The first computer in the world

 The first computer in the world  

Computers play a very important role in our life. Today it is used in almost every area. For example, in the engineering field it is used in simulation, designing, and analysis of various products, in the medical field it is very widely used in examining internal organs, determining blood flow pattern, in the Military, it is used in the operation of various weapons, satellites and so on. There is no field which can develop at a fast rate without the use of computers. So, we can easily say that computers are nowadays an integral part of our life.  

Now, the question might have arisen in your mind: which was the first computer? Who had invented that? How was it at that time?  What was its capability? and so on. Now we will look into these questions in detail. The name of the world’s first electronic general-purpose digital computer was ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It was designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper  Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. There were many other researchers involved in the construction of different parts of this computer.  

ENIAC was computationally universal and it can be used to simulate any Turing machine. It can solve a large class of numerical problems through reprogramming. It was a modular computer having different panels to perform different functions. There were some accumulators that store the ten-digit decimal and can add or subtract those. It was capable of doing many things at a time because it could branch and perform different operations in each branch, thus it is more versatile.  

ENIAC was primarily designed to be used by the US Army’s Ballistic  Research Laboratory to calculate artillery firing tables. By the end of its operation, it contained approx. 20000 vacuum tubes, 70000  resistors, 10000 capacitors, 7200 crystal diodes, and 5000000 hand-soldered joints. The weight of this computer was around 27000 kg and it occupies 1800 sq ft area. It consumed 150 kW of power and hence it is said that at that time when this computer was switched on the lights of the whole city got dimmed.  

This computer was also involved in the development of hydrogen bombs. Although there were many mechanical computing devices available at that time like IBM Harvard Mark I, the German Z3,  ENIAC was most capable of them all. In 2011, In the honor of the  65th anniversary of the ENIAC, the city of Philadelphia declared  February 15 as ENIAC day.  

Although ENIAC was the first electronic general-purpose digital  computer, the first mechanical computer was conceptualized and  invented by English mechanical engineer “Charles Babbage” in early 

19th century. He also originated the concept of a programmable computer. Thus, he is considered as the “father of the computer”.  

After so many years, we now have many advanced computers and laptops in homes and offices. We are now having supercomputers in some laboratories where much-advanced computing is necessary.  But think, what would have happened and how our world would look like if there were no computers.  

Article By- Abhas Raj