Who Invented The Computer ?
I've just watched a program on the history of the computer. Fascinating, if over simplified. It covered the various people who contributed to the development of the computer:
Charles Babbage. Designed the difference engine.
Alan Turing. Formulated the Turing Machine and the Turing test.
Tommy Flowers. Built Colossus from Turing's postulations.
Xerox. Implemented email, networking, object oriented coding, 'windows' driven interface.
Microsoft. Er.
Now, all of these people contributed, but who stands out as the main man/person ? For me, it's Alan Turing. A fantastic mathemetician who came up with the idea of the modern computer - the Turing Machine.
Charles Babbage. Designed the difference engine.
Alan Turing. Formulated the Turing Machine and the Turing test.
Tommy Flowers. Built Colossus from Turing's postulations.
Xerox. Implemented email, networking, object oriented coding, 'windows' driven interface.
Microsoft. Er.
Now, all of these people contributed, but who stands out as the main man/person ? For me, it's Alan Turing. A fantastic mathemetician who came up with the idea of the modern computer - the Turing Machine.
Comments
but the abacas can't be beat
He's a sock puppet that lives on my hand.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
- Charles Babbage (1791-1871). Used to be in my sig for a bit.
Anyway, the Analytical Engine (the machine I'm referring to) was never built, because the technology of the day was insufficient to produce precise enough parts. And no, it wasn't electronic. It was completely mechanical; they physically couldn't make small enough, precise enough cogs and suchlike back then. As far as I know, a team of researchers implemented a machine to his specifications, and it worked.
Off the top of my head, I think the next person to come along, some time after Babbage, was Blaise Pascal who created the first mechanical calculator to help his father. While obviously not Von Neumann, a calculator does qualify as a computer.
("So, what's this Von Neumann business?", you ask? Basically, it's the concept of a computer in which there is a component for processing instructions, and a component that holds the instructions, and these components are distinct and seperate from each other. So an abacus doesn't qualify, because the "part" in which you do the processing is the same as the place where you store the "data". Pretty much all modern computers have Von Neumann architecture).
[edit]But anyway, as far as I know, the first person to actually <i>construct</i> a Von Neumann architecture machine was in fact Konrad Zuse.[/edit]
Ah. I guess he wins, then. (I <i>knew</i> I should have gone and looked up his birth\death before posting <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->)