The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator

History is so random. Here is the world's first computer, and I had never heard of it, at least not until this morning when I stumbled across this post on "The Adventures of Roberta X". From the link:

"The SSEC was visible to pedestrians on the sidewalk, and inspired a generation of cartoonists to portray the computer as a series of wall-sized panels covered with lights, meters, dials, switches, and spinning rolls of tape (click image to enlarge). The SSEC ran at this location from January 1948 to July 1952, when it was replaced by the first-off-the-line 701, IBM's first "mass"-produced computer (i.e. more than one)."

It's also interesting that though I have heard of other machines that were supposed to be the first computers, I don't recall seeing any pictures of them. Of course by that time we were well into the cold war, so all that was probably blocked out in the name of National Security.

This should give you some idea of what a great leap forward this, and how far we have come since:

"It enabled Wallace Eckert to publish a lunar ephemeris ... of greater accuracy than previously available... the source of data used in man's first landing on the moon" [4]. "For each position of the moon, the operations required for calculating and checking results totaled 11,000 additions and subtractions, 9,000 multiplications, and 2,000 table look-ups. Each equation to be solved required the evaluation of about 1,600 terms — altogether an impressive amount of arithmetic which the SSEC could polish off in seven minutes for the benefit of the spectators" [9]."