ABC – 1939
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first
electronic digital computer. It was built by John Vincent Atanasoff and
Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937-42. It incorporated several
major innovations in computing including the use of binary arithmetic,
regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and
computing functions.
Harvard Mark 1 – 1943
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Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper designed the MARK series of computers at Harvard University. The MARK series of computers began with the Mark I in 1944. Imagine a giant roomful of noisy, clicking metal parts, 55 feet long and 8 feet high. The 5-ton device contained almost 760,000 separate pieces. Used by the US Navy for gunnery and ballistic calculations, the Mark I was in operation until 1959.
The computer, controlled by pre-punched paper tape, could carry out addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and reference to previous results. It had special subroutines for logarithms and trigonometric functions and used 23 decimal place numbers. Data was stored and counted mechanically using 3000 decimal storage wheels, 1400 rotary dial switches, and 500 miles of wire. Its electromagnetic relays classified the machine as a relay computer. All output was displayed on an electric typewriter. By today's standards, the Mark I was slow, requiring 3-5 seconds for a multiplication operation
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ENIAC – 1946
ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator). The U.S. military sponsored their research; they needed a calculating device for writing artillery-firing tables (the settings used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy).
John Mauchly was the chief consultant and J Presper Eckert was the chief engineer. Eckert was a graduate student studying at the Moore School when he met John Mauchly in 1943. It took the team about one year to design the ENIAC and 18 months and 500,000 tax dollars to build it.
The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, along with 70,000 resistors and 10,000 capacitors.
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