who's the 1st founder of computer?

Question

i want to kwn about the 1st founder of computer and the scientist whos think about the computer. and made it.

Answer 1

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 BC). The end of the Middle Ages saw 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".[2] 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 19th 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 20th 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.

Answer 2

There were at least half a dozen calculating machines of various kinds which were clearly ancestors of the computer, ranging from Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine (circa 1840) through Tommy Flowers' Colossus at Bletchley Park (1943) to Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC (1946), but equally clearly none of them were themselves computers. This includes Konrad Zuse's relay calculator, a similar device by George Stibitz, John V. Atanasoff's ABC electronic calculator, and Howard Aitken's huge ASCC electro-mechanical calculator at Harvard in 1944.

None of these earlier machines had the distinctive feature of a modern general-purpose electronic digital computer, which is that it uses a single type of store to hold both its program instructions, and the data on which those instructions are to operate, and that it accesses them both in exactly the same way. This idea was first publicly proposed in 1946 by John von Neumann of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, but modern historians think that he has received more credit for this than he would have wanted, and that it was actually based on the work of the English mathematician and logician Alan Turing.

The very first computer to operate in the new von Neumann way was the Manchester "Baby" constructed by Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn. It ran its first program on 21 June, 1948, and this is the anniversary date still recognised by the British Computer Society.

Max Newman, whose ideas had been behind the Colossus project, was in charge of the Manchester department at this time, so he knew that the project would be entirely feasible, but the latest accounts of the development are that he just let Williams and Kilburn get on with it. In any case, the details of Colossus were still covered by the Official Secrets Act.

Answer 3

Charles Babbage

Answer 4

Konrad Zuse created the first functional tape-stored-program-controlled computer, the Z3, in 1941. The Z3 is claimed to be the "first computer" as such, though this depends on complex and subtle definitional issues, as the machine was not truly general-purpose in the manner of later machines.

Answer 5

The person responsible for laying the foundations of the modern computer would be Charles Babbage with his analytical engine in 1835 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine

Answer 6

The first mechanical programmable computer was made by Charles Babbage, in 1837.

Answer 7

Go to this link and find out how "long" the answer to your question can be!
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_invented_the_computer

Thanks for helping me become more educated!

Answer 8

bill gates just started microsoft not a computer

Answer 9

Err.... I think Bill Gates.