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The Z1 was a motor-driven mechanical computer designed by German inventor Konrad Zuse from 1936 to 1937, which he built in his parents' home from 1936 to 1938. [1] [2] It was a binary, electrically driven, mechanical calculator, with limited programmability, reading instructions from punched celluloid film.
The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. [3] The Z3 was built with 2,600 relays, implementing a 22-bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz. [1] Program code was stored on ...
PDP-1 PDP-6 PDP-7 PDP-8/e PDP-11/40 PDP-12 PDP-15 (partial) PDP-15 graphics terminal with light pen and digitizing tablet. Programmed Data Processor (PDP), referred to by some customers, media and authors as "Programmable Data Processor," [1] [2] [3] is a term used by the Digital Equipment Corporation from 1957 to 1990 for several lines of minicomputers.
The team at Bletchley Park devised automatic machinery to help with decryption, culminating in the development of Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer. [a] Codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park came to an end in 1946 and all information about the wartime operations was classified until the mid-1970s.
Not programmable: No Joseph Desch NCR (US) March 1940: Decimal: Electronic: Not programmable: No Zuse Z3 (Germany) May 1941: Binary floating point: Electro-mechanical: Program-controlled by punched 35 mm film stock (but no conditional branch) In theory : Atanasoff–Berry Computer (US) 1942: Binary: Electronic: Not programmable — single ...
Stibitz was born in York, Pennsylvania, the son of Mildred Murphy, a math teacher, and George Stibitz, a German Reformed minister and theology professor. Throughout his childhood, Stibitz enjoyed assembling devices and systems, working with material as diverse as a toy Meccano set or the electrical wiring of the family home. [3]
A programmable logic controller (PLC) or programmable controller is an industrial computer that has been ruggedized and adapted for the control of manufacturing processes, such as assembly lines, machines, robotic devices, or any activity that requires high reliability, ease of programming, and process fault diagnosis.
Other computers, though programmable, stored their programs on punched tape, which was physically fed into the system as needed, as was the case for the Zuse Z3 and the Harvard Mark I, or were only programmable by physical manipulation of switches and plugs, as was the case for the Colossus computer.