Analog And Digital Computers

In the mid-20th century there were two quite different and challenging approaches to designing computing machines: Digital and Analog. Analog computers used continuous distinctions of voltage or even mechanical movement to calculate answers to equations, where digital computers operated one command at a time using distinct values and logical addresses. In the beginning , digital computers faced many design and cost problems that organizations felt, would never be covered. By comparison, analog systems in the 1930s and 1940s such as Vannevar Bush's differential analyser were quite fast and powerful. However, once the general purpose design, usually attributed to Von Neumann, was widely accepted, digital systems began their extraordinary path to ubiquity. Analogue computers were increasingly relegated to narrower and narrower applications.