First Generation Computers (1936-1947)
The first computers ever invented required vacuum tube technology for memory storage. The problem with this is that the vacuum tubes produced a lot of heat which, even with air conditioning units running non-stop, would melt the installations together. This meant that such computers were incredibly costly to run and could only be used by large corporations. In addition to the cost of the melted installations, because of the large number of vacuum tubes, the computer took up an entire room. Finally, these machines used punched cards, paper tape, and magnetic tape which forced the computers to only speak in computer language and be unreliable due to common human error.
- Arguably the first computer ever, the Z1 was created by Konrad Zuse in 1936. It was the first ever freely programmable computer.
- In 1944, the Harvard Mark I was invented. It was built by Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper. It was used by the Navy for gunnery and ballistics calculation.
- Afterwards came the ENIAC computer in 1946. It was invented by John Eckert and John Mauchly. It had 20,000 vacuum tubes and was used for calculating target accuracy for the military.