> developed in the 1940's in in England and the US. There were card sorting
> systems but no actual computers.
Yes, there were. Sort of. In 1624 Schickard built a 4-function
calculating clock. In 1642 Pascal built a better one. In 1822, Babbage
built his Differnece Engine, which was a little bit programmable. In
the 1830s, he designed the Analytical Engine, but it was never built
IIRC. In 1855, however, the Scheutz brothers built a version of it
which is generally considered the first practival mechanical computer.
The first binary calculator was built in 1937. And, in 1939, the first
automatic digital calculator, the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer) was built.
Now, none of these were Von Neumann machines, as present-day computers
are. But computers did exist prior to 1940.
However, you are right that purely electronic computers didn't really
exist until 1940, but they weren't Von Neumann machines yet, either.
That didn't happen until (IIRC) about 1949, based on Von Neumann's
designs drafted in '45.
So there. :-P heeheehee
--benD
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