23 Jan
2011
23 Jan
'11
2:51 p.m.
On 2011 Jan 23, at 1:25 PM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
Perhaps people should stick to facts: "this
did that"; rather than
declarations: "this was that". All these machines had their
contributions. ENIAC doesn't get to claim everything
I agree. That's why the page at http://the-eniac.com/first/ is
organized exactly as you described. The only thing claimed is that
ENIAC was the first "general-purpose, all-electronic" computer.
Babbage designed a computer. Unfortunately he wasn't able to build
it. Zuse designed a computer, but it was electromechanical. Colossus was an all-electronic computer, but it was
single-purpose.
TMU, Colossus was actually like the ABC in that it did some processing
in electronics but the primary data flow still had electro-mechanics in
the path (giant paper tape loops).
The electronics was still beneficial in both because continually
rotating mechanisms (ABC:drum, Colossus:paper tape loops) could operate
at higher speeds than toggling relays (changing momentum).
What ENIAC did was make the advancement to being
general-purpose AND
all-electronic.
Yes.
But the ABC still needs credit in that list for what it did do.
On my site at:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/ABC/omflow.html is a
flowchart of the problem solving process using the ABC. Note it
carefully distinguishes between what the human operator did and what
the ABC did.
A lot to read there! I will have to get back to you.
On the other hand, I also like to argue the
developments would have
taken place regardless of the military and the only reason the ENIAC
was a 'military' machine was (as with the mis-attribution to Willi
Sutton) "That's where the money is".
Absolutely.