when was the first computer invented?
78828
"The first of the "modern" computers was invented during World War II, in 1941 by a German engineer named Konrad Zuse. The computer was called the Z3 and was used to help design German airplanes and missles."
479775
Wikipedia has a good resource starting well before 1949\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computers\n\nAbout.com has some interesting stuff\nhttp://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm\n\nHere's a link to Yahoo's category\nhttp://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/History/
747168
Hewlett Packard was founded in 1939. It has been making lab equipment back then, engineering and professional hardware mainly for the military. HP started making computers in the 1960's and introduced both the inkjet (the "ThinkJet") and the LaserJet in 1984. \n\nAnd that's all you're going to get for that generic questions. :)
76420
In the 1940's with ENIAC.  It was one of the first "high-speed" computational devices and is considered the first major milestone in the development of digital computers.  It was used mainly by the U.S. military during WWII for artillery trajectory calculations.\n\nHowever things really took off after the development of the silicon transistor (1954), which are still in use today.
184095
when microsoft came about
24046
Hello,\n\nPlease see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing for a great article with many links to learning about the history of computing on my favorite site Wikipedia.org. \n\nIf you feel that I've answered your question please close your question so I can receive points for my answer. \n\nThanks,\n\nV
457688
It all depends. If they were asking you to explain what a computer is in 1900 it is not possible since I don;t think computers were available back then. If they are asking to explain present technology to someone from the 1900, I would start out with te basics of the different componets of a computer, eg. hard drive, mother board, power supply, RAM, disk drives, and etc. The reson for this is that you need to understand how a computer works before you can even get to software.
154069
i guess you mean hand-held electronic calculator which uses chip.\n\nTexas, a company, made the first electronic calculator. Jack Kilby, who invented chip (Robert Noyce too is credited to be the inventor of chip), worked in the team which made the first calculator.\n\nThe first calculator did not have the screen but it printed the result on a thermal paper using printer attached to the calculator itself. Don't get the idea of the printer being very large. The first calculator was small enough to be used conveniently.
519846
History of computing\n\n    Main article: History of computing\n\nENIAC — a milestone in computing history\nEnlarge\nENIAC — a milestone in computing history\n\nOriginally, the term "computer" referred to a person who performed numerical calculations, often with the aid of a mechanical calculating device. Examples of early calculating devices, the first ancestors of the computer, included the abacus and the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek device for calculating the movements of planets, dating from about 87 BC.[1] The end of the Middle Ages saw a reinvigoration of European mathematics and engineering, and Wilhelm Schickard's 1623 device was the first of a number of European engineers to construct a mechanical calculator.[2] The abacus has been noted as being an early computer, as it was like a calculator in the past. Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable computer as early as 1820, but due to a combination of the limits of the technology of the time, limited finance, and an inability to resist tinkering with his design, the device was never actually constructed in his lifetime. A number of technologies that would later prove useful in computing, such as the punch card and the vacuum tube had appeared by the end of the 19th century, and large-scale automated data processing using punch cards was performed by tabulating machines designed by Hermann Hollerith.\n\nDuring the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated, special-purpose analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. These became increasingly rare after the development of the programmable digital computer.\n\nA succession of steadily more powerful and flexible computing devices were constructed in the 1930s and 1940s, gradually adding the key features of modern computers, such as the use of digital electronics (largely invented by Claude Shannon in 1937)[3] and more flexible programmability. Defining one point along this road as "the first digital electronic computer" is exceedingly difficult. Notable achievements include the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (1937), a special-purpose machine that used valve-driven (vacuum tube) computation, binary numbers, and regenerative memory; the secret British Colossus computer (1944), which had limited programmability but demonstrated that a device using thousands of valves could be made reliable and reprogrammed electronically; the Harvard Mark I, a large-scale electromechanical computer with limited programmability (1944); the decimal-based American ENIAC (1946) — which was the first general purpose electronic computer, but originally had an inflexible architecture that meant reprogramming it essentially required it to be rewired; and Konrad Zuse's Z machines, with the electromechanical Z3 (1941) being the first working machine featuring automatic binary arithmetic and feasible programmability.\n\nThe team who developed ENIAC, recognizing its flaws, came up with a far more flexible and elegant design, which has become known as the Von Neumann architecture (or "stored program architecture"), named for one of its principle designers. This stored program architecture became the basis for virtually all modern computers. A number of projects to develop computers based on the stored program architecture commenced in the mid to late-1940s; the first of these were completed in Britain. The first to be up and running was the Small-Scale Experimental Machine, but the EDSAC was perhaps the first practical version that was developed.\nThe Apple II, an early personal computer\nEnlarge\nThe Apple II, an early personal computer\n\nValve (tube) driven computer designs were in use throughout the 1950s, but were eventually replaced with transistor-based computers, which were smaller, faster, cheaper, and much more reliable, thus allowing
149454
I didn't get into the PC world until the mid-80's - besides, the first PC wasn't invented until 1981.\n\nThe first PC compatible I had was an AT&T 6300 with 640KB of memory and an 8086 processor.  It came with two floppy drives.  I upgraded it later, adding two 5 MB hard disks (that's five megabytes, not five gigabytes).  I'm thinking it cost around $2,600, with a Princton Graphics EGA monitor.  This was probably 1984.\n\nMy first PC compatible laptop was a Zenith 181, 640 KB of memory, 8088 chip and two floppies.  I remember that cost $2,999.99.  It won PC Magazine's Annual award for laptops in 1986.\n\nBoth of these were after much 1979, because the "personal computers" of that day were NOT PC compatible.  My previous machine was a TRS-80 Color Computer running "Color Disk Basic".  This was the machine I did all my college papers on between 1981 and 1982.  The machine was much less, around $400, but that did NOT include a monitor, or a floppy drive.
1049291
sorry, i wasnt paying any attention in my computer literature class last year. it might be in 1960 somthin, i think
600573
Humans invented computers. So humans are best
50878
Nobody discovered a computer. It was invented. As far as who acctually invented the computer is still being debated to this day.
899703
The first computer bug is said to have been a moth that was found squashed between the points of an electromechanical relay in the Mark II computer in 1945. This moth caused the entire computer to shut down. When the moth was removed, it was affixed to the computer’s log with a scribbled note that read, “First actual case of bug being found.” When the computer operators removed the moth, they claimed to have “debugged” the computer, thus introducing the term “debugging a computer program.”\n\nFrom then onwards, all software programming defects are also termed as “Bugs”\n\nBy the way, this first bug is now housed in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.
453159
Charles Babbage invented the computing machine..\n\nIts was series is research done to get the current form of computers
125563
I dunno, but my first computer job was back in 1966 .... there were FIVE computers in this city of 100,000 people then - and each new one in town would be almost front page news.\n\nThat computer had 96K RAM .... our company used it for a few years, then needed to expand, so we upgraded (probably for $20,000+!) to a "massive" 192K\n\n(Yes, that is "K", not MB, GB, etc etc!)
650841
If you don't count the abacus, which is ancient, then Blaise Pascal invented the first mechanical computation machine in France in 1642. Check it yo!\n\nhttp://www.thocp.net/hardware/pascaline.htm