Who invented the computer?

Question

Who invented the very first computer and how did they think of it in the first place?

Answer 1

Charles Babbage, an English mathematician, is considered to be the great-grandfather of the computer. Over 150 years ago, in 1840 to be exact, he invented a sophisticated calculating machine, and called it the "Analytical Engine." As with many inventions, his creation was far in advance of its time.

Answer 2

The first of the "modern" computers was invented during World War II, in 1941 by a German engineer named Konrad Zuse. The computer was called the Z3 and was used to help design German airplanes and missles. A couple years later, in 1943, the Allied forces developed a computer called Colossus to help decode German messages. But since the Z3 was developed by the side that lost the war and Colossus stayed a military secret for many years, these computers didn't contribute much to the ones that came next.

Answer 3

I think Bill Gates came up with the first home computer. Not sure who actually invented the very first. Think it was called Univac though and took up city blocks to run it.

Answer 4

History teaches that the Ancient Chinese invented the First computer that was known as the Abacus.

Answer 5

The government invented the computer. Actually they stole it from Area 51.

Answer 6

Al Gore

Answer 7

Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is currently the CEO of Apple Computer and is a leading figure in both the computer and entertainment industries. He co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976.

Before their advent in the late-1970s to the early-1980s, the only computers possibly available, if the user was privileged, were "computer-terminal based" architectures owned by large institutions. In these, the technology was called "computer time share systems", and used minicomputers and mainframe computers. These central computer systems frequently required large rooms — roughly, a handball-court-sized room could hold two to three small minicomputers and its associated peripherals, each housed in cabinets much the size of three refrigerators side by side (with blinking lights and tape drives). In that era, mainframe computers occupied whole floors; a big hard disk was a mere 10–20 Megabytes mounted on a cabinet the size of a small chest-type freezer. Earlier PCs were generally called desktop computers.

The first generations of personal microcomputers were usually sold as kits or merely instructions, and required a somewhat skilled person to assemble and operate them. These were usually called microcomputers, but the name "personal computer" was also used. Later generations were sometimes interchangeably called by the names "home computer" and "personal computer." By the mid-1980s, "home computer" was becoming a less common label in favor of "personal computer." These computers were pre-assembled and required little technical knowledge to operate. In today's common usage, personal computer and PC usually indicate an IBM PC compatible. Due to this association, some manufacturers of personal computers that are not IBM PCs avoid explicitly using the terms to describe their products. Mostly, the term PC is used to describe personal computers that use Microsoft Windows operating systems.

One early use of "personal computer" appeared in a November 3, 1962 New York Times article reporting John W. Mauchly's vision of future computing as detailed at a recent meeting of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers. Mauchly stated, "There is no reason to suppose the average boy or girl cannot be master of a personal computer.[1]"


A university computer lab containing many desktop PCsSome of the first computers that might be called "personal" were early minicomputers such as the LINC and PDP-8. By today's standards they were very large (about the size of a refrigerator) and cost prohibitive (typically tens of thousands of US dollars), and thus were rarely purchased by an individual. However, they were much smaller, less expensive, and generally simpler to operate than many of the mainframe computers of the time. Therefore, they were accessible for individual laboratories and research projects. Minicomputers largely freed these organizations from the batch processing and bureaucracy of a commercial or university computing center.

In addition, minicomputers were relatively interactive and soon had their own operating systems. Eventually, the minicomputer included VAX and larger minicomputers from Data General, Prime, and others. The minicomputer era largely was a precursor to personal computer usage and an intermediary step from mainframes.

Development of the single-chip microprocessor was an enormous catalyst to the popularization of cheap, easy to use, and truly personal computers. Arguably the first true "personal computer" was the Altair 8800, which brought affordable computing to an admittedly select market in the 1970s. However, it was arguably this computer that spawned the development of both Apple Computer as well as Microsoft, spawning the Altair BASIC programming language interpreter, Microsoft's first product. The first generation of microcomputers (computers based on a microprocessor) that appeared in the mid-1970s, due to the success of the Steve Wozniak-designed Apple release, the Apple II, were usually known as home computers. These were less capable and in some ways less versatile than large business computers of the day. They were generally used by computer enthusiasts for learning to program, running simple office/productivity applications, electronics interfacing, and general hobbyist pursuits.


A release photo of the original IBM PC (ca. 1981)It was the launch of the VisiCalc spreadsheet, initially for the Apple II (and later for the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore PET, and IBM PC) that became the "killer app" that turned the microcomputer into a business tool. This was followed by the August 1981 release of the IBM PC which would revolutionize the computer market. The Lotus 1-2-3, a combined spreadsheet (a clone of VisiCalc), presentation graphics, and simple database application, would become the PC's own killer app. Good word processor programs would also appear for many home computers, in particular the introduction of Microsoft Word for the Apple Macintosh in 1985 (While earlier versions of Word had been created for the PC, it became popular initially through the Macintosh.).

In the January 3, 1983 issue of Time magazine, the personal computer was named the "Machine of the Year" or its Person of the Year for 1982.

During the 1990s, the power of personal computers increased radically, blurring the formerly sharp distinction between personal computers and multi-user computers, such as mainframes. Today higher-end computers often distinguish themselves from personal computers by greater reliability or greater ability to multitask, rather than by brute CPU ability.

Answer 8

There was invention called the internet. Use it.
http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.invent.org/hall%5Fof%5Ffame/1%5F1%5F6%5Fdetail.asp%3FvInventorID=140

Answer 9

Steven Jobs (Apple)

Answer 10

Konrad Zuse. I don't know how he got the Idea though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse
Thats a link to the page about him. :-)