What was the very first computer you owned or used ?

[woofy]

Ah, I still groan when I hear folks referring to capacitors as "condensers".
But then, I like to tease by measuring speed in furlongs per fortnight. 

[brucehoult]

'Bugs' were literally causing faults because of actual insects getting caught between the computers relay contacts, and hence causing it to malfunction.

The term "bug" for a fault in a mechanical device -- and debugging -- has been used by engineers since at least the mid 19th century. It can be found a number of times in Thomas Edison's notebooks.

When those computer engineers found a moth caught in computer relay contacts Grace Hopper wrote in the logbook "first actual case of bug being found". i.e. the term was already in common use.

I believe "bug" is short for "bugbear", an imaginary creature, also goblin or gremlin -- all of which can be used to describe hard to find problems with complex mechanical things.

[ebastler]

Ah, I still groan when I hear folks referring to capacitors as "condensers".

That's how they are still called in German: "Kondensator". And yes, we call a device where vapor gets liquified a "Kondensator" too...

I don't know who transferred the term to electronics initially, and what the mental model was behind that. Maybe the idea that the volatile electricity from the clouds was "condensed" into the Leyden bottles in Franklin's experiment?

[Nusa]

They were called condensers before they were called capacitors. The automotive industry STILL calls the capacitor in a distributor a condenser.

Capacitors condense or collect electricity, much like radiators condense or collect water. Not an unreasonable use for the word in the early days.

[SiliconWizard]

Ah, I still groan when I hear folks referring to capacitors as "condensers".

That's how they are still called in German: "Kondensator". And yes, we call a device where vapor gets liquified a "Kondensator" too...

Same in french, those are called "condensateurs".

[ebastler]

Capacitors condense or collect electricity, much like radiators condense or collect water. Not an unreasonable use for the word in the early days.

Sure; but what about the phase change (gas to liquid) which is implied in the "condenser" term? If it were just about collecting electricity, capacitors might have been called "buckets" or "balloons".   What "condensation" were people visualizing when they chose the name?

[MK14]

Sure; but what about the phase change (gas to liquid) which is implied in the "condenser" term? If it were just about collecting electricity, capacitors might have been called "buckets" or "balloons".   What "condensation" were people visualizing when they chose the name?

I looked it up. Apparently, it is because the 'capacitor' has the ability to 'condense' the electricity into a much smaller space, compared to just a bare conductor.

The term was first used for this purpose by Alessandro Volta in 1782

The source I got that from, is claiming they originally got the information from the wiki article on early capacitors.

My initial source, is here:
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/222137/why-was-a-capacitor-called-a-condensor-condenser-in-the-early-days-of-electro

[m k]

Capacitor Kondensaattori
Condenser lauhdutin, kondenseri(optics)
Evaporator höyrystin

Here temperature and water oriented things have clearly had names a bit longer.

[CatalinaWOW]

While I am all for standardized terms for items, there is way to much angst about the use of the term condenser for a capacitor.  The term was in common usage in the US in my youth, and older folks will still use it. 

Think of it like reading a German or French language web page.  Only bigots would complain about the language used, even though they used different words for items than they normally do.

[coppice]

While I am all for standardized terms for items, there is way to much angst about the use of the term condenser for a capacitor.  The term was in common usage in the US in my youth, and older folks will still use it. 

Think of it like reading a German or French language web page.  Only bigots would complain about the language used, even though they used different words for items than they normally do.

Condenser was a more common term than capacitor in the UK when I was young. In fact, for certain types, like variable condensers, condenser was almost the exclusive term.

[SiliconWizard]

As we can see, this all depends on the country and language used. Terms equivalent to "condenser" are still very common in many other languages than english. It's probably at least partly a cultural thing only. And add to the mix that "condenser" has more words than one in some languages. For instance, in french, "condensateur" is how we call a "capacitor", but some other uses of the term "condenser" in english, such as for gas condensing, have a different word. We call that a "condenseur" in french, so that's two different words. The fact there was only one word in english for both uses probably is what led to this term "capacitor". That makes sense.

[ferdieCX]

In Spanish, the most commonly used word is  " condensador ", some people say also "capacitor "

[garrettm]

If I'm not mistaken, it was Alessandro Volta who coined the term condenser. So blame the Italians... Later, Oliver Heaviside coined the term "permittance" for the storage of electrostatic energy. He also pulled a Shakespeare and made up most of the terms we still use to describe most electrical quantities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside#Electromagnetic_terms

I quite enjoyed reading Heaviside's work (Electromagnetic Theory Vols I and II). The man had a razor sharp wit and hated quaternions with a passion. See page 7 for a good laugh:

https://ia904607.us.archive.org/28/items/electromagnetict01heavrich/electromagnetict01heavrich.pdf

Page 134 gives a good overview of his dislike for quaternions:

"But I came later to see that, so far as the vector analysis I required was concerned, the quaternion was not only not required, but was a positive evil of no inconsiderable magnitude; and that by its avoidance the establishment of vector analysis was made quite simple and its working also simplified, and that it could be conveniently harmonised with ordinary Cartesian work. There is not a ghost of a quaternion in any of my papers (except in one, for a special purpose). The vector analysis I use may be described either as a convenient and systematic abbreviation of Cartesian analysis; or else, as Quaternions without the quaternions, and with a simplified notation harmonising with Cartesians. In this form, it is not more difficult, but easier to work than Cartesians. Of course you must learn how to work it. Initially, unfamiliarity may make it difficult. But no amount of familiarity will make Quaternions an easy subject."

[Neomys Sapiens]

If I'm not mistaken, it was Alessandro Volta who coined the term condenser. So blame the Italians... Later, Oliver Heaviside coined the term "permittance" for the storage of electrostatic energy. He also pulled a Shakespeare and made up most of the terms we still use to describe most electrical quantities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside#Electromagnetic_terms

I quite enjoyed reading Heaviside's work (Electromagnetic Theory Vols I and II). The man had a razor sharp wit and hated quaternions with a passion. See page 7 for a good laugh:

https://ia904607.us.archive.org/28/items/electromagnetict01heavrich/electromagnetict01heavrich.pdf

Page 134 gives a good overview of his dislike for quaternions:

"But I came later to see that, so far as the vector analysis I required was concerned, the quaternion was not only not required, but was a positive evil of no inconsiderable magnitude; and that by its avoidance the establishment of vector analysis was made quite simple and its working also simplified, and that it could be conveniently harmonised with ordinary Cartesian work. There is not a ghost of a quaternion in any of my papers (except in one, for a special purpose). The vector analysis I use may be described either as a convenient and systematic abbreviation of Cartesian analysis; or else, as Quaternions without the quaternions, and with a simplified notation harmonising with Cartesians. In this form, it is not more difficult, but easier to work than Cartesians. Of course you must learn how to work it. Initially, unfamiliarity may make it difficult. But no amount of familiarity will make Quaternions an easy subject."

I'm totally with Mr. Heaviside here. One project on which I was working involved a computation which could supposedly only achieved by the method of quaternion transformation. To furnish the necessary algorithm, a professor of mathematics which also operated as a consultant was applied. When we met with him over lunch, he got a bit carried away about his vectors and quaternions and started to illustrate things with multiple pieces of cutlery. When he asked his neighbour to  join him in order to depict more variables, we returned the topic forcibly to 'when will we get the code and how much will it cost'. It was a very close brush with one sort of 'crazy scientist'.

[CatalinaWOW]

I am not an expert on any type of rotational transforms, but where I worked quaternions were widely used in motion simulation.  The stated reason was that quaternions avoided the division by zero problems that occur in Euler transforms and others for certain rotations.  Can't say if this is true, but if so it is a reason well worth whatever extra effort is involved in setup. 

[garrettm]

I think the primary use of quaternions in modeling 3D motion is to avoid the dreaded "gimbol lock."

https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse474/17wi/pdfs/lectures/Orientation-Quaternions.pdf

I'm sure there are other practical applications of quaternions, but for ordinary electromagnetic phenomena, quaternions obfusicate an already difficult subject. Though they seem to pop up when more complicated electromagnetic phenomea are studied, like magnetohydrodynamics.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Quaternionic+Approach+to+Dual+Magnetohydrodynamics+of+Dyonic+Cold...-a0578045073

[CatalinaWOW]

Gimbal lock is another way of describing division by zero problems. 

[Nominal Animal]

If you don't like using unit quaternions (also called versors) for 3D spatial rotations, use bivectors instead.

The elementary algebraic operations you end up implementing stay exactly the same.

[Herr R aus B]

PET 2001 at school, first owned computer then was a C64 

[jonpaul]

https://bletchleypark.org.uk/our-story/75-years-since-colossus-arrived-at-bletchley/

[MK14]

   The first time that I ever used a computer was sometime in the late 1960s, when I went to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and saw a computer that played Tic-Tac-Toe. It used a telephone dial for data entry, and displayed your move, and then its move, on a light panel above the dial. I think that I was allowed to play one game with the computer. You can see a good description of a recreation of the computer here: https://www.museumofplay.org/2018/08/08/an-expansion-pack-for-a-history-of-video-games-in-64-objects/ (item # 1,) and there are four pictures of that recreation here: https://twitter.com/jpdysonplay/status/948258557773910017?lang=en. A couple years later, I used a bunch of Christmas Light sockets and bulbs (the old kind that screwed into their sockets) and switches to attempt to recreate the Tic-Tac-Toe computer myself – not a computer, but pretty good for a pre-teen.

   First used on a regular basis: HP 2000 (not sure, but probably an A model.)

This was upgraded to an HP 2000F/Access during summer break (summer of '76, or '77.) A few days prior to graduation, an older friend took me to what became my high school, and sat me down in front of a large "typewriter" (what I now know was an ASR-33 Teletype.) He then picked up a phone, dialed a number and placed the handset into a white box next to the "typewriter" (the modem.) Then he typed something, and the Teletype typed back - All... By... Itself...!!! I was hooked. He got me logged in and ran a tutorial program (TUTxx, from the HP library) and it got me started in programming.

   The first "computer" I owned (other than that tic-tac-toe computer) was a Bell Lab's CardIAC (Cardboard Illustrative Aid to Computation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation. If you would like to build your own clone, check out: https://www.kylem.net/hardware/hardware.html).

Miss McGuigan, one of our math teachers, and the sponsor of the computer club gave the CardIAC to me. While still in high school, I wrote an emulator for the CardIAC on the HP 2000, in BASIC. I actually still own a CardIAC, and am working on building an electronic hardware emulator.

   My first real computer was a Sinclair ZX-81.

I ordered this in December of 1980, received it in early 1981, and took it to work (an Air Force shop where we maintained mainframe air defense computers - I was on active duty at the time) to assemble. All of the guys in my shop kept "finding things to do" near the workbench that I was using. One thing that I noticed was that there was a dual RAM option on the PCB, allowing either the two 2114 1KX4 RAM chips, or a single 6116 2K RAM chip. Unfortunately, I did not have the 6116 chip to double my RAM. This computer quickly received a 16K RAM and a real keyboard. I talked a co-worker into getting one, and helped him give it a real keyboard, just like mine. I actually still have a couple of ZX-81s and Timex-Sinclair TS-1000s.

Thanks for making such a nice, detailed post.  Which seems a good point, to get this thread, back on topic.

[granzeier]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. Interestingly enough, when I saw a new post in this thread, while clicking to read the newest post, I was wondering if I had ever posted to this thread. It was funny seeing the answer to my wondering when I got to your post  - and I enjoyed rereading my post, too.

[Dave Wise]

First used: In high school (1976), an HP 2000G school district machine running BASIC, via 300-baud ASR33 teletype with paper tape reader/punch.
First owned: In college (1978), an IBM 1620 which the school gave me in lieu of scrapping it.  I still have it, and AFAIK it's the last operational one in the world.  Serial number 98, originally bought by Pettijohn Engineering, then donated to Vernonia High School when Pettijohn got an 1130, then donated to University of Portland (where the paper tape reader was interfaced to a PDP-8/e), then me.

[granzeier]

Cool. I did not remember the 1620 and had to look it up. Variable length words, and decimal rather than binary. I'll need to look into that a bit more.

[ebastler]

First owned: In college (1978), an IBM 1620 which the school gave me in lieu of scrapping it.  I still have it, and AFAIK it's the last operational one in the world.

That is a pretty cool machine to own! But here's at least one more (unless it is yours, or it has become non-operational again during the past 10 years -- both of which are possible of course):