[Ads-l] digital computer

[James A. Landau]

Having attempted "analog(ue) computer" I should try "digital computer".

Google Books plays its usual games but does come up with a 1950 usage, in a surprising but not unlikely source.

https://books.google.com/books?id=2A0AAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA155&dq=digital+computer&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4_pHXnefKAhVJbB4KHSL-Bd84FBDoAQhbMAk#v=onepage&q=digital%20computer&f=false

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists  
article "AEC Seventh Semiannual Report: A Condensation, Prepared by Anthony Turkevich"
page 155 column 3:

"One development carried on during the war at the Army's Aberdeen Proving ground was the construction of an electronic digital computer, the so-called Eniac."   The author apparently did not realize that "ENIAC" was an acronym and therefore should have been all caps.

A related term appears in the same column of the same article:

"...Harvard University's Automatic Sequence Controlled Digital Calculator, more familiarly known as the Mark I Computer."  Interesting that the same system should be called both a "calculator" and a "computer".  Modern terminology would be that the Mark I was a computer, not a calculator.

Undoubtedly there are earlier usages, perhaps even antedating both the ENIAC and the Mark I, but Google Books did not supply them.

- Jim Landau (who thinks the Super Bowl had a really lousy selection of commercials 




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