Page 172 - Inventions - A Visual Encyclopedia (DK - Smithsonian)

The computer

English inventor and mathematician, Charles Babbage
famously designed three computing machines. Their

purpose was to store and process numbers and output
the results of calculations. Babbage’s designs were

groundbreaking, leading many to regard him as the
COMMUNICATION “father of the computer.” BILL GATES

COMPUTING ENGINE
instructions that tells a computer how to
Although Charles Babbage designed Every computer uses software—a set of
the first automatic computing perform a task. In 1975, US computer
engines, he failed to build them. scientist Bill Gates cofounded Microsoft,
His “Difference Engine No. 2” was which became the world’s largest software
completed in London in 1991, company and made him one of the world’s
142 years after it was designed. richest men.

Part of Babbage’s “Difference
Engine No. 1”

EARLY COMPUTING
The era of modern computing began
during World War II. In 1941, German
engineer Konrad Zuse completed the Z3,
the world’s first general-purpose digital
computer, which was nonelectronic and
large enough to fill a room. It helped Zuse
in his calculations for aeronautical design.

▶ COMPUTING GIANT
The Colossus was a computer developed by the
British in 1943–1945 during World War II to
assist in breaking Germany’s wartime secret codes.
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