Computer history

  • Charles Babbage

    Charles Babbage
    Charles Babbage was an English mathematician, philosopher and inventor born on December 26, 1791, in London, England. Often called “The Father of Computing,” Babbage detailed plans for mechanical Calculating Engines, Difference Engines, and Analytical Engines. Babbage died on October 18, 1871, in London.
  • Joseph Marie

    Joseph Marie
    1801: Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French merchant and inventor invents a loom that uses punched wooden cards to automatically weave fabric designs. Early computers would use similar punch cards.
  • computer history

    computer history
    The history of computers goes back over 200 years. At first theorized by mathematicians and entrepreneurs, during the 19th century mechanical calculating machines were designed and built to solve the increasingly complex number-crunching challenges. The advancement of technology enabled ever more-complex computers by the early 20th century, and computers became larger and more powerful.
  • What does a computer work?

    A computer, a digital information-processing machine, works by changing information into binary numbers (ones and zeros) and then using simple mathematics to make decisions about how to rearrange those numbers into words or actions.
  • First printing

    First printing
    1853: Swedish inventor Per Georg Scheutz and his son Edvard design the world's first printing calculator. The machine is significant for being the first to "compute tabular differences and print the results," according to Uta C. Merzbach's book, "Georg Scheutz and the First Printing Calculator (opens in new tab)" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977).
  • The first Bombe is completed

    The first Bombe is completed
    Built as an electro mechanical means of decrypting Nazi ENIGMA-based military communications during World War II, the British Bombe is conceived by computer pioneer Alan Turing and Harold Keen of the British Tabulating Machine Company. Hundreds of allied bombes were built in order to determine the daily rotor start positions of Enigma cipher machines, which turn allowed the Allies to decrypt German messages. The basic idea for bombes came from Polish code-breaker Marian Rejewski's.
  • Konrad Zuse finishes the Z3 Computer

    Konrad Zuse finishes the Z3 Computer
    The Z3, an early computer built by German engineer Konrad Zuse working in complete isolation from developments elsewhere, uses 2,300 relays, performs floating point binary arithmetic, and has a 22-bit word length. The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations but was destroyed in a bombing raid on Berlin in late 1943. Zuse later supervised a reconstruction of the Z3 in the 1960s, which is currently on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
  • Commercial computer

    1946: Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and receive funding from the Census Bureau to build the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for business and government applications.
  • what are computers

    what are computers
    A computer is a digital electronic machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks.
  • Fist computer

    The first computer was invented by Charles Babbage (1822) but was not built until 1991! Alan Turing invented computer science. The ENIAC (1945) was the first electronic general-purpose digital computer, it filled a room. The Micral N was the world's first “personal computer”(1973).