25 May
2001
25 May
'01
5:20 a.m.
On 25 May, John Honniball wrote:
[...]
Ahh. Good to know.
Baby machine?
Do you mean the machines of Charles Babbage?
No, the "Baby" was built in 1948 at Manchester University As far as I'm concerned, if it ran the first
stored
program, then it's the first computer! Machines like Eniac
weren't stored-program and we'd call them "calculators"
nowadays.
Yes and no. It just depends on your definition of "computer".
The Z3 is
often not called computer due to the lack of a branch instruction. But
as I wrote before: There are so many remarkable inventors and projects
in this area and that time, that I don't like to make a definite
decision about the "winner". Everyone deserves (the same amount of)
honor.
If anyone's interested, there's a couple of
good books on
this era by Simon Lavington.
I am afraid that these books are hard to get in
Germany.
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/