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From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Subject: [COFF] In memoriam: John Mauchly
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2019 07:30:32 +1100 (EST)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1901080726310.84878@aneurin.horsfall.org> (raw)

We lost a co-inventor of ENIAC, John Mauchly, on this day in 1980.  ENIAC 
is claimed to be the "first general purpose electronic digital computer", 
but I guess it comes down to a matter of definition[*], as every culture 
likes to be the "first" (just ask the Penguins, for example); for 
"computer" you could go all the way back to the Mk-I Antikythera (Hellenic 
variation, from about the 100BC production run)...

[*]
Analogue/digital/hybrid
Mechanical/electrical/electronic/hybrid
General/special
Wired/programmable/Turing
Prototype/production
Harvard/Neumann/quantum
Etc...

-- Dave


                 reply	other threads:[~2019-01-07 20:30 UTC|newest]

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