Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
developed. In Germany Konrad Zuse (illus.
11
) built a digital calcu-
lating machine called the Z
in the United States
John V. Atanasoff and his student Claude Berry built the ABC or
Atanasoff-Berry Computer, also electronic and digital. In
1
in
1938
, while in
1939
, build-
ing on his experience in using IBM accounting machines, Howard
Aiken, with the collaboration of IBM, started to develop a calculat-
ing machine, the Harvard-IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled
Calculator, also known as the Harvard Mark I, which was to be
followed by three more machines, the Marks II, III and IV. In the
same year George Stibitz built his Complex Number Calculator,
which used Boolean logic to calculate. None of these machines were
computers in the modern sense, in that they lacked the capacity to
store data, or in some cases were hard-wired to perform one task.
But all were close to the modern conception of the computer.
It was in this period that Turing published his
Entscheidungs-
problem
paper, which anticipated the future development of digital
technology. At the same time two other essays were published that
were unwittingly prescient about the future of digital technology
and culture. One was by the German Marxist philosopher and critic
Walter Benjamin, called 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction',
28
and the other was an entry for the
Encyclopédie
française
written by English novelist Herbert George (H. G.) Wells,
entitled 'The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopedia'.
29
In his essay
1939
11 Konrad Zuse and
colleague at work
on one of the first
digital computers in
his parents' front
room, late 1930s.
