40's

Technology in the 40's

By nhitzeman

  • Complex Number Calculator (CNC)

    Complex Number Calculator (CNC)
    Invented by Bell Telephone Laboratories, designed by George Stibitz. It was not programmable and was one of the first technologies to make use of relays. A set of telephone wires was used to convey the calculations from a "calculating unit" to a processor and back to the CNC. It could perform advanced calculations.

  • First Colossus

    First Colossus
    Designed by Tommy Flowers, this was designed to break ciphers used by Nazis during WW2. It used vacuum valves to perform Boolean and counting operations. Regarded as the first electric programmable computer, but was programmed by switches and valves and not a stored program.

  • ENIAC

    ENIAC
    ENIAC stands for Electric Numerical Integrator and Computer. This was the first programmable electric computer and was in decimal. It was developed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. This revolutionized how computers are designed and developed since it was a general processor (could solve a large number of numerical problems) instead of only one problem at a time.

  • EDVAC

    EDVAC
    EDVAC stands for Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer. This one is binary rather than decimal and was created by the same inventors as the ENIAC. It was designed to be a stored program computer, meaning that it stores program instructions in its memory. It was a binary computer with automatic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division functions.

  • Modem

    Modem
    MODulation + DEModulation = MODEM (it MODulates numbers into sounds, and Demodulates sounds into numbers). Developed by a group at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center. By allowing computers to use normal telephone lines, instead of specialized ones, it helped make technology more cost effective and offers more coverage.