Who invented the computer?


Charles Babbage is widely credited with having conceived the idea for the first computer, and indeed he has been referred to as the "father of computing." His designs led to the creation of the world's first digital device - "the Difference Engine". Babbage's ideas were picked up by Ada Lovelace, who described an algorithm to compute Bernoulli numbers using one of his proposed devices. In documenting this algorithm, Lovelace has been recognised as the world's first computer programmer, and in the notes that accompanied it she is also credited with making the first distinction between hardware and software. 

Alan Turing is often recognised as being the father of modern computer science, and for developing the first modern computers. During the Second World War, Turing's devices broke the Enigma Code, which was used by the Germans to encode all of their military communications. In so doing, Turing is credited with saving millions of lives. After the war, Turing published a detailed design for an "Automatic Computing Engine" (ACE), which very much a precursor of the modern computer, even storing its programs in memory. 

In 1950, Turing published a paper describing what become known as the "Turing Test" - a method to compare human and machine outputs. This paper is widely seen as being a seminal moment in the development of Artificial Intelligence.