The First Computers

Charles Babbage, the father of the original computer was a mechanical engineer who got the original idea for the computer when he tried to invent something for the use of navigation calculations.  Due to the technology being used on this "first computer" it was at least a century ahead of its time.  Parts were made individually for the computer, not a single part came from a factory or anywhere else.  Everything was made completely by hand, especially the hardware of the computer.  Computers nowadays come in pieces and then are put together with each part assembled separately.  Unlike computers today, Babbage put every single part of the computer together himself, each and every part built separately and then combined to create a truly innovationary device used daily by most Americans.  Babbage's son, Henry was truly the first creator of the first computer after compiling his fathers work into a smaller more simplified version of the computer that was far more usable.

However this type of computer was never marketed to the public.  There were several different computers created around this time, one of them being the Manchester Mark 1.  The Manchester Mark 1 was truly the first computer that was ever used all around the world.  It was one of the earliest stored program computers, meaning it was able to hold its own programs and hold its own memory.  The success of this very first computer went smoothly for nine hours on the first day it was released before a problem was encountered.  The IBM 650 was the truly original computer that was produced and sold over two thousand different systems.  The IBM 650 was used commonly among many scientists and engineers everywhere.  It was the first computer to convert special characters from a two decimal code. Without this technology the IBM 650 wouldn't be able to type out words and coding commonly used at the time.  The IBM was created back in 1952 and parts and software were produced for it all the way up until around 1969 when the next model was released as an even better computer that sold even more units.  The pure size of this machine is hard to compare to any computers we have today.  Each system was a set of different machines that took up an incredible amount of space compared to the small compact computers we have today.