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Seriously? We launch a gajillion dollar probe, chance it in a sling around the largest planet in our solar system to only save 3 years, and we get black and white photos that have more noise than my cell-phone's camera!?

This is how the first computers looked like. And this is how their "hard drives" looked like.

It was expensive as hell, and the returns were minimal. They dared to do it first, and to improve upon their experience, so today the neighbor kid can whine how he has to wait entire 7 seconds for his physically accurate and photo realistic 3D racing car simulator game to load the entire race track, complete with realistically behaving crowd, plants and atmospheric effects.

NASA reached Pluto with a remotely controlled probe deep in space. You ranted in Slashdot. Congratulations to both for your great achievements.

While I agree with you in fact regarding the Colossus, I don't think it gets the mark for being first, either.

Konrad Zuse was first, by a number of years, with the Z3. Fully programmable, Turing-complete -- a computer by practically any definition of the term. Unfortunately he wasn't recognized until recently (when the machine was rebuilt) since it was destroyed during an Allied aerial bombardment of Berlin. It's actually arguable whether this distinction ought not go to his earlier prototype (the Z1) in 1938/39, which embodied many of the same principles, but didn't work too well due to the method of construction. (It was electromechanical.)

It's also worth pointing out that it wasn't created for any cryptographic purpose. It was built as a general-purpose machine, my understanding is that Zuse's background was in logistics and the Post Office. The Nazis were apparently underwhelmed and didn't support the project particularly well; if they had, computing history (and all modern history) might be quite different.

More references:
http://www.epemag.com/zuse/part4a.htm Article written by Konrad Zuse's son.
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Zuse.html Bio and C.V. of Konrad Zuse, and writings on information theory.

Nope. Zuse's Z1-Z3 were not electronic, as the old Ladybird book had specified.

From my parent posting, quoting; ".. so the modern electronic computer was born". Konrad Zuse's original Z1, Z2 and Z3 were electromechanical, not electronic. Hence why I didn't mention him.

If you were fascinated by this electromechanical version of Pong, check out their links to the work of Konrad Zuse. This guy designed and built the first programmable digital computer in 1936 in his parent's basement! Really amazing.

[flamebait] So, Wolfram gets plagiarized... Cool, it's what he deserves: Wolfram did not give credit to Konrad Zuse (or anybody else) when he made up this nonsense.[/flamebait]

There is another programming language family tree on that page aswell. This was mentioned in a previous story.

Here You will find a picture and some information about the "The Z4's Planfertigungsteil (program construction unit), which was used to create punch tapes for the Z4 in an easy way."

The whole book, The Life and Work of Konrad Zuse is well worth a read.

The whole book, The Life and Work of Konrad Zuse is well worth a read.

Contrary to popular belief, ENIAC was not the first general-purpose computer. In 1973 the patent for ENIAC was invalidated by the Judge Earl Larson of the US District Court in Minneapolis. Larson found that ENIAC was based on the ideas of John Vincent Atanasoff, who constructed ABC, the first electronic computer, around 1940 [1].

John Atanasoff was finally acknowledged as the true inventor of the electronic computer. However, ABC also wasn't the first general-purpose computer, because actually it wasn't general-purpose, as it wasn't programmable. It was hardwired for solving systems of linear equations [2].

The real first ever digital programmable general-purpose electronic computer was built around the same time in Germany. In 1941 Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, built Z3, a binary computer, controlled by perforated strips of film. The machine was fully programmable and in fact it contained almost all features of a modern computer, as defined by John von Neumann in Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronical Computing Instrument (1946) [3]. The only exception was that the program was not stored in the internal memory of Z3, but on the perforated film strip. However, ENIAC also did not posess this ability - the programming was done by manually rewiring part of the computer.

Now let's give our due respect to Konrad Zuse [4].

Sources (to back my claims):
1 http://www.computer.org/history/development/1973.h tm
2 http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff_Berry_Comp uter
3 http://www.epemag.com/zuse/part4a.htm
4 http://www.bionomics.org/text/resource/articles/ar _015.html

the article mentions IBM's digital computer in america,
but doesn't mention that the first digital computer (the 'ZI') was designed in germany by: KONRAD ZUSE:

Konrad Zuse - Mark I

As for the first electronic digital computer, that wasn't ENIAC, either. I know you USAns like to think that you invented everything, but Colossus here in the UK beat you by a few years.

The first binary electronic digital computer was German: Konrad Zuse's Z1.

And ENIAC wasn't even the first stored-program electronic computer: while ENIAC had to be programmed by plugboard, the Manchester Mark 1, aka `Baby', was storing programs in memory along with data, just as all current machines do.

Credit where it's due, please :)

"Like on the X-Files. ROSWELL STYLE!"

I wouldn't say Woz was the first person to design and build a computer by himself, that would be Konrad Zuse, hence my Sig. Though Woz also rules ;-)

Some believe they are protecting themselves from this risk via RSA authentication. Of course they're not, because the risk only affects passwords in session

It is even not sure who invented the Macintosh, perhaps it was Jef Raskin perhaps some others (even Jobs) had a good idea or two during its development too.

It's amazing that with all the people involved in these inventions still alive today, nobody quite agrees on who invented what.

Jef Raskin is certainly not amused. While I can't judge if he was the true father of the mac, his saying that the truth was far less sexy than the common myth (he a former professor in contrast to some dropped out students) seems reasonable to me. Raskin had the necessary background, and it is more probable to me that the mac was no accident but the result of a longer line of thought.

It's another matter trying to figure out who invented the first computer.

Sure, Konrad Zuse together with his Plankalkül language.

By the way - that teacher has to tell, that one of the first higher languages, COBOL, was invented by a woman, Admiral Grace Hopper.

Yes... But it would be bad for the american ego if an american book would publish that the first computer was not american but german...

The Z3

Another source

It could also be disputed that the UNIVAC was the first comercial computer. The company of Konrad Zuse delivered a Z4 system to the ETH in Zuerich in 1950. Data can be found here: Zuse KG

Maybe that book needs a rewrite...

Yes... But it would be bad for the american ego if an american book would publish that the first computer was not american but german...

The Z3

Another source

It could also be disputed that the UNIVAC was the first comercial computer. The company of Konrad Zuse delivered a Z4 system to the ETH in Zuerich in 1950. Data can be found here: Zuse KG

Maybe that book needs a rewrite...