Info on things old wanted...

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Sun Oct 26 10:33:19 1997

> Maybe we're talking of different kinds of worms. : ^ ) but I've
> always considered Babbidges machine the first computer.
> I've got an old Monroe mechanical calculator in my collection
> that I don't call a computer tho it "crunches" numbers , but the
> Enniac which was preprogrammed by plugboard IIRC ,is considered a
> computer by any authority I've ever read . The 80 col "computer" card
> would be a misnomer in that case. The sorters, collators, keypunch,
> and compilers I worked on in the 50's tho obviously not computers
> were I\O adjuncts just as keyboard, DDs and modems are now.
> Plugboards were handwired to delineate paths for info just as
> present-day programs do.
> Am I missing something from your original post ? Did you mean
> pre-processing rather than before the computer era ?

Punched card technology was well established well before what we think of
as the first electronic computers - ENIAC, the ABC machine, etc.. IBM, of
course, was the biggie in the field (and oddly enough, entered the
computing business a bit late), starting sometime in the 1930s.

Was this IBM model 29 used with such ancient systems? Probably not - most
likely it spent its time preparing cards for a System/360.

As far as who developed the first computer - we could argue all day on
that one. There are no distinct lines between technologies or generations.
For example, do analog computers count? At what point does a complex
feedback control become a computer? For example, do the computers used to
direct gunfire count? They date from well before World War 2, and it took
digital machines many years to surpass them in performance, yet I would
not call them computers as we think of them.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Sun Oct 26 1997 - 10:33:19 GMT