First Computer

It depends what you mean by "computer". Isn't an abacus a type of computer?!

It's pretty widely accepted that the first computer - as perhaps most would use the term - was Colossus:

In WW2 there were electromechanical gun laying computers, the analog computer could continually integrate the position from radar data to get a target's velocity vector, and along with the range compute an appropriate gun super elevation.

Here's a video series that shows how they worked, the mechanical ball-integrator was an ingenious contraption:

Astronomers a few centuries ago hired human computers (i.e. often unmarried females) to do their routine orbital calculations.

Gunlaying analog computers go back to WW1. One of the reasons that the Battle of Jutland was a more even affair than expected was that more of the German ships had director gun laying than the British.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

As you say, you first have to define what you are talking about.

"the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer" is how Wikipedia talks about Colossus. It was not a stored program computer, being programmed by switches and plugs.

Code breaking drove a branch of computing technology. Another branch that was also desperately needed in the war, was finding targeting solutions. I don't recall the name, but there was a computer designed to be airborne, that was pretty interesting. I can't seem to find it on the web. I thought it was WWII vintage and used rather archaic components like delay lines. Maybe not.

In WWII, most targeting computers were analog.

The pre-war doctrine was that B17s in combat box formation were self-defending, and so could be used for daylight precision bombing.

'T'weren't so, but it wasn't the Sperry or Norden folks' fault. The Sperry in particular was a beautiful piece of kit for its day.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Yes, and it takes one to know one. God, you are such a downer. They won the f**king war. Why don't you use technology from the time and design one better.

What's the saying? Don't bring an optical range finder to a RADAR fight.

Not sure that single-purpose things like gun-laying or Colossus qualified. The Egyptians must have had devices for computing geometry, too.

I think "computer" should be reserved for things that are equivalent to a Universal Turing Machine. That rules out Colossus.

I do remember seeing a radar synthetic aperture airborne computer on the bench when I visited RSRE, Malvern in the late 1970s. What was striking about it was the relatively small size along with the hose connectors for the cooling water.

John

I recall reading about submarine warfare in the Pacific. The boat had a gizmo, the "is was", which somehow computed the aim of the torpedo barrel. "the triangle of sub tactics"

The captain read the target's co-ordinates, through the periscope. Presumably the speed was simply dx/dt, probably timed with a wrist watch. Unclear how they estimated its range.

Submarines could do that with a standard optical approach.

Yer cracked. But we knew that. ;)

Ya can't blame a bomb sight for somebody dropping when the target isn't even in the field of view.

And the accuracy was much better than that, especially in Nagasaki. A

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(Who lives exactly the wrong distance from Manhattan if there's a real nuclear war.)

Speaking of horrendously poor accuracy the British Royal Air Force calculated that only 1% of their bombs landed within a mile of the intended target. I once met a RAF WW2 navigator/bomb aimer who said some nights their designated target was the letter "R" - meaning where R was within the word BERLIN on their charts. He later flew with Mosquito pathfinders using Gee/Oboe navaids and H2S RADAR so although his bomb placement improved he seriously doubted the accuracy of main force that followed.

piglet

There's a little bit here about Operation Starfish. The British set big bonfires away from actual cities to confuse German night bombers. It did work.

But on D Day and afterward, the Luftwaffe was invisible. The most reasonable explanation is that their industrial sector had been wrecked.

The aerial bombing campaign was effective, evidently.