1 jan 1937 ano - Digital Computers

Descrição:

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was the world’s first electronic digital computer. John Vincent Atanasoff, a former Iowa State professor of physics and mathematics, and Clifford Berry, a former physics graduate student and electrical engineering undergraduate, built the computer at Iowa State University from 1937 to 1942. The ABC looked nothing like today’s computers: It was the size of a big desk, weighed 750 pounds, and featured rotating drums for memory, glowing vacuum tubes, and a read/write system that recorded numbers by scorching marks on cards. The purpose of the digital computer was that it was the first to use several innovations that are still a part of today’s computers: a binary system of arithmetic, separate memory and computing functions, regenerative memory, parallel processing, electronic amplifiers as on-off switches, circuits for logical addition and subtraction, clocked control of electronic operations, and a modular design. In society today, It is used to run everything from spacecraft to factories, healthcare systems to telecommunications, banks to household budgets. Since its invention during World War II, the electronic digital computer has become essential to the economies of the developed world.