Posted on 10/08/2008 7:53:33 PM PDT by mimi from mi
When I heard Barack Hussein Obama mention last night that the government invented computers, I immediately thought it was invented by kids (not Al Gore) working in a garage. Guess I was wrong as today I discovered the following on another blog:
Was this a McCain moment by obama?
Quick takeaway from the 2nd presidential debate - Obama claimed specifically that U.S. government invented the computer, and Obama was very wrong. The computer was developed over a long period of time, and by most historical accounts trace back to Europe with British and German inventors in the late 19th and early 20th century for the conceptual idea of a computer. For a functioning machine, most historical accounts point to a Iowa State University professor and his graduate student:
“I have always taken the position that there is enough credit for everyone in the invention and development of the electronic computer” - John Atanasoff to reporters.
Professor John Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry built the world’s first electronic-digital computer at Iowa State University between 1939 and 1942. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer represented several innovations in computing, including a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions.
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/08/a-privilege-to-join-the-debate/
Private industry invented television and Obama’s hype machine.
I caught that too.
It’s one of those unanswerable questions like who invented the first car? There are too many qualified distinctions.
The Chinese abacus was really the first computer.
The way he phrased it “communicating with one another” or words to that effect, I think he meant the Internet, which was once the DARPAnet, put together by the Department of Defense.
not really it was cave men
I’ll give Barry the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was referring to ENIAC, developed by the U.S. Army and was the first electronic (as opposed to electromechanical or non-electronic) digital computer.
But who cares? Even if the first computer was developed by the government, what the heck does that say or prove? Nothing, really. Private industry drove the computer explosion, and pretty much all of the successful computers of today are developed by private industry.
In a way he’s right. The ENIAC was probably the first true electronic computer as we understand them. Since it was designed and built by the gov’t to do things like calculate shell trajectories, he would be correct.
True, Babbage’s Thinking Engines were close, but were mechanical, and never built. The Difference Engine was less complex, and more likely just a complex semi-automated adding machine.
I caught that one too. I think he probably meant the government invented the internet since he said something at the end of the sentence about “that means of communication:. If so, it has a bit more truth to it, since the internet was developed by people working on contract to the Defense Department. But of course if McCain said it the Left Stream Media would say it was proof he is senile and talk about nothing else.
I wonder if Obama could tell you what Charles Babbage built (even if
someone else proposed it).
Difference Engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine
In context with the entire statement, that was also my first reaction, he confused the word computer with internet. Still no excuse for someone who is supposed of such high IQ.
Rather than “developed” by the U.S. Army, I should say that the inventors of ENIAC were financed by the U.S. Army.
The Government PAID for ENIAC, but the University of Pennsylvania developed it.
It is believed that the real first computer was not ENIAC but a machine developed by the Brits at Blechley Park used to decode Hitler’s coded messages.
Obama is a dumb ass.
A citizen of the United States, John Atanasov had a Bulgarian father and a French-Irish mother. His mother's father fought in the US Civil War. His father's was killed in the Bulgarian April 1876 Uprising against the Ottoman yoke.
As a lecturer at Iowa State University in 1937 John Atanasov had some ideas about improving an IBM tabulator but the company refused to authorize his meddling. It took 35 years and a series of exhausting court cases until he succeeded in proving that he was the father of the intelligent machine.
In the land of his father - BULGARIA, John Atanasov was awarded the order of Cyril and Methodius, first class in 1970 and was awarded the order oh the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
He gave the following definition of his brainchild: “The computer is but a means, a tool, and a useful instrument and remains one so long as people manage to use it well.” John Atanasov after long and hard examinations in 1937 with the help of the assistant Berry and 650 dollars from the University made the first prototype of electrical - computing machine.
But the good Bulgarian man Atanasov didn't look for his copyright 40 years. Just about in 1973 the court restores the copyright of John Atanasov. Then the news arrived in Bulgaria and Bulgarian filming team made the first documental film for the inventor of the century.
The navy did it's part.
didn’t adm hopper coin the term “bug”?
GRACE
What about Colossus, the code breaking computer from WWII?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
3 years before ENIAC.
And Obama is AGAINST military technology development.
She did but I think she was also instrumental in the development of COBOL. For anyone under 40 that was a programming language. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
The Colossus machines were electronic computing devices used by British codebreakers to read encrypted German messages during World War II. These were the world’s first programmable, digital, electronic, computing devices. They used vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) to perform the calculations.
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