English mathematician Charles Babbage (1792-1871) is recognized as the first to conceptualize the computer. He worked to develop a mechanical computing machine called the ‘analytical engine’, which could perform all sorts of calculations and is considered the prototype of the digital computer.
In the US, a team of Harvard and IBM scientists led by Howard Hathaway Aiken were also working on a programmable computer. This computer, called Mark I, was completed in February 1944. It is the fully automatic calculator, very big and fancy.
Over five tons and fifty-one feet, the Mark I was huge in size and weight. The Mark I had a memory capacity of 72 numbers and it could be programmed to perform a 23-digit multiplication in the lightning-like time of 4 seconds.
The first functional computer program was written by Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) an admiral of the US Navy. Hopper, a professor of mathematics at Vassar College had been ordered by the Navy to assist Howard Aiken with programming of Mark I.
The importance of Mark I is primary its role in making known to the world at large that a machine could successfully perform a programmed sequenced of operations and do so automatically without error.
History of computer: Mark 1
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