• Question: who invented the first computer?

    Asked by sameenah12 to Tom on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Tom Crick

      Tom Crick answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      The first use of the word “computer” was recorded in 1613, referring to a person who carried out calculations, or computations, and the word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century onwards, the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, describing a machine that carries out computations.

      There were computational devices throughout the 1800, including the Hollerith machine, which was a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards.

      The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) was among the first electronic digital binary computing devices, although some people believe that ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first general-purpose electronic computer.

      However, these were very different from what we think of as a computer today!

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