medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I was just huffing and puffing! You are quite right. I am aware of the British
machines. Apparently the first digital computer was designed by someone in the
post office (you call it the royal post? Commoners can't use it?}The post
office was apparently where you Brits hid your counter intelligence people. The
Enigma was cracked even before the war by Polish intelligence who gave their
copy of the machine and the codes to the British before the fall of Poland. The
Ultra code, a code for top level Nazis, was more of a challenge. The postman
then invented the first digital computer using vaccum tubes. It was called the
"Bomb" but apparently after a kind of ice cream. It was truly the first
computer, and it really pisses people off here at Penn when I tell this story.
V. K. Inman
Quoting Anne Willis <[log in to unmask]>:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Sorry to contradict you, but my husband's memory is as follows:
>
> U of Pennsylvania built one of the first electronic calculating machines.
> Part of it is in the entrance area (or it was when my husband went there
> some years ago). Of course the UK had similar stuff going on at Bletchley
> [Enigma etc.] but it was held back from public knowledge for years (1970s I
> think), by the Official Secrets Act. A book on Leo (the Lyons Electronic
> Office) mentions this.
>
> These early machines didn't have everything that we normally associate with
> the modern computer: stored programmes in the same memory as the data being
> manipulated being the key.
>
> The Manchester baby machine [on which my husband's D.Phil supervisor worked]
> had these properties and ran a program before any other machine. See
>
> http://www.computer50.org/
>
> So it is the first modern computer.
>
>
> Anne
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
> culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of V. Kerry
> Inman
> Sent: 28 February 2007 02:16
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [M-R] guide to use of geometric patterns in Islamic design
>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> I am sorry, my server seems to playing games tonight. As you know the
> computer
> was invented at Penn during the early 50's and the Dean brushes aside all
> questions as to whether or not the original one is still in use.
>
> Let me try that picture again.
>
> V. Kerry Inman
>
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