Overview

It is difficult to define any one device as the earliest computer. The very definition of a computer has changed and it is therefore impossible to identify the first computer. Many devices once called computers would no longer qualify as such by today's standards.Originally, the term computer referred to a person who performed numerical calculations (a human computer), often with the aid of a mechanical calculating device. Examples of early mechanical computing devices included the abacus, the slide rule and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism (which dates from about 150-100 B.C.E.). The end of the Middle Agessaw a re-invigoration of European mathematics and engineering, and Wilhelm Schickard's 1623 device was the first of a number of mechanical calculators constructed by European engineers.However, none of those devices fit the modern definition of a computer because they could not be programmed. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the textile loom that used a series of punched paper cards as a template to allow his loom to weave intricate patterns automatically. The resulting Jacquard loom was an important step in the development of computers because the use of punched cards to define woven patterns can be viewed as an early, albeit limited, form of programmability.In 1837, Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable mechanical computer that he called The Analytical Engine . (The Analytical Engine should not be confused with Babbage's difference engine which was a non-programmable mechanical calculator.) Due to limited finance, and an inability to resist tinkering with the design, Babbage never actually built his Analytical Engine.Large-scale automated data processing of punched cards was performed for the US Census in 1890 by tabulating machines designed by Herman Hollerith and manufactured by the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, which later became IBM. By the end of the nineteenth century a number of technologies that would later prove useful in the realization of practical computers had begun to appear: The punched card, boolean algebra, the vacuum tube (thermionic valve), and the teleprinter.During the first half of the twentieth century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers.A succession of steadily more powerful and flexible computing devices were constructed in the 1930s and 1940s, gradually adding the key features that are seen in modern computers. The use of digital electronics (largely invented by Claude Shannon in 1937) and more flexible programmability were vitally important steps, but defining one point along this road as the first digital electronic computer is difficult (Shannon 1940). Notable achievements include: EDSAC was one of the first computers to implement the stored program (von Neumann) architecture

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