It is difficult to pinpoint any one device as the earliest form of a computer. The definition of the word computer has changed and hence it is difficult to identify the first computer. In the olden days, many devices were called computers. However, they no longer qualify to be called computers in the modern times.
The computer is the most modern mechanical device used to calculate. Its predecessors were the abacus, the slide rule, the astrolabe, the Antikythera mechanism (which dates back to between the year 150 B.C. and the year 100 B.C.), the mechanical calculator which was invented by Wilhelm Schickard in the year 1623, the modified textile loom which used punched paper cards which was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in the year 1801, the analytical engine invented by Charles Babbage (who is believed to be the inventor of the computer) in the year 1837 and the Herman Hollerith-designed, Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (later the International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated as IBM)-manufactured tabulating machines in the year 1890. The punched card, Boolean algebra, the vacuum tube or the thermionic valve, the teleprinter and the analog computers were the precursors to the modern computers in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries
The computer is the most modern mechanical device used to calculate. Its predecessors were the abacus, the slide rule, the astrolabe, the Antikythera mechanism (which dates back to between the year 150 B.C. and the year 100 B.C.), the mechanical calculator which was invented by Wilhelm Schickard in the year 1623, the modified textile loom which used punched paper cards which was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in the year 1801, the analytical engine invented by Charles Babbage (who is believed to be the inventor of the computer) in the year 1837 and the Herman Hollerith-designed, Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (later the International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated as IBM)-manufactured tabulating machines in the year 1890. The punched card, Boolean algebra, the vacuum tube or the thermionic valve, the teleprinter and the analog computers were the precursors to the modern computers in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries
