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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dybdahl who wrote (63467)	11/27/2001 6:06:12 PM
From: Charles Tutt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

I thought Babbage beat them both. <g> Distinctions are drawn by many between: electronic vs. relay vs. mechanical; working vs. mere design; stored program vs. hardwired; general purpose vs. dedicated, etc., in order to conclude that the local guy was first, whoever that might be. To me it was a process with many contributors. JMHO. Charles Tutt (TM)

To: dybdahl who wrote (63467)	12/2/2001 7:01:02 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Lars - William Shockley and his team at Bell Labs in New Jersey invented the transistor. Last time I checked, New Jersey was NOT in Europe... time.com

To: dybdahl who wrote (63467)	12/2/2001 8:04:55 PM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 74651

Lars - as long as we are debunking myths, the "invention" of the modern computer is usually accredited to John von Neumann - virtually every computer design today is a variant of the "von Neumann" architecture. Von Neumann was born and educated in Europe, and achieved fame in a number of mathematical areas before coming to the US in 1936. He first started thinking about architectures for computing machines at that time. Alan Turing, another key thinker in early computer architecture, worked with von Neumann at Princeton in 1936-38 but went back to England to continue theoretical work at Cambridge. During WWII, von Neumann began work which eventually led to the first actual computing machines. The British also did some practical work in this area, with Turing as a major contributor, but the British designs were not "general purpose" computers - they were dedicated logic engines which happened to use primarily digital components. Von Neumann continued to be deeply involved in development of general purpose computers, working in three parallel efforts, one at MIT, one at Princeton and one at Columbia. All three efforts were heavily supported by IBM and funded by the US Army. The first functioning general purpose computer is generally conceded to be Howard Aiken's Harvard Mark I (ASCC) calculator in 1944 but it was not all digital and lacked some of the key features that made computers what they are today. Dr. John W. Mauchly and J. P. Eckert, Jr. developed ENIAC, the first full realization of a true von Neumann architecture machine, with full programmable store, separation of computer, memory, I/O and storage in about the arrangement we see in most computers today. Not much European work until many years later... salem.mass.edu ftp.arl.mil