i feel like ive seen multiple different things refereed to as "the first modern computer." what does "modern" actually mean in that sense, and what deserves that title?
its an arbitrary line in the sand. i wont draw it for you but here are some of your options from earliest to most recent:
1.) certainly not
2.) this fucking tihng. fuck this thing. its not a computer. i dont care sHUT UPPP. don't bring this up with me.
3.) shit like this, still no, but much warmer. does not meet base qualifications b/c no electronics. you said modern computer, so i am waiting for at least CMOS and some other things ill point out later. these things do weird math and some ppl like to call them computers. it is weird for them to be disconnected from some useful apparatus, they use the geometry and rotation of parts to do higher order math like integrations/derivations. in the linked article i guess it makes sense for it to be a standalone thing but ppl didn't stand around these huge whirring clinking mechanical contrivances, observing it like "Hmm, Ah, Yess..Indeed", they were used for things like the oil and fuel pumps for a military jet engine whose operation depends on lots of factors and needed some complicated non-linear input that has to come in real-time. this family of stuff is german engineering at its core: forty kajillion moving interfacing machined parts (tight tolerance) whose configuration is completely impenetrable except for the sex pervert who built it.
4.) the z123456789 etc etc the z4 might be the first non-shithead answer here. its the same shit as above but with electronics. z1 through z3 got blown up on account of a bomb dropped from a plane, because they were built in nazi germany. this is still the era of "dancing around the concept of implementing a turing machine" and not "modern computing". none of this era of stone age electronics worked reliably for any meaningful amount of time rly.
5.) eniac. same shit as above but scaled up to a big stupid building and only affordable by a big stupid wartime military expenditure budget. constantly on fire, constantly exploding tubes inside, trained teams of tube-replacers needed for any effective operation. "i don't think so, tim". i guess you could program it. no mmu no kernel no pre-empt mechanism. not the one imo
6.) mainframes and minicomputers. this is the first non-dickhead answer (as opposed to non-shithead answer). still no. no kernel, no mmu, no pre-empt. this time instead of a building that explodes, its just a 4 ton steel brick that mostly works, only affordable by The Bank which uses it to store account legers and do arithmetic and the like. we're getting there. these were nuts, this is around where we pulled the trigger on the digitalization of banking and iirc this happened from the core outward, meaning the first few managed e.g. the federal reserve's intrabank lending & interest type stuff, or a regular bank's accounting of big company's accounts. the kind of stuff you basically can't lose or fuck up under any circumstance, but the tech isn't there for reasonable redundancy so the answer is a truly horrifying nightmare fire suppression system that will flood the room with halon gas in 1 second when triggered. it'd stop any combustion occurring inside as well as, uh, respiration. it was that important
7.) microcontrollers. we're getting close now but no mmu, no kernel, no kernel mode, etc etc. i don't need to explain this one much, right? you all know what an arduino or w/e is. this is finally a semiconductors but there's more parts we need.
8.) pdp/11 & vax. i'll bite here. kernel mode, memory protection, mmu, multi user timeshared OS. real computer type shit. the hw and ISA allows for pretty much everything hereafter (via software). i can't e.g. just read or write to any arbitrary address like you could on a real mode machine and do things like directly manipulate things on the system bus or read any memory from just a userspace application run by a non-root user. computery-computer type shit.
