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Computer history - four generations, Iowa State College and ABC computer
Konrad Zuse, Helmet Schreyer and the Z1, Z2, Z3 computers in Germany
during World War II.  The ENIAC computer in Philadelphia in WWII,
and how John Mauchly never gave credit to John Vincent Atanasoff for
the ideas that were used to build the ENIAC computer.
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The four generations of computers.  The x86 family of processors.
      1.  Vacuum tubes,
      2.  transistors,
      3.  Integrated Circuits,
      4.  microprocessors.

Moore's law about doubling the number of transistors that can be placed
on a chip of silicon seems to happen and only take about 18 months.
Computer hardware thus gets twice as powerful, much faster, more 
reliable,taking less energy (battery powered laptops) as history unfolds.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

King Kong, honky tonks, electronic digital computer and 4 ideas on a 
napkin, one of which was that the digits would be 0 and 1, i.e. 
computers would be based on binary, base two hardware.

    http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050898.htm

    http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/comeniac.htm

    http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050298.htm

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

    http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/Reckoners-ch-2.html

    "Not only that, but Zuse was the first. He designed and built a working
     automatic calculating machine by December, 1941, at least a year or
     two ahead of anyone else."

           Fortunately for history, or WWII would have been much more
           difficult for the Allied side, Adolph Hitler felt so confident
           that the Nazis and Axis would win the war and fascism would
           rule the world, that the Nazis decided Zuse's computer idea
           was great, but since the war would be easily won in only a
           few more years, there should be no wasting of precious
           resources on funding research and development of the invention
           and technology until AFTER WWII.

    http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/Reckoners-ch-2.html

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     KING KONG movie enters into computer history.
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    "Throughout those early days in Zuse's home workshop, he could 
always rely on the help of Helmut Schreyer, a college mate, a student of 
electrical engineering, and a handsome amateur actor of considerable 
charm. Schreyer was one of those who helped cut out all the metal plates 
for the Z1. While a student Schreyer had worked as a film projectionist.  
He and Zuse were especially fond of the sensational American film King 
Kong, then just released in Germany. He remembered that in a movie 
projector, the film advances through a gate where each frame is stopped 
for a moment so that it can be projected on the screen.

     That was precisely the kind of motion the programming unit of 
Zuse's computer needed-a quick reading of the calculating plan, one 
command at a time. From then on Zuse designed his computers to have 
their programs supplied by perforated movie film instead of paper tape. 
(Discarded 35mm film was cheaper than commercial paper tape anyway.)" 
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