April 28, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR LORI KANE IN MA
Some of the first computers include the Harvard Mark I designed by Howard
Aiken, ENIAC ( Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) built at the
University of Pennsylvania and designed by J. Eckert and John Mauchly, and
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer). Most of these early computers were
quite large. ENIAC was 8 feet by 100 feet, weighed 80 tons and had 18,000
vacuum tubes!

The IEEE Computer Society has a wonderful timeline of computer history
(starting with the abacus) and includes many pictures of these early
computers:
http://www.computer.org/history/development/

The Virtual Museum of Computing has many links to information on computer
history:
http://vmoc.museophile.com/

The Smithsonian website includes a link to the Original Press Release for
the ENIAC Computer:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/csr/comphist/index.htm

I hope you find these helpful!

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April 27, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR MAMIE MOY IN TX
Julie should go to the following web page-
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blstibitz.htm.
George Stibitz is recognized as the father of the modern digital computer.
You will find a link that illustrates the Complex Number Calculator,
the world's first electricl digital computer.

The current computers bear no resemblance to the earlier ones. One of
the very first computers occupied a room the size of a small
classroom. An internet search will probably provide Julie with
pictures of earlier computers. Hope this helps.
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A: FROM MENTOR BARB KONTOGIANNIS IN CO
The first concept of a computer was by Charles Babbage in 1837. He called it the "Analytical Engine" and envisioned that it would be a massive mechanical, brass, steam-powered machine. From what I can find, it was never built. http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/

From this web page http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/jva-archive.shtml there is a lot of information about the first electronic digital computer, some of which I've pasted here. John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry are credited with inventing the first digital computer.
"Professor John Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry built the world's first electronic-digital computer at Iowa State University between 1939 and 1942. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer represented several innovations in computing, including a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions.

Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the first to patent a digital computing device, the ENIAC computer. A patent infringement case (Sperry Rand Vs. Honeywell, 1973) voided the ENIAC patent as a derivative of John Atanasoff's invention. Atanasoff was quite generous in stating, "there is enough credit for everyone in the invention and development of the electronic computer." Eckert and Mauchly received most of the credit for inventing the first electronic-digital computer. Historians now say that the Atanasoff-Berry computer was the first."

I've also read a lot about Grace Murray Hopper, the first woman computer programmer. She first worked on the Mark I computer, which was 8 feet high, 8 feet wide, and filled with relays, switches and vacuum tubes. Early computers were very large, easily filling a room. Early computers most certianly did not look the same as they do now! They were also not nearly as fast. The first commercial electronic computer, called the UNIVAC, was 1000 times faster than the Mark I. But it was still big and slow compared to today's computers. There are some pictures of the UNIVAC at this website.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/case1107.html

Here's an interesting story about the first computer "bug": In 1946, Grace Murray Hopper joined the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory where she continued her work on the Mark II and Mark III. She traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book. Stemming from the first bug, today we call errors or glitch's in a program a bug. See the photo of the first computer "bug" from the Smithsonian:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/csr/comphist/objects/bug.htm
There's a lot of information on the web. If you look up ENIAC, UNIVAC, Grace Murray Hopper, or go to any of the websites I've included above, you can learn a lot more about early computers.

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A: FROM MENTOR JO ELLEN HINCK IN MO
Julie- the computer has definitely evolved over time! Check out this link
from pbs (http://www.pbs.org/nerds/timeline/) that gives a time line. I
searched for computer and history and found many more websites. Good luck!