What was the first digital computer?

Question

Who invented it?

Answer 1

I believe the first real one was at Univ of Penn (Philadelphia) where the Univac was the first to be built. Eckert and Mauchly were the inventors.

Answer 2

The first digital computer was invented in 1642 by Blaise Pascal. It consisted of numbers entered in dials but, it could only add. However in 1671 a computer was invented that was eventually was built in 1694. The man to credit for this invention is Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Unlike Pascal’s Leibniz’s could add and multiply. Leibniz also invented the stepped gear mechanism for the addend digit introduction, and to this day is still being used.

Answer 3

The answer to the question 'What was the fiirst digital computer' is lose in a haze of claims and counterclaims. I reproduce below the first page of the relevant web containing 10 alternatives. There are five more pages.I begin with an extract from Wikipedia as follows
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A Colossus Mark II computer. The slanted control panel on the left was used to set the pin patterns on the Lorenz; the paper tape transport is on the right.
The Colossus machines were early computing devices used by British codebreakers to read encrypted German messages during World War II and was an early binary electronic digital computer.
Colossus was designed by engineer Tommy Flowers at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill with input from mathematician Max Newman and group at Bletchley Park. The prototype, Colossus Mark I, was shown working in December 1943 and was operational at Bletchley Park by February 1944. An improved Colossus Mark II was first installed in June 1944, and ten Colossi had been constructed by the end of the war.
The Colossus computers were used to help decipher teleprinter messages which had been encrypted using the Lorenz SZ40/42 machine. Colossus compared two data streams, counting each match based on a programmable boolean function. The encrypted message was read at high speed from a paper tape. The other stream was generated internally, and was an electronic simulation of the Lorenz machine at various trial settings. If the match count for a setting was above a certain threshold, it would be output on an electric typewriter

Now thefirst page of the relevant Web

first "digital computer"
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Colossus computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An improved Colossus Mark II was first installed in June 1944, and ten Colossi had been ... as has the significance of its places in the chronology of the invention of the digital computer" . ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
· 6/24/2007
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Computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer
· 6/25/2007
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+Show more results from en.wikipedia.org
Department of Computer Science: Iowa State University
ISU Computer Science Department ... The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first electronic digital computer.
www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/jva-archive.shtml
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Rebuilding the ABC
Reconstruction of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) 60 years of digital computing. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the first electronic digital computer.
www.scl.ameslab.gov/Projects/ABC/ABC.html
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Konrad Zuse: Preface
Many encyclopedias and other reference works state that the first large-scale automatic digital computer was the Harvard Mark 1, which was developed by Howard H.
www.epemag.com/zuse/default.htm
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John P. Eckert, Co-Inventor of the First Electronic Digital Computer ...
John P. Eckert is credited with being a coinventor of the first electronic digital computer. While he was a research associate at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of ...
timarcher.com/?q=node/33
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The invention of the computer
The first digital computer was invented in 1642 by Blaise Pascal. It consisted of numbers entered in dials but, it could only add. However in 1671 a computer was invented that was eventually was ...
www.tfsd.k12.id.us/ol/cps/historyofcomputers.htm
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John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry - The First All Electronic Computer
Professor John Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry built the world's first electronic-digital computer at Iowa State University between 1939 and 1942.
inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050898.htm
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Jerome Markowitz Memorial Museum
Digital Organ Prototype: the original "Rockwell" engineering model used by Allen to develop the first Digital Computer Organ—the first application of digital technology to produce music!
www.allenorgan.com/www/company/museum/dig1.html
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Modern Mechanix » First U.S. Digital Computer
This is a fantastic article about the IBM ASCC (Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator), or Harvard Mark I . The first large-scale automatic digital computer in the USA.
blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/06/30/robot-mathematician-knows-all-the-answers

Answer 4

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first electronic digital computer. It was built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937-42. It incorporated several major innovations in computing including the use of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions.
On October 19, 1973, US Federal Judge Earl R. Larson signed his decision following a lengthy court trial which declared the ENIAC patent of Mauchly and Eckert invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer -- the Atanasoff-Berry Computer or the ABC.