Who invented the first computer?

Answer 1

1. Charles Babbage invented the first fully programmable general purpose digital computer in the 1830s called the Analytical Engine. It was a mechanical computer programmed by a chain of punchcards and was to be powered by a steam engine. Babbage was never able to obtain the funding needed to build it and the idea effectively died.
2. Alan Turing invented a programmable general purpose digital computer in 1936 in his paper "On Computable Numbers", but he never intended to build it as it was only intended as a component of the main proof of that paper. Computers of this type are now called "Turing machines".
3. Tommy Flowers invented the first electronic programmable general purpose digital computer in 1943 to help Bletchley Park break the Nazi High Command teletype cypher machine that the British called "Tunney". This computer was called "Colossus", it was programmed by rewiring panels and setting switches, 10 of them were built from early 1944 until VE day in 1945 making it the first computer built in a quantity greater than 1 prior to the 1950s. However it was classified and remained classified until the 1980s, so nobody heard of it and it does not appear in most histories of computing.
4. J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly invented an electronic programmable general purpose digital computer in 1943 called ENIAC to help the US Army calculate firing tables for new artillery pieces. it was not finished until late 1945, it was designed to be programmed by rewiring panels and setting switches, but in 1948 was modified to be a "stored programmed computer" using 2 digit instructions set on switches of its "Function Table unit" eliminating the need to rewire it. ENIAC was declassified in February 1946 and demonstrated for the public, making it the first computer most ordinary people ever heard of.

There were many other computers built between the 1830s and 1945, but these were either analog or special purpose nonprogrammable machines. However prior to 1945 the word "computer" was a job title for a human that was hired to do computations, not a type of machine as it is today. People hired as computers go back hundreds of years. Specifically Charles Babbage was working as a computer when he got the idea for the Difference Engine a special purpose digital computer that preceded his idea for the fully programmable general purpose Analytical Engine.

Answer 2

The first thing that could be recognized as a computer was invented by Charles Babbage, an English mathematician, in 1812. It was called the "analytical engine" and could calculate math problems without human error.