What was the first electronic digital computer?

The identity of the first electronic digital computer is a matter that is often discussed by historians with technology and computer enthusiasts. In 1937, John Atanasoff and Cliff Berry, a professor and postgraduate student at Iowa State College, were invented and built. Known as ABC, after the names of both men it was not a programmable device, but it was designed to solve simple equations. In 1946, two scientists from the University of Pennsylvania completed their work on the electronic numerical integrator and computer (ENIAC), which received the first patent for digital electronic computing devices.

The ABC computer was about the table size and could only solve a number of linear equations. It was not fully programmable that the computers of the general purpose that came after they were, but it was a special -purpose device capable of only one function. This leads some to deny his real computer status. Part of this controversial results differentDefinition of the word "computer".

For many years, Presper Echert and John Mauchly have been considered the first electronic digital computer on Eniac. Eniac was certainly the first device of this type to be programmable and exposed something called Turing's completeness, a criterion of a real logical computer -based computing capacity. In 1964, Echert and Mauchly received a patent for their facilities that were built and financed by the United States Defense.

In 1973, after a court proceedings filed by Honeywell Corporation, the Federal Court of the United States issued a decision that determined that the patent Eniac was invalid and that it was derived from earlier work atanasoff and Berry on ABC. As a result, ABC computer was the first electronic digital computer, at least under the law. The more renowned device produced in Germany had similar abilities, but F FUngaloval on an electromechanical basis and it was not a real digital device.

Historians recognize ABC and ENIAC as progenitors of modern computers. History shows and the law has decided that technically ABC was the first electronic digital computer. However, most modern technology and computer historians believe that its lack of programmability will move it to the state no more than the predecessor of what many consider to be their programmability and surgical history, as a real first digital electronic computer, ENIAC.