THE MODERN HISTORY OF

COMPUTING

1 1828 - 1839: Babbage

Babbage's proposed Difference Engine
was a special-purpose digital computing
machine for the automatic production of
mathematical tables (such as logarithm
tables, tide tables, and astronomical
tables). Babbage's proposed Analytical
Engine, considerably more ambitious than
the Difference Engine, was to have been a
general-purpose mechanical digital
computer.

Analog Computers 2
The earliest computing machines in
wide use were not digital but analog.
James Thomson, brother of Lord
Kelvin, invented the mechanical wheel-
and-disc integrator that became the
foundation of analog computation.
Stanley Fifer reports that the first
semi-automatic mechanical analog
computer was built in England by the
Manchester firm.

3 1936 - Universal Turing Machine

In 1936, at Cambridge University,
Turing invented the principle of the
modern computer. He described an
abstract digital computing machine
consisting of a limitless memory and a
scanner that moves back and forth
through the memory, symbol by
symbol, reading what it finds and
writing further symbols.

Electromechanical and Electronic

4
Computation
Electromechanical digital computing
machines were built before and during the
second world war. Electronic equipment
designed by Flowers in 1934, for
controlling the connections between
telephone exchanges. Flowers' aim,
achieved after the war, was that
electronic equipment should replace
existing, less reliable, systems built from
relays and used in telephone exchanges.

5 1937–1942 Atanasoff
During the period 1937–1942 Atanasoff
developed techniques for using vacuum
tubes to perform numerical calculations
digitally, the earliest comparable use of
vacuum tubes in the U.S. Atanasoff began
building what is sometimes called the
Atanasoff-Berry Computer, or ABC, a
small-scale special-purpose electronic
digital machine for the solution of systems
of linear algebraic equations.

1944 - Colossus 6
The first fully functioning electronic digital
computer was Colossus, used by the Bletchley
Park cryptanalysts from February 1944. By the
end of the war there were ten Colossi working
round the clock at Bletchley Park. From a
cryptanalytic viewpoint, a major difference
between the prototype Colossus I and the later
machines was the addition of the so-called
Special Attachment, following a key discovery by
cryptanalysts Donald Michie and Jack Good.
 THE MODERN HISTORY OF
COMPUTING
1945 - Turing's Automatic
7
Computing Engine
Turing's 1945 report ‘Proposed Electronic Calculator’ gave the
first relatively complete specification of an electronic stored-
program general-purpose digital computer. The first electronic
stored-program digital computer to be proposed in the U.S.
was the EDVAC. The ‘First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC’
(May 1945), composed by von Neumann, contained little
engineering detail, in particular concerning electronic hardware.
Turing's ‘Proposed Electronic Calculator’, on the other hand,
supplied detailed circuit designs and specifications of hardware
units, specimen programs in machine code, and even an
estimate of the cost of building the machine (£11,200).
1948 - The Manchester
8
Machine
The earliest general-purpose stored-
program electronic digital computer to
work was built in Newman's Computing
Machine Laboratory at Manchester
University. The Manchester ‘Baby’, as
it became known, was constructed by
the engineers F.C. Williams and Tom
Kilburn, and performed its first
calculation on 21 June 1948.

9 ENIAC and EDVAC

The first fully functioning electronic digital
computer to be built in the U.S. was ENIAC. The
primary function for which ENIAC was
designed was the calculation of tables used in
aiming artillery. ENIAC was not a stored-
program computer, and setting it up for a new
job involved reconfiguring the machine by
means of plugs and switches. For many years,
ENIAC was believed to have been the first
functioning electronic digital computer.

High-Speed Memory 10
The final major event in the early history of
electronic computation was the
development of magnetic core memory. .
Forrester's early experiments with metallic
core soon led him to develop the superior
ferrite core memory. Digital Equipment
Corporation undertook to build a computer
similar to the Whirlwind I as a test vehicle for
a ferrite core memory. The Memory Test
Computer was completed in 1953.
Other Notable Early
Computers
EDSAC, 1949, built at Cambridge University by
Maurice Wilkes
BINAC, 1949, built by Eckert's and Mauchly's
Electronic Control Co., Philadelphia (opinions
differ over whether BINAC ever actually worked)
Whirlwind I, 1949, Digital Computer Laboratory,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jay
Forrester
SEAC, 1950, US Bureau of Standards Eastern
Division, Washington D.C., Samuel Alexander,

Other Notable Early Ralph Slutz

Computers
SWAC, 1950, US Bureau of Standards Western Division, Institute for
Numerical Analysis, University of California at Los Angeles, Harry Huskey
UNIVAC, 1951, Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, Philadelphia (the
first computer to be available commercially in the U.S.)
the IAS computer, 1952, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
University, Julian Bigelow, Arthur Burks, Herman Goldstine, von Neumann,
and others (thanks to von Neumann's publishing the specifications of the
IAS machine, it became the model for a group of computers known as the
Princeton Class machines; the IAS computer was also a strong influence
on the IBM 701)
IBM 701, 1952, International Business Machine's first mass-produced
electronic stored-program computer.