How the Modern Computer Was Invented...By Accident

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Sources:
ENIAC on display at the University of Pennsylvania: Copyright 2005 Paul W Shaffer, University of Pennsylvania

[Newsthink]

*What other topics would you like to watch a video on?*
CORRECTION: 6:35 meant to say neutrons, not neurons

[davepubliday]

The Manchester Baby was actually the first to use stored programs in 1948. I feel like computer history is often told in an Amerocentric framing, but these big advances were made in the UK first.

[NegusYosef]

6:34 should be "simulating the paths of neutrons" instead of "neurons"

[jscottupton]

As the other comments in this forum point out, the "invention of the computer" was far more complex than two men "meeting at a train station". Several countries produced men and women who made important contributions leading to today's computers. Everyone wants to "take credit for the invention of the computer". It's not that simple. So many different people made contributions including Tesla who set up the AC current electrical system.

[rodd]

The inventor of the modern computer can be traced right back to the U.K and Charles Babbage, who created the very first computer called the difference engine in the 1820s. He then went on to design a far more complex computer in 1837, called the analytical engine, which today’s computers are based, but due to funding it wasn’t constructed until 1991 at the London Science Museum.

[Laminar-Flow]

Fun fact, from that book: We as humanity have made more transistors than any other manufactured good in sum total in the history of our species, by many orders of magnitude. I'm a computer engineering student.. If any of you are really interested in the origins of computing- and how it got to where it is now- I highly recommend the book chip war. Not only does it go over the meaning of the title in modern terms, it starts at the very origins of the computing paradigm and lays out the state of things very competently. Right now in my degree, I am learning how to design integrated circuits (chips) from the CMOS transistor on up on an older nm process. The levels of complexity are baffling to me..

[joachimelz-fianda]

Th first computer using programs storer im memory was built by Konrad Zuse 1943 in Berlin. It was the Z2 which used telephone relays as store units. His next computers were based on electron tubes. 1971 I had the opportunity to play on a Z22 at the RWTH university in Aachen which was the first transistored series of Zuse.

[seanabsher]

funny moment showing Steve Jobs while saying in narration that electronic computers are public domain, because apple computer corporation has multiple times tried to patent concepts that would immobilize competition that has had the technologies for years before Apple put them together on smart phones and tablets... interesting.

[martincardenas]

The first free programmable computer was the z1, designed and built by Konrad Zusse from 1936 to 1938 in Germany.

[edina]

Klára Dán's and János Neumann's contributions make all of us Hungarians proud! Thank you for this video!

[Equiluxe]

Tommy Flowers built the first electronic computer in 1943 in the UK, it was only used for one job but was programmable via a punched tape.

[rainerlanglotz]

"Zuse Z III" built in Germany before 1944 was the first fully programmable computer. With The orginal one destroyed by allied bombers Konrad Zuse built an exact copy, which is still alive and well in the "Deutsches Museum" Munich.
Von Neumann was second only to Einstein as a genius, but here he can only claim the silver medal.

[Richard]

You seem to have missed the earlier history of computers, particularly the earlier work in the UK at Bletchley.

[GospodinovZhivko]

The first modern digital computer was the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the ABC. It was not EDVAC! and thanks to that fact the pattern of EDVAC was canceled which allows now everyone to be able to make digital computers, otherwise only one company was going to able to make digital computers.

[jnmrgn]

"Simulating the paths of neurons inside an atomic bomb"

I guess that was a smart

[jamessutton]

No mention of Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge who designed the EDSAC, inspired by the Princeton meeting which Wilkes attended, which ran its first program in 1949, or the Manchester “Baby” which ran its first program in 1948, both of which predated the EDVAC.

[guidopahlberg]

Set theory was developed by the German mathematicians Georg Cantor and Richard Dedekind in the 1870s

[shuvambanerjee-jr]

As an Indian Bengali I can say your pronunciation of Ananno was almost perfect.

[JedRothwell]

I have read von Neumann's early papers. Any programmer or computer technician would understand them. Here is the obvious thing though. When he wrote these papers, computers did not exist. He imagined this entire complex technology in his mind. That is astounding! It is genius. For me to say "anyone understands it now" is like saying Shakespeare's plays are full of cliches.

von Neumann had training in engineering. When the team of experts were building one of the first stored program computers at the Institute for Advanced Study, the IAS machine, they often came to him with difficult technical problems. He quickly proposed practical solutions. He made direct, hands-on contributions to the technology.

[billwendt]

Why do you ignore the Colossus computer of 1943 developed by Alan Turing at Bletchley Park?