World's First (?) Digital Computer in 1939, the ABC

erco

Jameco has an interesting nugget of computing history in their newsletter. A controversy or better yet, conspiracy about the 1939 Atanasoff-Berry Computer

http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/rollcall/first-digital-computer.html

The ABC weighed over seven hundred pounds and could solve up to 29 simultaneous linear equations. It had no central processing unit (CPU), but used 280 dual-triode vacuum tubes for digital computation. Its memory contained 1600 capacitors organized into 32 bands that rotated on a common shaft once per second within a pair of drums. This allowed the ABC to have a computation speed of 30 actions per second. Data was represented as 50-bit binary numbers. Some of its design concepts are still used in computing devices today.

Martin_H

It's not a stored program computer, so it's more like another link in the chain rather than the first computer.

Heater.

A digital calculator at least. With dynamic RAM!

That "...evening of scotch and 100 mph car rides,..." thing never did work for me

evanh

Yep, another example of what's better called a calculator, like the abacus and Antikythera mechanism.

Loadable programming would be a minimum spec of defining a computer.

jazzed

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Solomon

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/leonardo_da_vincis_incredible_mechanical_lion

There are other examples where lengths of rope and knots (ROM) were used for a programmable device.

Leon

Konrad Zuse developed a true computer (Turing-complete) around the same time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse