World War II was the first "high tech" war and many inventions were targeted towards combating other technological strategies used by the opposing side.
Colossus
The Colossus was an early mainframe computer, used to crack Nazi Codes during the war.
See an official BBC story on the Colossus at BBC News.
See an official BBC story on the Colossus at BBC News.
Harvard Mark I
The Mark I was a monster: 55 feet long and 8 feet high. It weighed five tons and contained 760,000 components, including 3,000 rotating counter wheels and 1,400 rotary-dial switches, along with an assortment of shafts, clutches and electromagnetic relays, all linked together with 500 miles of wire. Instructions were fed on on paper tape, and it loaded the data on punch cards. It could only perform operations in the precise linear order it received instructions. The tape could not run backward.
The Mark I could compute 23 decimal place numbers and perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It was also programmed with subroutines for logarithms and trigonometry. However, it was slow and took 3-5 seconds to do a multiplication problem. Results were given as a teletypewriter and a punch card.
The Mark I could compute 23 decimal place numbers and perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It was also programmed with subroutines for logarithms and trigonometry. However, it was slow and took 3-5 seconds to do a multiplication problem. Results were given as a teletypewriter and a punch card.