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Three brothers who wrote the Book of Ingenious Devices, describing what appears to be the first programmable machine, an automatic flute player. [8] 1960–1964 Baran, Paul: One of two independent inventors of the concept of digital packet switching used in modern computer networking including the Internet.
The first stored-program transistor computer was the ETL Mark III, developed by Japan's Electrotechnical Laboratory [50] [51] [52] from 1954 [53] to 1956. [51] However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialized ...
The steam-powered automatic flute described by the Book of Ingenious Devices (850) by the Persian-Baghdadi Banū Mūsā brothers may have been the first programmable device. [10] Other early mechanical devices used to perform one or another type of calculations include the planisphere and other mechanical computing devices invented by Al-Biruni ...
The category of early computers contains the computer systems made in the early era (i.e., the era in modern computer history defined as the period from the late 1930s to the early 1960s) utilizing mechanical, vacuum tube, discrete transistor, or other pre-integrated circuit technology. See also. Category:History of computing
Digital machinery used difference engines or relays before the invention of faster memory devices. The phrase computing machine gradually gave way, after the late 1940s, to just computer as the onset of electronic digital machinery became common. These computers were able to perform the calculations that were performed by the previous human clerks.
Heath Robinson is the name of a British cartoonist known for drawings of comical machines, like the American Rube Goldberg. Two later machines in the series were named after London stores with 'Robinson' in their names. 1943 Sep United States: Williams and Stibitz completed the 'Relay Interpolator', later called the 'Model II Relay Calculator ...
A few of these people pre-date the invention of the digital computer; they are now regarded as computer scientists because their work can be seen as leading to the invention of the computer. Others are mathematicians whose work falls within what would now be called theoretical computer science, such as complexity theory and algorithmic ...
It relates to both computer hardware and computer software. Names of many computer terms, especially computer applications, often relate to the function they perform, e.g., a compiler is an application that compiles (programming language source code into the computer's machine language). However, there are other terms with less obvious origins ...