By a Computer if one means a device which can perform simple mathematical calculations then the first one can be said to be the Abacus (around 300 BC), a contraption of beads arranged in vertical or horizontal patterns to perform simple calculations used first in China.
Speaking about recent times the computer as a mechanism that could perform calculations or change the course of mechanical tasks without the aid of a human being was first observed in the weaving machine of the French weaver Joseph Jacquard (1800) who is generally believed to be the first person to use punched cards in his machines for different weaving patterns. Charles Babbage's design of the Analytical Machine (1830) can be said to be the precursor to the modern computer.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century a number of developments took place, but it was in the 1940s that the competition really became intense with Konrad Zuse's Z1 Computer (1936), he is credited with being the first to invent the computer, Atanasoff and Berry's ABC Computer (1942), Howard Aiken's Harvard Mark 1 Computer (1944) and Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC 1 Computer (1946). All the above machines could be regarded as the first computers as each used a different technology; for example the Mark1 used electromagnetic tapes while Zuse's device was electro-mechanical in character and the ENIAC 1 used vacuum tubes, 20,000 to be precise.
Speaking about recent times the computer as a mechanism that could perform calculations or change the course of mechanical tasks without the aid of a human being was first observed in the weaving machine of the French weaver Joseph Jacquard (1800) who is generally believed to be the first person to use punched cards in his machines for different weaving patterns. Charles Babbage's design of the Analytical Machine (1830) can be said to be the precursor to the modern computer.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century a number of developments took place, but it was in the 1940s that the competition really became intense with Konrad Zuse's Z1 Computer (1936), he is credited with being the first to invent the computer, Atanasoff and Berry's ABC Computer (1942), Howard Aiken's Harvard Mark 1 Computer (1944) and Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC 1 Computer (1946). All the above machines could be regarded as the first computers as each used a different technology; for example the Mark1 used electromagnetic tapes while Zuse's device was electro-mechanical in character and the ENIAC 1 used vacuum tubes, 20,000 to be precise.
