Today's personal computers are a far cry from the massive, clunky devices that emerged during World War II, and not just in size. The "fathers" and "grandfathers" of modern desktops and laptops couldn't do many of the things that modern machines can do with ease. However, the world's first computer was a breakthrough in science and technology. Get comfortable in front of your monitor, and we'll tell you how the PC era was born.
Who created the very first computer in the world
In the 40s of the last century, there were several devices that could claim to be the first computer.
Z3
An early computer created by German engineer Konrad Zuse, who worked in complete isolation from the developments of other scientists. It had a separate memory block and a separate console for data entry. And their carrier was an eight-track punch card made by Zuse from 35 mm film.
The machine had 2,600 telephone relays and was freely programmable in binary floating-point code. The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations but was destroyed in the bombing of Berlin in late 1943. Zuse oversaw the reconstruction of his brainchild in the 1960s, and the programmable machine is now on display at a museum in Munich.
Mark 1
The Mark 1, designed by Professor Howard Aiken and released by IBM in 1941, was America's first programmable computer. The machine cost half a million dollars and was used to develop equipment for the US Navy, such as torpedoes and underwater detection systems. The Mark 1 was also used to develop implosion devices for the atomic bomb.
It is the "Mark 1" that can be called the very first computer in the world. Its characteristics, unlike the German Z3, allowed for calculations to be performed automatically, without requiring human intervention in the work process.
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
In 1939, Professor John Vincent Atanasoff received funding to build a machine called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). It was designed and built by Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry in 1942. However, the ABC device did not become widely known until a patent dispute over the invention of the computer. It was not resolved until 1973, when ENIAC co-inventor John Mauchly was proven to have seen the ABC computer shortly after it became functional.
The legal outcome of the lawsuits was significant: Atanasoff was credited with originating several key computer ideas, but the computer as a concept was declared unpatentable and therefore freely available to all developers. A full-scale working replica of ABC was completed in 1997, proving that the ABC machine functioned as Atanasoff claimed.
ENIAC
ENIAC was developed by two scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, John Eckert and John Mauchly. It could solve “a wide range of numerical problems” by reprogramming. Although the machine was not released to the public until after the war, in 1946, it was important for calculations during subsequent conflicts, such as the Cold War and the Korean War. It was used to calculate the hydrogen bomb, make engineering calculations, and create firing tables. It also forecast the weather in the USSR so that Americans would know where radioactive fallout might fall in the event of a nuclear war.
Unlike the Mark 1 with its electromechanical relays, ENIAC used vacuum tubes. It is believed that ENIAC performed more calculations during its ten years of operation than all of humanity had done up to that time.
EDSAC
The first computer with stored software was called EDSAC. It was built in 1949 at Cambridge University. The project was led by Cambridge professor and director of the Cambridge Computing Research Laboratory Maurice Wilkes.
One of Wilkes' major advances in programming was his use of a library of short programs called "subroutines." These were stored on punched cards and used to perform common, repetitive computations within a lager program.
What the world's first computer looked like
The American Mark 1 was enormous, measuring over 17 meters in length and over 2.5 meters in height. The machine, in a glass and stainless steel shell, weighed 4.5 tons, and the total length of its connecting cables was just under 800 km. A fifteen-meter shaft, which drove a 4 kW electric motor, was responsible for synchronizing the main computing modules.
Even heavier than the Mark 1 was the ENIAC. It weighed 27 tons and required 174 kW of electricity. When it was turned on, the city lights dimmed. The machine had no keyboard or monitor, occupied an area of 135 square meters, and was wrapped in kilometers of wires. To get an idea of what the ENIAC looked like, imagine a long row of metal cabinets, filled from top to bottom with light bulbs. Since the computer did not yet have good cooling, the room where it was located was very hot, and the ENIAC malfunctioned.
The first Soviet computer
The USSR did not want to lag behind the West and carried out its own developments in creating computers. The result of the efforts of Soviet scientists was "Small electronic calculating machine" (MESM). Its first launch took place in 1950. MESM used 6 thousand lamps, it occupied an area of 60 square meters and required up to 25 kW of power to operate.
The device could perform up to 3 thousand operations per second. MESM was used for complex scientific calculations, then it was used as a teaching aid, and in 1959 the machine was dismantled.
In 1952, MESM got an older sister - "Large Electronic Calculating Machine" (BESM). The number of vacuum tubes in it increased to 5 thousand, and the number of operations per second also increased - from 8 to 10 thousand.
The world's first commercial computer
UNIVAC 1, introduced in the United States in 1951, can be called the first computer intended for commercial use.
He became famous after using the 1% poll data of eligible voters to correctly predict that General Dwight Eisenhower would win the 1952 election. As people realized the power of computer data processing, many businesses began to purchase the machine for their needs.
The very first personal computer in the world
The term "personal computer" was first applied to the creation of the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, called Program 101It was released by the Olivetti company.
The device cost $3,200 and sold about 44,000 copies. NASA bought ten of them to use in calculating the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. ABC (American Broadcasting Company) used Programma 101 to forecast the 1968 presidential election. The US military used it to plan its operations during the Vietnam War. It was also purchased by schools, hospitals, and government agencies, and marked the beginning of an era of rapid development and sales of personal computers.
The first mass-produced home computer abroad
In 1975, an issue of Popular Electronics magazine featured an article about a new computer kit, the Altair 8800. Within weeks of its introduction, customers were flooding its manufacturer, MITS, with orders. The machine featured 256 bytes of memory (expandable to 64 KB) and a universal interface bus that evolved into the S-100 standard, widely used in hobbyist and personal computers of the era.
The Altair 8800 could be purchased for $397. After purchasing, the amateur radio owner had to solder and test the functionality of the assembled units himself. The difficulties did not end there; it was still necessary to master writing programs using zeros and ones. The Altair 8800 did not have a keyboard or monitor, hard disk or floppy disk drive. To enter the desired program, the user clicked the switches on the front panel of the device. And the results were checked by observing the lights blinking on the front panel.
A In 1976, the first Apple computer was born, designed and handcrafted by Steve Wozniak and promoted by his friend Steve Jobs as the first product of the Apple Computer Company. The Apple 1 is considered the first personal computer to be shipped ready-to-use.
In fact, the device had neither a monitor nor a keyboard (they were supposed to be connected). But it had a fully equipped circuit board with 30 chips. The Altair 8800 and other devices that came to market did not have this either; they had to be assembled from a kit. Initially, the Apple 1 had an almost "hellish" price of $666.66, but a year later it was reduced to $475. Later, an additional board was released that allowed data to be recorded on a cassette recorder. It cost $75.
The first mass-produced home computer in the USSR
Since the 1980s, a computer called Pravetz has been produced in Bulgaria. It was a clone of the second version of Apple. Another clone in the Pravetz line was the "Soviet" IBM PC, based on Intel 8088 and 8086 processors. A later clone of the Oric Atmos was the "home" model Pravetz 8D in a small case and with a built-in keyboard. It was produced from 1985 to 1992. Pravetz computers were installed in many schools in the Soviet Union.
Those wishing to build a home computer could use the instructions in the 1982-83 Radio magazine to build a model called the Micro-80. It was based on the KR580VM80 microprocessor, similar to the Intel i8080.
In 1984, the Agat computer appeared in the Soviet Union, which was quite powerful compared to Western models. The RAM capacity was 128 KB, which was twice as much as the RAM capacity of Apple models from the early 1980s. The computer was released in several modifications, had an external keyboard with 74 keys and a black-and-white or color screen.
The production of "Agates" continued until 1993.
Computers of modern times
Modern computer technology changes very quickly these days. The most powerful computers of our time are billions of times more powerful than their ancestors. Every company wants to surprise the already jaded users, and many still succeed in doing so. Here are just a few of the main themes in recent years:
- The laptop that had a major impact on the industry: Apple Macbook (2006).
- The smartphone that had a major impact on the industry: Apple iPhone (2007).
- The tablet that had a major impact on the industry: Apple iPad (2010).
- The first smartwatch: Pulsar Time Computer (1972). It can be seen on James Bond's wrist in the 1973 action film Live and Let Die.
And, of course, various gaming consoles: Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, etc.
We live in interesting times (even though it sounds like a Chinese curse). And who knows what the near future holds. Neural computers? Quantum computers? We'll see.
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