Subject: Re: CCL:The "birth-year" of computational chemistry?

From: "Rzepa, Henry" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 14:15:42 +0000

>.. The worlds first electronic, digital computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numeric Integrating Automatic Computer), was constructed at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, this sets an early limit for the birth of Computational Chemistry.

A rather US centric claim.  There was certainly a computer built by Turing well before  1945
at Bletchley park, to decode the  German  Enigma ciphers which probably qualifies. Turing
was also associated with Manchester  University, that I believe also has a prior claim  to
ENIAC.  No doubt reference to the textbooks (mine are at home and  I write this from work)
will clarify this issue.

Apologies for being slightly off topic!
-- 

Henry Rzepa. +44 (0)20 7594 5774 (Office) +44 (0)20 7594 5804 (Fax)
Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, London, SW7  2AY, UK. 
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/