Although Babbage is often called the “father of computing,” his machines were
mechanical, not electrical or electronic. In the 1930s, Konrad Zuse (1910–1995)
picked up where Babbage left off, adding electrical technology and other improvements
to Babbage’s design. Zuse’s computer, the Z1, used electromechanical
relays instead of Babbage’s hand-cranked gears. The Z1 was programmable and
cally to solve systems of linear equations, we cannot call it a general-purpose
computer. There were, however, some features that the ABC had in common with
the general-purpose ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer),
which was invented a few years later. These common features caused considerable
controversy as to who should be given the credit (and patent rights) for the
invention of the electronic digital computer. (The interested reader can find more
details on a rather lengthy lawsuit involving Atanasoff and the ABC in Mollenhoff
[1988].)
John Mauchly (1907–1980) and J. Presper Eckert (1929–1995) were the two
principle inventors of the ENIAC, introduced to the public in 1946. The ENIAC
is recognized as the first all-electronic, general-purpose digital computer. This
machine used 17,468 vacuum tubes, occupied 1,800 square feet of floor space,
weighed 30 tons, and consumed 174 kilowatts of power. The ENIAC had a memory
capacity of about 1,000 information bits (about 20 10-digit decimal numbers)
and used punched cards to store data.
John Mauchly’s vision for an electronic calculating machine was born from
his lifelong interest in predicting the weather mathematically. While a professor
of physics at Ursinus College near Philadelphia, Mauchly engaged dozens of
adding machines and student operators to crunch mounds of data that he believed
would reveal mathematical relationships behind weather patterns. He felt that if
he could have only a little more computational power, he could reach the goal
that seemed just beyond his grasp. Pursuant to the Allied war effort, and with
ulterior motives to learn about electronic computation, Mauchly volunteered for a
crash course in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore
School of Engineering. Upon completion of this program, Mauchly accepted a
teaching position at the Moore School, where he taught a brilliant young student,
J. Presper Eckert. Mauchly and Eckert found a mutual interest in building an
electronic calculating device. In order to secure the funding they needed to build
their machine, they wrote a formal proposal for review by the school. They portrayed
their machine as conservatively as they could, billing it as an “automatic
calculator.” Although they probably knew that computers would be able to function
most efficiently using the binary numbering system, Mauchly and Eckert
designed their system to use base 10 numbers, in keeping with the appearance of
building a huge electronic adding machine. The university rejected Mauchly and
Eckert’s proposal. Fortunately, the United States Army was more interested.
had a memory, an arithmetic unit, and a control unit. Because money and resources
were scarce in wartime Germany, Zuse used discarded movie film instead of
punched cards for input. Although his machine was designed to use vacuum tubes,
Zuse, who was building his machine on his own, could not afford the tubes. Thus,
the Z1 correctly belongs in the first generation, although it had no tubes.
Zuse built the Z1 in his parents’ Berlin living room while Germany was at
war with most of Europe. Fortunately, he couldn’t convince the Nazis to buy his
machine. They did not realize the tactical advantage such a device would give
them. Allied bombs destroyed all three of Zuse’s first systems, the Z1, Z2, and
Z3. Zuse’s impressive machines could not be refined until after the war and ended
up being another “evolutionary dead end” in the history of computers.
Digital computers, as we know them today, are the outcome of work done by
a number of people in the 1930s and 1940s. Pascal’s basic mechanical calculator
was designed and modified simultaneously by many people; the same can be said
of the modern electronic computer. Notwithstanding the continual arguments
about who was first with what, three people clearly stand out as the inventors of
modern computers: John Atanasoff, John Mauchly, and J. Presper Eckert.
John Atanasoff (1904–1995) has been credited with the construction of the
first completely electronic computer. The Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC) was
a binary machine built from vacuum tubes. Because this system was built specifi
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