The War Years...
Zuse Z3
Source: Venusianer/WikiMedia
Devised by Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) in 1941, the Z3 was the world's first programmable electromechanical digital computer. It was built in Berlin and was used to analyse aircraft wing designs. Nominally a general-purpose machine, it nonetheless featured an instruction set heavily oriented to solving engineering problems. The Z3 comprised 2000 electric relay switches to store and operate on binary numbers. Programs and data were stored on punched film, and it was able to crunch five to ten numbers a second. The Z3 continued in operation until 1943 when it was destroyed in an Allied air raid. Zuse went on to develop the Z4, a more advanced version of the Z3, and to pioneer computer design on through the 1950s and 1960s.
Colossus
Source: Timitrius
Colossus, the first electronic programmable digital computer, was created in 1943 by Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers (1905-1998) and others as a faster, more reliable alternative to the electro-mechanical rigs then being used to compare German coded military messages with the entire possible output of the Nazis’ Lorentz cypher machine. Flowers believed his electronic machine could don the job more quickly and more reliably, and when it was put to work in 1944 it quickly proved itself a success. It was able to compare message at 5000 characters per second, almost three times the speed of the electro-mechanical system. Flowers immediately began work on an improved model which formed the basis for nine more machines installed in code-breaking centre Bletchley Park throughout the remainder of the War. Flowers’ work remained a secret until the 1970s.
ENIAC
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) began life in 1943 as a University of Pennsylvania project to devise a machine capable of calculating ballistic firing solutions for the US Army, though it was first used for hydrogen bomb design calculations. Conceived by John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert, ENIAC was completed after World War II in 1946 and so its existence 1946 was made public in a way Colossus and the Z3 never could be. Designed as a general purpose computing machine, ENIAC contained almost 17,500 vacuum tubes, and used IBM punch cards to present results and to take in input data. Data was stored not in binary form but as decimal numbers. Like Colossus, ENIAC was programmed by setting switches and wiring.
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COMMENTS
Leo
Any reference to Leo always reminds me of the story my father-in-law (95 and still going strong) tells. Lyons offered the use of Leo to the Inland Revenue to calculate the tax tables after a budget change. One year he was selected to go to Lyons, taking with him the highly confidential envelope that contained details of the tax changes to be announced in the budget. The rule was that the changes were secret until the budget announcements were made and the chancellor had sat down. Which meant waiting for the phone call to say that the chancellor had sat down. The envelope could be opened and the details given to the Lyons' techies. He opened the envelope, took out the paper that was inside and read it - "No Change".
> The Apple machines really weren't that important or successful
Maybe, but I used one in the office back in the early 80s. Great little machine, 48kb memory, twin floppies and the killer app, Visicalc.
When the company acquired its first IBM PC it seemed inferior in every sense. "It'll never catch on", thought I. Thus starting my ability to be 100% wrong about new technology.
DOS or CCPM? - no question, Concurrent CPM was superior in every way!
Future PC with CCPM or IBM PC with PC-DOS? - no brainer, I can multitask on my Future pc and store data on my 800kb floppies rather than 1 thing at a time with 360kb storage.
Word Perfect of MS Word? - easy. MS Word is so clunky it's all but unusable
Apple Lisa and a mouse? No-one needs a mouse
If only I had bet against myself
Oh, no it wasn't.
The IMSAI 8080 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMS_Associates,_Inc.) and MITS Altair 8008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800) both allowed third-party plug-in cards, and were launched in 1975.
That predates the Apple ][ by two years.
The Apple machines really weren't that important or successful until the Mac came out.
Try looking at the other home computers of the era, especially those from Commodore. Don't believe the Apple revisionists, even Apple lied about who sold a million machines first (it was Commodore, not Apple).
