10 Feb
2015
10 Feb
'15
11:20 a.m.
From: Chuck Guzis
"the first electronic digital computer"
I think that's a bit of a stretch; the ABC wasn't really a computer (as we
think of them). As someone (forget the name) said, for those early machines,
if you add enough adjectives, each one is the first <something>.
Here's my list (in temporal order):
ABC - first electronic digital computing device
COLOSSUS - first large-scale electronic digital computing device heavily used
for actual work
ENIAC - first general-purpose electronic digital computing device
Manchester Baby - first operational stored-program computer
EDSAC - first stored-program computer heavily used for actual work
Noel