On 25 May, John Honniball wrote:
>> Baby machine? Do you mean the machines of Charles Babbage?
>
> No, the "Baby" was built in 1948 at Manchester University
[...]
Ahh. Good to know.
> 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/
Received on Fri May 25 2001 - 12:20:05 BST