Computer History

The evolution of the first recognizably modern computers in the 1940&'s and early 1950&'s is an epic story of innovation, collaboration, secrecy, and a technological phoenix built from the ashes of World War II. The development of The von Neumann Architecture, from concept, to ultimate practical realization lasted a few years, a decade, or a century depending on how you interpret the facts. The characters, places, and machines, in this story are legend; Babbage, Lovelace and the Analytical engine, Atanasoff’s ABC, Aiken and the Harvard Mk1, Zuse’s Z1 through Z4, Vannevar Bush, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, John von Neumann, the ENIAC and EDVAC. Tommy Flowers the Heath Robinson and Collossus at Bletchley Park. TRE Malvern, Manchester University, the Baby and the Williams-Kilburn tube, Lyons tea shops and the EDSAC at Cambridge and the CSIRAC. My goal is not to catalog these efforts but rather to show the links between them and the web of collaboration that led to the evolution of the first modern computer.