Sunday, February 28, 2010

Early Computers in Photos

All photos from: http://www.computerhistory.org



1939 Hewlett Packard



1944 Colossus






1949 Illiac2

2 comments:

  1. What was the purpose of each of these computers? You mention in another post later about the colossus, but what about the others? The pictures of each computer are a great idea but without information they are meaningless. For the next time period it might be better to take a picture and focus on what that computer does.

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  2. I don't know if anyone is still looking but I can help with the ILLIAC II computer. It was the second supercomputer built by the University of Illinois in the 60s. (Preceded by the ILLIAC I which was an EDSAC or IAS style computer using vacuum tubes and rotating drum memory and Williams Tube RAM.) The ILLIAC was a transistorized computer famous for the fact that the very first time it was run for testing it discovered 3 previously unknown prime numbers, including the largest prime number ever discovered at that time. It also used rotating drum storage as secondary storage but also used the newer core memory for main RAM. A great deal of scientific research was carried out on the ILLIAC II until it was retired. As an interesting side note, both the ILLIAC I and ILLIAC II were used in the very early field of electronic music and electronic composition.

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