their work laid the groundwork new ideas for inventions advancement. The completed machine was unveiled on Feb. 14, 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania. The military had funded the price tag of almost $500,000. It occupied about 1,800 square feet and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 a lot. It is widely considered to function as first computer invented, considering its highly functional status along with the late 1950s.

However, its “first” status was challenged in court when Rand Corp. bought the ENIAC patent and started charging royalties. Honeywell Incorporated. refused to pay and challenged the patent in 1968. It was learned that Mauchly, one of the many leaders of the Project PX at the University of Pennsylvania, had seen an initial prototype of a tool being built in the Iowa State College called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer.

Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry began development on top of the ABC in 1937 and it remained developed until 1942 at the Iowa State College (now Iowa State University). Eventually, it could solve equations containing 29 variables.

In 1973, product ideas U.S. Federal Judge Earl R. Larson released his decision how the ENIAC patent by Mauchly and Eckert was invalid along with the ABC was the first computer devised. However, the ABC was never fully functional, so the most popular opinion to the present day has the ENIAC as the first electronic computing computer. The Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of American History in Washington displays most in the remains of the ENIAC, alongside bits of the ABC.

However, there’s another twist to this tale. The most rudimentry computer is an electronic device designed to adopt data, perform prescribed mathematical and logical operations and display the results. Germany’s Konrad Zuse created what was basically the first programmable calculator in the mid-1930s in his parent’s living room. Zuse’s Z1 had 64-word memory and a clock speed of 1 Hz. Programming the the Z1 required the user to insert tape into a punch tape reader and then receive his results through a punch tape dispenser – making it possibly the first computer invented.