From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2019 07:30:32 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In memoriam: John Mauchly Message-ID: 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