Who Invented the Computer? | History and Evolution of Computers

Who Invented the Computer?

Computers are digital machines used for mathematical calculations, simple to complex programs and arithmetical and logical sequences. Charles Babbage invented the primary computer within the year 1822. Charles Babbage was an English mathematician who first conceived the thought of an electronic computer, but it was not until 1991 that a data processor was built physically. A mathematician is the daddy of modern computers and engineering because he was the primary to bring the thought of computers into everyday household lives. He made his first modern computer (Colossus) in 1945 during warfare 2. the pc he built was up to a house room.

Charles Babbage the Invented Computer

History and Evolution of Computers

During the primary half of the 20th century, increasingly sophisticated analogue computers were used for several computing needs, which used an immediate mechanical or electrical model of the matter as a basis for computation. However, the flexibility and accuracy of those computers weren’t good, and they weren’t programmable and lacked modern digital calculations. Sir William Thomson invented the primary modern computer within the year 1872. The differential analyser, a mechanical information processing system designed to unravel differential equations by integration using wheel-and-disc mechanisms, was conceptualised in 1876 by James Thomson. He was the elder brother of Sir William Thomson.

The concept of analogue computing peaked with the differential analyser, built by H. L. Hazen and Bush at MIT, starting in 1927. This was made on the mechanical integrators of James Thomson and also the torque amplifiers invented by H. W. Nieman. A dozen of those devices were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the 1950s, the success of digital electronic computers meant the tip for many analogue computing machines. In 1938, the USA developed an electromechanical electronic computer that was very small and taken aboard a submarine. The Torpedo Data Computer used complex mathematics like trigonometry to unravel the matter of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During war II, similar devices were developed in other countries.

Mechanical and electromechanical computers were soon replaced by electronic circuit computers, while digital calculation replaced analogue.

Mechanical and electromechanical computers were soon replaced by electronic circuit computers, while digital calculation replaced analogue. Tommy Flowers, within the 1930s, began to explore the possible use of electronics for the phone exchange. Experimental equipment that he had inbuilt in 1934 went into operation five years later, which converted a little of the phone exchange network into an electronic processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes. In the US, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry Computer in 1942, the primary automatic electronic computer. This design was also all-electronic and used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed during a mechanically rotating drum for memory.

During war II, the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park succeeded in breaking encrypted German military communications, referred to as the ENIGMA machine. The German encryption machine, Enigma, was first attacked with the assistance of electro-mechanical bombs. Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to make the Colossus crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army communications. He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building the primary Colossus. After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, delivered on 18 January 1944 and attacked its first message on 5 February.


Colossus was the world’s first electronic digital programmable computer. It used many valves, had a paper-tape input, and performed various Boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete.
The ENIAC(Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the primary electronic programmable computer inbuilt the U.S. it had been just like the Colossus but was much faster, more flexible, and Turing-complete. The state of its patch cables and switches defined a program on the ENIAC, which differed from the stored program electronic machines invented later. After writing a program, it was mechanically set into the machine with manually resetting plugs and switches.

It combined the high speed of electronics with the flexibility to be programmed for several complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, cardinal times faster than the other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and root. High-speed memory was limited to twenty words (about 80 bytes). Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC’s development and construction lasted from 1943 to the whole operation at the top of 1945. The machine was giant, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electrical power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and many thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors.

Alan Turing proposed the principle of the fashionable computer in 1936. Turing proposed a straightforward device that he called a “Universal Computing machine”, which later became universal computing. The electronic computer could compute anything computable by executing programs stored on tape, which allowed the machine to become programmable. The basic concept of Turing’s design is the stored program, where all the instructions for computing are stored in memory. Turing machines are liable for the arrival of recent computing. Modern computers are Turing-complete because they need algorithm execution capability resembling a universal data processor. The sole constraint is that modern computers have finite storage capabilities.

With the advancement of technology, computers are now a household object and the primary source of modernisation of the entire world. People worldwide are connected via modern digital computers, and thus, computers are needed by everyone daily for their living. In the 21st century, computers have transformed into laptops, palmtops and digital portable phones which can be carried easily from one place to another. These have been possible due to the advancement of electronics and modern semiconductors, which has made it possible to reduce the size of the devices and build extra-large storage capacity in a tiny space.

Common Questions and Answers in this Article

Who is the Father of Computer?

Who Invented the Computer?

History of Computer

What is an Analog Computer?

What was the First Electronic Computer?

What is ENIAC ?

About InformationQ.com 221 Articles
Quality Information about the all computers or laptops, mobiles,Tablets, technology and latest electronic gadgets.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.