The History of Computers (1937 – 1990)

Three machines have been promoted at various times as the first electronic computers. These machines used electronic switches, in the form of vacuum tubes, instead of electromechanical relays. Electronic components had one major benefit, however: they could „open” and „close” about 1,000 times faster than mechanical switches.The earliest attempt to build an electronic computers was by J. V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State, 1937. By 1941 he and graduate student Clifford Berry had succeeded in building a machine that could solve 29 simultaneous equations with 29 unknowns. However, the machine was not programmable, and was more of an electronic calculator.A second early electronic machine was Colossus, designed by Alan Turing for the British military in 1943.…