can you guys tell me some stuff about who made the first computer and he resources and electricity usage,
thanks i have a project to do for a comp class :D

The first computer weighed around 150 lbs, could perform about five 3-digit multiplications per minute, and consumed around 2000 Calories of energy per day. The electricity used was on the order of a few milliwatts.

The First actual PC Was built and invented by apple?Am I not correct?

Originally posted by creid
The First actual PC Was built and invented by apple?Am I not correct?

You are not correct. Apple was the first popular mass produced PC.

History lesson = http://www.pc-history.org/

http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist/

http://www.pbs.org/nerds/

Originally posted by creid
The First actual PC Was built and invented by apple?Am I not correct? Ok you re-defined the term "computer" to assume "PC = Computer"

cue: *Buzzer*

"null point" from the French Judge... :D

First computer is a completely different thing to first PC.

Just a quick re-direct there.
:)

"...Before the advent of reliable mechanical calculators and high-speed computers, the trick was to adopt plausible approximations that provided predictions of planetary positions for a given date with a prescribed level of precision. However, the more precisely one tried to pinpoint a given celestial event, the more calculations it took to make a sufficiently reliable prediction. And the computations were done by hand with the aid of interminable, eye-taxing tables of logarithms. Indeed, until the last half century, the word computer meant a person who performed the painstakingly tedious calculations required in astronomy and other number-intensive fields. Whereas present-day astronomers can turn to the electronic machines on their desks, few astronomers in the past could get by without the ranks of anonymous assistants and clerks who performed the necessary calculations...." (Ivars Peterson, Newton's Clock - Chaos in the Solar System, ISBN 0-7167-2396-4)

I just finished reading that book, it was most excellent. The part about using plausible approximations is quite true. When I was taking engineering lab during my freshman year in college, my calculations were never precisely correct; they were approximations due to the limited resolution of my slide rule.

Oh.. Geezzz. Did you type that all in one breath? :D

Originally posted by Mike the newbie
"...Before the advent of reliable mechanical calculators and high-speed computers, the trick was to adopt plausible approximations that provided predictions of planetary positions for a given date with a prescribed level of precision. However, the more precisely one tried to pinpoint a given celestial event, the more calculations it took to make a sufficiently reliable prediction. And the computations were done by hand with the aid of interminable, eye-taxing tables of logarithms. Indeed, until the last half century, the word computer meant a person who performed the painstakingly tedious calculations required in astronomy and other number-intensive fields. Whereas present-day astronomers can turn to the electronic machines on their desks, few astronomers in the past could get by without the ranks of anonymous assistants and clerks who performed the necessary calculations...."

Originally posted by remarkable
Oh.. Geezzz. Did you type that all in one breath? :D



I had to come up for air 'bout halfway through it. ;)

The first computers were computers that were made for cryptography rigth after WWII to decode encoded messages. At that time they didn't know it was computer but it actually was.