According to the Easyjet inflight magazine (which I happened to be reading today during a particularly boring flight to Madrid):
Manchester boasts that "The world’s first computer was built in Manchester in 1948. A working replica is housed in the city's Museum of Science and Industry."
A few pages later, Sofia, Bulgaria has a similar claim to fame: "The inventor of the first electronic computer John Vincent Atanasoff is of Bulgarian origin. He and Clifford Berry tackled this task at Iowa State University, between 1939 and 1942."
So which one is right? (And why didn't the same person proof-read the whole magazine?)
I'm sure that I remember something about the Z1 in 1936.
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Maybe John Atanasoff moved from Bulgaria to Iowa in 1937 then worked on the concept of an electronic computer until 1942 when he popped to Bletchley Park for a bit then went to Manchester where he finally succeeded...
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying it's true, just that it accommodates both articles.
You should update the Wikipedia entry then...
ReplyDeleteUnfortunatley, I don't think it's true. Apparently At this time, he was in the US Naval Ordnance Lab., Washington, D.C. as Chief of Acoustics Division 1945-48.