26 Feb
1999
26 Feb
'99
6:21 p.m.
OK, I think I have a candidate for the first computer with blinkenlights.
This is from David Richie's The Computer Pioneers:
<<
As he sat in his kitchen, one November evening in 1937, [...] Stibitz went
into his workshop, took some relays salvaged from Bell Labs' junk pile,
[...] and devised a few circuits. Input consisted of strips of metal cut
from coffee cans. Output was a pair of flashlights
bulbs that lit up or
stayed dark to indicate the results of binary calculations.
>
Stibitz is generally credited with creating one of the first digital
computers. I think this date is earlier than both Zuse's Z1 (1938) and
Atanasoff's ABC (1939), so I guess blinkenlights were there from the
start!
-- Doug