The First Computers In 1930 the first analog computer was built by American named Vannevar Bush. This

device was used in World War II to help aim guns.

Many technical developments of electronic digital computers took place in the 1940s and

1950s. Mark I, the name given to the first digital computer, was completed in 1944. The man

responsible for this invention was Professor Howard Aiken. This was the first machine that

could figure out long lists of mathematical problems at a very fast rate.

In 1946 two engineers at the University of Pennsilvania, J.Eckert and J.Maushly, built their

digital computer with vacuum tubes. They named their new invention ENIAC (the Electronic

Numerical Integrator and Calculator).

Another important achievement in developing computers came in 1947, when John von

Neumann developed the idea of keeping instructions for the computer inside the computer's

memory. The contribution of John von Neumann was particularly significant. As contrasted

with Babbage's analytical engine, which was designed to store only data, von Neumann's

machine, called the Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, or EDVAC, was able to store both

data and instructions. He also contributed to the idea of storing data and instructions in a binary

code that uses only ones and zeros. This simplified computer design. Thus computers use two

conditions, high voltage, and low voltage, to translate the symbols by which we communicate

into unique combinations of electrical pulses. We refer to these combinations as codes.

Neumann's stored program computer as well as other machines of that time were made

possible by the invention of the vacuum tube that could control and amplify electronic signals.
(Read the text again and answer the questions)

1. When was the first analog computer built?

2. Where and how was that computer used?

3. When did the first digital computers appear?

4. Who was the inventor of the first digital computer?

5. What could that device do?

6. What is ENIAC? Decode the word.

7. What was J. Neumann's contribution into the development of computers?

8. What were the advantages of EDVAC in comparison with ENIAC?

9. What does binary code mean?

10.Due to what invention could the first digital computers be built?
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