once again, this article is neglecting the role of Konrad Zuse:
Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (/ˈzuːsə/;[5]German: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈtsuːzə]; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Zuse is regarded by some as the inventor and father of the modern computer.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
Hi Henry, No intention to neglect Konrad Zuse at all and Z3 was certainly an important machine and Zuse deserves his place in history. It wasn't fully electronic though and I think that the lack of a conditional branch draws a dividing line between it and modern computers. Baby on the other hand was electronic, stored its program in memory - so was the first true von Neumann machine - and the ISA although very small had the key characteristics of modern machines. Of course it's all a matter of judgement!
In 1936, Zuse launches in Germany some fundamental ideas on the behavior of the automatic computer, including the binary system utilization and the floating-point computations, used in the architecture of his first computer called V1, later renamed Z1, finished in 1938. A single reassembled Z1 in 1986 by Konrad Zuse, exists today in a Berlin Museum. Anyhow, the Z1 is today considered to be the first freely programmable computer of the world.
The same year, 1938, Zuse started the plans for V2 and performing tests with electro-magnetic relays instead of mechanical linkages.
While in the Wehrmacht army, Zuse started in 1939 to plan and build the V2 (Z2) with funds from The Third Reich's Aerodynamic Research Institute. Z2 was completed but remained an experimental computer and Zuse started to assemble the V3 (Z3), completed in May 1941. Both, Z2 and Z3 were electromechanical relay machines. Z3 became the first fully functional, program-controlled, general-purpose electronic digital computer in the world before MARK I, MARK II, ENIAC, and the UK Colossus. Following the Z3 success, Zuse started the design for the Z4 computer in 1942, finished in 1944. Z4 will be issued only in 1945, running an advanced version of his programming language-PK (PlanKalkul) enhanced after 1945.
The final version of the Plankalkül was finished in Hinterstein (Allgäu) in 1945-1946 and it remained the first complete programming language for computers. Since 1950, the Z4 configuration was used for 5 years at the Institute of Applied Mathematics at ETH Zurich and in 1951 Z4 was the only operational computer in Europe. Zuse designed more other computers (S1, S2, L1 etc.) while for the Z series he reached the Z22 model in 1958.
You say, "In the ENIAC the form of the that storage (decimal) was quite different to that of the data that ENIAC operated on (binary)." Actually, ENIAC's 20 10-digit accumulators were decimal. Source: Wikipedia, and various references it cites:
once again, this article is neglecting the role of Konrad Zuse:
Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (/ˈzuːsə/;[5]German: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈtsuːzə]; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Zuse is regarded by some as the inventor and father of the modern computer.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
more can be read on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse
—Henry
Hi Henry, No intention to neglect Konrad Zuse at all and Z3 was certainly an important machine and Zuse deserves his place in history. It wasn't fully electronic though and I think that the lack of a conditional branch draws a dividing line between it and modern computers. Baby on the other hand was electronic, stored its program in memory - so was the first true von Neumann machine - and the ISA although very small had the key characteristics of modern machines. Of course it's all a matter of judgement!
No conditional branch? So, the Z3 was (in today's terms) microcode? That makes sense.
For me, the big dividing line is Turing-complete, the ability to change the stored program and thus drive yourself completely mad debugging it.
Absolutely!
In 1936, Zuse launches in Germany some fundamental ideas on the behavior of the automatic computer, including the binary system utilization and the floating-point computations, used in the architecture of his first computer called V1, later renamed Z1, finished in 1938. A single reassembled Z1 in 1986 by Konrad Zuse, exists today in a Berlin Museum. Anyhow, the Z1 is today considered to be the first freely programmable computer of the world.
The same year, 1938, Zuse started the plans for V2 and performing tests with electro-magnetic relays instead of mechanical linkages.
While in the Wehrmacht army, Zuse started in 1939 to plan and build the V2 (Z2) with funds from The Third Reich's Aerodynamic Research Institute. Z2 was completed but remained an experimental computer and Zuse started to assemble the V3 (Z3), completed in May 1941. Both, Z2 and Z3 were electromechanical relay machines. Z3 became the first fully functional, program-controlled, general-purpose electronic digital computer in the world before MARK I, MARK II, ENIAC, and the UK Colossus. Following the Z3 success, Zuse started the design for the Z4 computer in 1942, finished in 1944. Z4 will be issued only in 1945, running an advanced version of his programming language-PK (PlanKalkul) enhanced after 1945.
The final version of the Plankalkül was finished in Hinterstein (Allgäu) in 1945-1946 and it remained the first complete programming language for computers. Since 1950, the Z4 configuration was used for 5 years at the Institute of Applied Mathematics at ETH Zurich and in 1951 Z4 was the only operational computer in Europe. Zuse designed more other computers (S1, S2, L1 etc.) while for the Z series he reached the Z22 model in 1958.
You say, "In the ENIAC the form of the that storage (decimal) was quite different to that of the data that ENIAC operated on (binary)." Actually, ENIAC's 20 10-digit accumulators were decimal. Source: Wikipedia, and various references it cites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
@TheChipLetter, you have a spammer named @thechipletter1 .