# Was the DC-3 first aircraft designed With CAD? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 3, 2008, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-dc-3-first-aircraft-designed-with-cad/475534 "2008-12-03T17:59:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-dc-3-first-aircraft-designed-with-cad/475534/21 "2008-12-04T12:38:04Z")
> [@UncleFred](#): > > Well, then what was the first airlane designed entirely with CAD, in the sense of a commercially available package installed on one or more computers having at least a screen, keyboard, and GUI? > > I nominate the following; The Boeing 777. (First delivery 1995) I agree. I was working at Boeing at the time and they made a big deal out of the fact that no full scale mock-ups were made. They had computer models of ‘average’ cabin crew and machanics that they used to digitally test fit and access. The software used was CATIA and IBM made a small fortune selling us DASD to hold it all. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-dc-3-first-aircraft-designed-with-cad/475534/22 "2008-12-04T13:35:37Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > We were using computers in WW-II to decode German Enigma messages. They were designed and built in my home town. Enigma encrypted traffic was not decrypted using computers, it was decrypted by semi-brute force using machines called [bombes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe) which in no way can be considered computers. > [@](#): > > A standard Enigma used by one of the German services employed, at any one time, a set of three rotors, each of which could be set in any of 26 positions. The bombe tried each possible rotor position and applied a certain test. The test eliminated thousands of positions of the three rotors; the few potential solutions were then examined by hand. In order to use a bombe, however, a cryptanalyst first had to produce a “crib” – a section of ciphertext for which he could guess the corresponding plaintext. > > In the bombe, a set of rotors with the same internal wiring as the German Enigma rotors was used – but designed to be spun by a motor, stepping through all possible rotor settings. The bombe rotors had a double set of contacts and wiring to emulate the Enigma reflection. A bombe would consist of a number of these sets of rotors wired up according to a menu prepared by codebreakers. At each position of the rotors, an electrical test would be applied. For a large number of the settings, the test would lead to a logical contradiction, ruling out that setting. If the test did not lead to a logical contradiction, the machine would stop and ring a bell, and the candidate solution would be examined further, typically on a replica of the German Enigma machine, to see if that decryption produced German. Typically, there were many false matches before the correct match was found. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-dc-3-first-aircraft-designed-with-cad/475534/23 "2008-12-04T15:23:05Z")
This might be considered the first computer > [@](#): > > [Colossus computer - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer) > > The Colossus machines were electronic computing devices used by British codebreakers to read encrypted German messages during World War II. These were the world’s first programmable, digital, electronic, computing devices. They used vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) to perform the calculations. > > Colossus was designed by engineer Tommy Flowers with input from Allen Coombs, Sid Broadhurst and Bill Chandler at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill to solve a problem posed by mathematician Max Newman at Bletchley Park. The prototype, Colossus Mark 1, was shown to be working in December 1943 and was operational at Bletchley Park by February 1944. An improved Colossus Mark 2 first worked on 1 June 1944, just in time for the Normandy Landings. Ten Colossi were in use by the end of the war. > > The Colossus computers were used to help decipher teleprinter messages which had been encrypted using the Lorenz SZ40/42 machine — British codebreakers referred to encrypted German teleprinter traffic as “Fish” and called the SZ40/42 machine and its traffic “Tunny”. Colossus compared two data streams, counting each match based on a programmable Boolean function. The encrypted message was read at high speed from a paper tape. The other stream was generated internally, and was an electronic simulation of the Lorenz machine at various trial settings. If the match count for a setting was above a certain threshold, it would be sent as output to an electric typewriter. > > In spite of the destruction of the Colossus hardware and blueprints as part of the effort to maintain a project secrecy that was kept up into the 1970s—a secrecy that deprived some of the Colossus creators of credit for their pioneering advancements in electronic digital computing during their lifetimes—a functional replica of a Colossus computer was completed in 2007. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-dc-3-first-aircraft-designed-with-cad/475534/24 "2008-12-04T15:53:13Z")
FWIW, the first graphical CAD application was called Sketchpad and it was designed at MIT in 1960. I don’t think it was ever actually used, though; it was just a development step. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-dc-3-first-aircraft-designed-with-cad/475534/25 "2008-12-04T16:19:08Z")
The word ‘computer’ is mainly defined to make sure _your_ machine was the first.\* That, or some joker makes the jape that humans are computers because we compute things, don’t we?\*\* This is complicated by the fact a number of mechanical and semi-mechanical devices were used to do things vaguely related to numbers all the way back to rocks and sticks and charcoal on cave walls. These days, however, ‘computer’ means an all-electronic digital device with real software (no plugboards) and at least one level of digital storage (Williams tubes count, mercury delay lines count, water levels do not\*\*\*). By this definition the first computer was invented in June 1948 in Manchester and it _wasn’t_ the original ENIAC. It was the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, aka the Baby. (The original ENIAC didn’t have real software. It used plugboards, meaning it had to be disassembled to be ‘reprogrammed’. This is little different from the Polish Bombes, or an abacus, for that matter.) \*(This works for other things: I’ve heard someone define ‘Personal Computing’ such that IBM invented it in the 1960s when they put CP/CMS on System/360 mainframes.) \*\*(This happens to be congruent with a very old definition of the term: “One who computes for money.” The last human computers were unskilled women doing trivial arithmetic in WWII.) \*\*\*(Yes, I have a specific machine in mind.) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-dc-3-first-aircraft-designed-with-cad/475534/26 "2008-12-04T16:33:18Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > …I’d be shocked if they didn’t use wind-tunnel models in designing wings for the first DC-3. Likewise. Hell, the Wright Brothers designed, built and used their own minature wind tunnel in designing the Flyer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-dc-3-first-aircraft-designed-with-cad/475534.md?page=1)