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The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine was design to aid navigation on the sea and land by not making any Human Error. -
The Enigma Machine
The Enigma Machine was used to send out messages by the Military, Navy or the Air force to other divisions for information. The Enigma Machine could also be used in commercial practices instead of military -
IBM 701
The IBM 701 was used as a scientific calculator and was meant to do extremely difficult mathematical tasks for scientific purposes. The IBM 701 was regarded as an extremely expensive machine as the rental charge for the machine was $12,000 every month which is why Thomas Watson said that there would be a world market of five computers -
SpaceWar!
SpaceWar! Was one of the earliest digital computer games and also one of the first two-player games. It was very innovative at the time as SpaceWar was a machine that could easily make pseudo-random generations which at the time pretty cool and also innovative. -
MITS Altair 8800
The MITS Altair 8800 was meant to be a smaller version of full sized computers (like the IBM 701). Due to the fact that the computer is significantly smaller that full sized computers the 8800 was to be called the microcomputer. The 8800 is also (just like our previous mentions) extremely innovative as it was the first computer to have a “bus” for expansions for the microcomputer. -
Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor)
This (The PET) was arguably the most innovative piece of kit in this list due to the fact that this was the first home/office/scientific/personal computer that was actually worth having as it was actually useable by normal people and didn’t need a specific person to man the computer. The PET was also one of the first full-sized computers as it had a keyboard, cassette and monitor all in one package. The PET also had a (at its time) extremely large ROM peaking at 18kbites and also the machine had -
IBM Personal Computer (PC)
IBM PC was personal computer that really got to the mainstream mainly because of the simplicity of PC DOS and the fact that IBM made the IBM PC so open to third party software and hardware thus leading to making the IBM PC as a standard for Personal Computers for about 3 years. -
Compaq SLT 286
The Compaq SLT 286 was meant as a “compact” business laptop without any sacrifices (i.e. no floppy drive or small screen). The Compaq SLT 286 was also the first portable computer to have a battery that didn’t die within an hour and was also the first laptop to have a “desktop class” processor (Intel 286). Having the “desktop class” processor really made the Compaq SLT a great laptop with powerful specs and a (at the time) great battery life. However it was more than $6000 US dollars in 1990 -
IBM RoadRunner
The IBM Roadrunner was an amazing supercomputer and is probably one of the biggest jumps in supercomputer history. The Roadrunner was made for the aerospace industry and for scientific research. The Roadrunner was superior to its competitors because the Roadrunner could compute a peak of 1 petaflops whereas the competitors could compute about 400-600 teraflops. -
Tianhe-2
Tianhe-2 is a computer used for stimulation for military and scientific purposes. The Tianhe-2 was a huge jump from US machines as the Tianhe-2 could approximately 33 Petaflops which was at least twice as much as the US machines. However the Tianhe-2 is known to be one of the hardest to use computers in the world due to its complexity. But its complexity is what makes the machine so powerful.
