[TUHS] OT: Happy birthday, Tommy Flowers!

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Fri Dec 22 17:03:34 AEST 2017


    > From: Dave Horsfall

    > Colossus, arguably the world's first electronic computer

Well, it all depends on your definition of "computer"... :-)

I myself prefer to reserve that term for things that are programmable,
and Turing-complete. (YMMV... :-)

So I call things like Colossus and ABC "digital electronic calculating
devices" (or something similar).


None of which is to take anything away from the incredible job done by Flowers
and his cohorts. It was an amazing device, and had a major effect on history.

    Noel



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