-
Turing machine
Though it isn't technically a physical computer, the Turing machine was an extremely important 'invention' in the history of computers. Alan Turing, a very influential mathematician and computer scientist, created this mathematical model of an abstract machine. the purpose of this is to understand how a computer understands information, and how it processes and solves it. The model leads to the theory of Turing completeness, whether or not a machine would be a Turing machine, which we still use. -
Z3 computer
The Z3 computer was the world's first working fully automatic digital computer, created by German engineer Konrad Zuse. This was an improvement from the previous designs, Z1 and Z2, because it made computing easier and faster, and was the first to not require rewiring when changing programs -
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
Named the first automatic electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry computer was basically a calculator used to solve multiple equations at once. Created by professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry, it opened up important ideas of modern computing. While the system itself was named obsolete, it led to the creation of the much more well known ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic computer. -
Harvard Mark 1 (ASCC)
The Harvard Mark 1, otherwise known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, was designed by Howard Aiken, funded by IBM (International Business Machines Corporation). It was a general purpose electromechanical computer, and was used during WWII for the Manhattan Project. The ASCC was used to model a simulation of the first atomic bomb, and the test was run by mathematician, John von Neumann. -
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
As stated before, the ENIAC was the first electronic general purpose computer. It was designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert in Pennsylvania. It was created for and financed by the US Army; most inventions in this decade were created due to WWII. It was used to calculate ballistics measurements, and its first major use was computing the details of the hydrogen bomb. it could do 5,000 calculations a second.
