The digital computer was invented just prior to and during the Second World War in at least three different places: Germany, the United States and Great Britain. The idea that we could represent different phenomena using the binary code, by arranging and switching various things (or bits) on and off, had been around for centuries but during the 1920s and 1930s, the idea gained momentum. The vacuum tube had become key to the development of circuitry in a range of electrical devices from radio to the telephone network and early digital computers availed themselves of this technology. The war effort in these countries rapidly spurred on these developments with the Manhattan project and the code cracking effort at Bletchley Park, providing the momentum for the first large-scale digital computation which continued apace once the war ended.

中文翻译：

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规划的数字化转型

数字计算机是在第二次世界大战之前和期间至少在三个不同的地方发明的：德国，美国和英国。我们可以使用二进制代码来表示不同现象的想法，是通过排列和关闭各种事物（或位）来开启和关闭的，这种想法已经存在了多个世纪，但是在1920年代和1930年代，这种想法得到了发展。真空管已成为从无线电到电话网络的各种电子设备中电路开发的关键，而早期的数字计算机也充分利用了该技术。在曼哈顿项目和布莱奇利公园（Bletchley Park）的代码破解工作中，这些国家的战争努力迅速刺激了这些发展，为战争结束后迅速发展的第一批大规模数字计算提供了动力。