Nimrod (; ), king of Shinar, was, according to the Book of Genesis and Books of Chronicles, the son of Cush, the great-grandson of Noah. The Bible states that he was "a mighty hunter before the Lord [and] .... began to be mighty in the earth". Extra-biblical traditions associating him with the Tower of Babel led to his reputation as a king who was rebellious against God. Since Accad (Babylonian Akkad) was destroyed and lost with the destruction of its Empire in the period 2200–2154 BC (long chronology), the stories mentioning Nimrod seem to recall the late Early Bronze Age. The association with Erech (Babylonian Uruk), a city that lost its prime importance around 2,000 BC as a result of struggles between Isin, Larsa and Elam, also attests the early provenance of the stories of Nimrod. Several Mesopotamian ruins were given Nimrod's name by 8th-century Arabs, including the ruins of the Assyrian city of Kalhu (the biblical Calah), built by Shalmaneser I (1274–1244 BC) (see Nimrud). A number of attempts to connect him with historical figures have been made.

The Nimrod, built in Britain by Ferranti for the 1951 Festival of Britain, was an early computer custom-built to play a computer game, one of the first games developed in the early history of video games. The twelve by nine by five foot computer, designed by John Bennett and built by engineer Raymond Stuart-Williams, allowed exhibition attendees to play a game of Nim against an artificial intelligence. The player pressed buttons on a raised panel corresponding with lights on the machine to select their moves, and the Nimrod moved afterwards, with its calculations represented by more lights. The speed of the Nimrod's calculations could be slowed down to allow the presenter to demonstrate exactly what the computer was doing, with more lights showing the state of the calculations. The Nimrod was intended to demonstrate Ferranti's computer design and programming skills rather than to entertain, though Festival attendees were more interested in playing the game than the logic behind it. After its initial exhibition in May, the Nimrod was shown for three weeks in October 1951 at the Berlin Industrial Show before being dismantled.