Despite the fact that the distant predecessor of modern computers - abacus (abacus) - appeared more than 3000 thousand years ago, presumably in Babylon, the computer era began less than 100 years ago. Before answering the question of who created the computer, one should mention the German Wilhelm Schickard and the Frenchman Blaise Pascal.
Schickard in 1623 created the first automatic calculator, giving it the name "Counting Hours". This device skillfully subtracts and adds six-digit numbers, and more complex operations were performed using a set of Napier's sticks mounted on the machine body. Alas, this device was lost in a fire, and a copy of it, based on the surviving drawings, was constructed only in 1960, proving its efficiency.
Blaise Pascal in 1642 invented a mechanism, which was a box filled with many gears. "Pascalina", as the inventor called this machine, knew how to perform operations in addition to addition and subtraction, but was not very convenient to work with. However, this device is considered the world's first computing machine.
On the left is Shikkard's "Counting Clock", on the right is Pascal's computer.
The inventor of the first mechanical computer is considered the German Konrad Zuse. His brainchild - a trial mechanical programmable machine Z1 - was created in 1938, and in 1942 he also assembled the Z3, which has all the properties of modern computers.
The first electronic computer ABC was developed in 1942 at the University of Iowa by American John Atanasov and his graduate student Clifford Berry, but they could not mount it, in particular, due to the fact that Atanasov went to the army. However, this work inspired another American scientist, John Mockley, who in 1946 introduced the world to ENIAC, officially considered the world's first electronic computer.
ENIAC is the first electronic computer.
Work on the creation of the first electronic computers was carried out in parallel in other countries of the world. In England, the first computer was developed in 1949, in the USSR - in 1950.
The first computers were huge - they took up a space of several rooms, weighed more than 20 tons, and a whole staff of engineers was engaged in their maintenance and repair. Compared to these machines, personal computers looked unusually compact, and they appeared in the 1970s, when people began to collect them at home to show off to friends. These devices were of no practical use and spread very slowly.
The Altair 8800 is considered the ancestor of personal computers, which appeared in 1975 and was distributed both in the form of a finished model and in the form of parts for assembly, becoming the first commercially successful PC. And it was created by American engineer Henry Edward Roberts.
Altair 8800 is the first PC.
It turns out that the answer to the question "Who created the computer?" ambiguous. Pascal, Schikcard, Zuse, Atanasov, Berry, Mauchly, Roberts - they were all key persons in this story, and each of them deserves respect and gratitude for the fact that we have the opportunity to use a computer - a modern miracle of technology. Although today PCs are no longer a miracle of technology, they can be found in almost every civilized family.
