[citation][nom]intelpatriot[/nom]
"The choice of computers was U.S. centric, because computers were U.S. centric. I chose only one mechanical computer, and it was made by IBM, since they were the dominant company. To add more computers would have been boring, and none of them were important technological milestones."
Correctamudno!It's refreshing to read an article that presents a fair and balanced history instead of catering to the feelings of other countries like a PC special olympics.It's simple. There are no unamerican computers featured because unamerican computers have always been either hopelessly backward antiques or outright thefts of american intellectual property. A situation which continues to this day![/citation]
I do hope you're kidding...
Have you ever read a book on computer history? (Inside Intel is a good starting point for integrated computers)
"To add more computers would have been boring, and none of them were important technological milestones."
So he just accidentally chose only American computers... makes sense... not.
No important technological milestones?
While an army of engineers in America spend millions of dollars to create an almost fully programmable Computer, two lone construction engineers in Germany not only build a fully programmable one in their small workshop, they also developed things like the Von-Neumann-Architecture and the first programming language (Plankalkül). These are now attributed to the Americans who (presumably independently) had the same ideas years or decades later.
The only reason the Z3 was so slow was because radio tubes where too expensive for these guys. They had a design of a tube computer, long before the ENIAC ever saw the light of day.
There are many computer achievements by Europeans that where ignored in this article, but the Z3 is by far the worst.
To ignore the Z3 because it uses relays instead of tubes is the same as ignoring the invention of the electric cable because somebody made a cable out of gold a couple of years later.