What does June 6 1944 and the computer have in common.?
Jack C (answerer 5) is quite wrong. The current Wikipedia page on the Harvard Mark I Automatic Sequence-controlled Calculator gives it a start date of August 7, 1944. The page also credits this calculator with a much higher position than it deserves in the history of computing. It was a dead end, like the ENIAC at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering which went operational on February 15, 1946. But they both helped to show Johnny von Neumann which way NOT to go when he published the design of a true computer, later in 1946. About two years later, the first computer built to this design went live at Manchester, England, on 21 June 1948. I am waiting to see what the connection with June 6 1944 actually is.
