Спереводом in 1944 in united states international business machines (ibm) built a machine in cooperation with scientists working at harvard university under the direction of prof. aik en. the machine, called mark i automatic sequence-con trolled calculator, was built to perform calculations for the manhattan project, which led to the development of atomic bomb. it was the largest electromechanical calculator ever built. it used over 3000 electrically actuated switches to control its operations. although its operations were not controlled elec- tronically, aiken's machine is often classified as a computer because its instructions, which were entered by means of a punched paper tape, could be altered. the computer could cre- ate ballistic tables used by naval artillery. the relay computer had its problems. since relays are elec- tromechanical devices, the switching contacts operate by means of electromagnets and springs. they are slow, very noisy and consume a lot of power. 3. the abc (1939-1942) the work on introducing electronics into the design of com- puters was going on. the gadget that was the basis for the first computer revolu tion was the vacuum tube, an electronic device invented early in the twentieth century. the vacuum tube was ideal for use in computers. it had no mechanical moving parts. it switched flows of electrons off and on at rates far faster than possible with any mechanical device. it was relatively reliable, and operated hun- dreds of hours before failure. the first vacuum tube computer was built at iowa university at about the same time as the mark i. the computer, capable to perform thousands of related computations, was called abc, the atanasoff-berry comput- er, after dr.john atanasoff, a professor of physics and his assis- tant, clifford berry. it used 45 vacuum tubes for internal logic and capacitors for storage. from the abc a number of vacu- um-tube digital computers developed.