I thought the Colossus which was ran at Bletchley Park -also during WWII- was the "first" computer. Was the Colossus still classified when that interview was conducted or is this a case of different "firsts" (eg Colossus being the first electrical computer, but Harvard Mark I (I think they said she was the operator of) was the first computer of another specification?
It's largely a toss-up, as neither was fully Turing-complete. In principle Zuse's Z3 completed in 1941 was fully programmable, but no-one realised it at the time, and writing arbitrary programs on it involves using a hack which apparently wouldn't have been suitable for real use anyway. (Nonetheless, Zuse had started work on his high-level language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl during the war.) The earlier Bell Labs machines and the ABC weren't fully programmable either. Babbage's Analytical Engine would have been Turing-complete but had never been built. The old Computer Museum documentary Computer Pioneers - Pioneer Computershttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qundvme1Tik&list=PL14396C9538... is pretty good.
She said something about Mark I being the first such computer in the United States, but I think the gist is true anyway, that people employed at least in the practical aspects of computing at that time were learning a lot as they went along.
Oh totally. And each computer was significantly different so while some knowledge was transferable, a lot may not have been.
Sorry if it came across as if I was undermining Graces achievements. I really didn't mean it that way at all. I was just enquiring about the classifications of early 'computers' and which came first as computers back then differed quite substantially from now and even from each other, so you get several different machines that claim to be the 'first' for various different reasons.
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I really like this clip of Grace Hopper on Letterman in the mid 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vcErOPofQ
"How did you know so much about computers then?"
"I didn't. It was the first one."
Brilliant.
I thought the Colossus which was ran at Bletchley Park -also during WWII- was the "first" computer. Was the Colossus still classified when that interview was conducted or is this a case of different "firsts" (eg Colossus being the first electrical computer, but Harvard Mark I (I think they said she was the operator of) was the first computer of another specification?
It's largely a toss-up, as neither was fully Turing-complete. In principle Zuse's Z3 completed in 1941 was fully programmable, but no-one realised it at the time, and writing arbitrary programs on it involves using a hack which apparently wouldn't have been suitable for real use anyway. (Nonetheless, Zuse had started work on his high-level language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl during the war.) The earlier Bell Labs machines and the ABC weren't fully programmable either. Babbage's Analytical Engine would have been Turing-complete but had never been built. The old Computer Museum documentary Computer Pioneers - Pioneer Computers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qundvme1Tik&list=PL14396C9538... is pretty good.
She said something about Mark I being the first such computer in the United States, but I think the gist is true anyway, that people employed at least in the practical aspects of computing at that time were learning a lot as they went along.
Oh totally. And each computer was significantly different so while some knowledge was transferable, a lot may not have been.
Sorry if it came across as if I was undermining Graces achievements. I really didn't mean it that way at all. I was just enquiring about the classifications of early 'computers' and which came first as computers back then differed quite substantially from now and even from each other, so you get several different machines that claim to be the 'first' for various different reasons.
That's fantastic, thanks for posting it here.