Computing power of ENIAC?

Paul H. Henry

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Mar 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/13/97

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I've read several stories about ENIAC, the 30-ton, room-sized monstrosity
from 1945 that is considered by some to be the first computer ever made,
but none of them address what I really want to know. How much computing
power did ENIAC have relative to today's computers? I know we're supposed
to understand that it was incredibly primitive. I'm just wondering HOW
primitive it was: how it would stack up against today's machines.

If Moore's Law has really been in effect ever since 1945, it's hard to
imagine the thing being powerful enough to successfully do long
division--yet it was designed to calculate missile trajectories, which has
to require SOME muscle at least.

ENIAC was a digital computer (wasn't it?), so I have to assume that its
main memory could be measured in bytes. How large was it? Was it in the
kilobyte range? Did it have a clock speed as we recognize it today? How
fast was it? Was ENIAC as powerful as an original IBM PC? A Trash-80? The
fancy Texas Instruments pocket calculator I bought in college? Someone
please express these things in terms we understand today: RAM, bps,
megahertz, whatever.

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Justin Hiltscher

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Mar 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/13/97

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Paul H. Henry wrote:
>
> I've read several stories about ENIAC, the 30-ton, room-sized monstrosity
> from 1945 that is considered by some to be the first computer ever made,
> but none of them address what I really want to know. How much computing
> power did ENIAC have relative to today's computers? I know we're supposed
> to understand that it was incredibly primitive. I'm just wondering HOW
> primitive it was: how it would stack up against today's machines.
>
> If Moore's Law has really been in effect ever since 1945, it's hard to
> imagine the thing being powerful enough to successfully do long
> division--yet it was designed to calculate missile trajectories, which has
> to require SOME muscle at least.
>
> ENIAC was a digital computer (wasn't it?), so I have to assume that its
> main memory could be measured in bytes. How large was it? Was it in the
> kilobyte range? Did it have a clock speed as we recognize it today?

ENIAC Historical Doc: http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v42/n18/eniac.html

or for those people who can follow HTML links from here:
<a href=http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v42/n18/eniac.html>ENIAC Historical
Doc</a>

Nice text. Fairly interesting stuff on the history and evolution of the
"counting machine."

Perry Farmer

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Mar 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/13/97

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-> I've read several stories about ENIAC, the 30-ton, room-sized monstro
-> from 1945 that is considered by some to be the first computer ever made,
-> but none of them address what I really want to know. How much computing
-> power did ENIAC have relative to today's computers? I know we're supp
-> to understand that it was incredibly primitive. I'm just wondering HOW
-> primitive it was: how it would stack up against today's machines.

Eniac wasn't the first computer made, there had been many before it,
although not of its "type".

-> ENIAC was a digital computer (wasn't it?), so I have to assume that its
-> main memory could be measured in bytes. How large was it? Was it in the
-> kilobyte range? Did it have a clock speed as we recognize it today? How
-> fast was it? Was ENIAC as powerful as an original IBM PC? A Trash-80?
-> fancy Texas Instruments pocket calculator I bought in college? Someone
-> please express these things in terms we understand today: RAM, bps,
-> megahertz, whatever.

My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.

Perry

Matthew D Eayre

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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In article <phenry-1203...@blv-pm109-ip12.halcyon.com>,
Paul H. Henry <phe...@halcyon.com> wrote:
>I've read several stories about ENIAC, the 30-ton, room-sized monstrosity

>from 1945 that is considered by some to be the first computer ever made,
>

Computer is a pretty broad term and can refer to a lot of things, but
generally people mean digital electronic computers. ENIAC was a digital
electronic computer, but it was not the first. The Atanasoff-Berry
Computer, built at Iowa State in 1939, was. Parts of ENIAC are on display
in the EECS Building here on the North Campus of the University of
Michigan. The display calls ENIAC the first "general-purpose" digital
electronic computer. Big deal. We don't honor Curtiss for his aviation
"firsts" (e.g. flying over kilometer) so how come ENIAC got a big 50th
anniversary celebration last year?

>but none of them address what I really want to know. How much computing

>power did ENIAC have relative to today's computers? I know we're supposed

>to understand that it was incredibly primitive. I'm just wondering HOW

>primitive it was: how it would stack up against today's machines.
>

>If Moore's Law has really been in effect ever since 1945, it's hard to
>imagine the thing being powerful enough to successfully do long
>division--yet it was designed to calculate missile trajectories, which has
>to require SOME muscle at least.
>

>ENIAC was a digital computer (wasn't it?), so I have to assume that its

>main memory could be measured in bytes. How large was it? Was it in the

>kilobyte range? Did it have a clock speed as we recognize it today? How

>fast was it? Was ENIAC as powerful as an original IBM PC? A Trash-80? The

>fancy Texas Instruments pocket calculator I bought in college? Someone

>please express these things in terms we understand today: RAM, bps,

>megahertz, whatever.
>
According to the display, ENIAC had 20 accumulators which could each store
a ten digit number and collectively it could add 5000 numbers per second
and the multipliers could collectively perform 400 multiplications per
second. So I guess that gave it a RAM of 200 bytes. I'm not sure how to
compare its speed to modern devices. It was first used to calculate
artillery shell paths. It would just time step through the problem to
calculate the solution. For a 25 second flight, it could calculate the
solution in 20 seconds. About 4 seconds were computation and the rest
were printing the punch cards.

--
Matthew D Eayre I'm not not really this stupid;
mea...@umich.edu I just pretend to be on the net.

Formerly mea...@iastate.edu

Jim Balter

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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Perry Farmer wrote:

> My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.

Understanding based on what?

--
<J Q B>

Jim Balter

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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Paul H. Henry wrote:

> ENIAC was a digital computer (wasn't it?), so I have to assume that its
> main memory could be measured in bytes.

Why do you *have to* assume something that is false?
Up to 1967 I worked with an IBM 1620, which was a BCD machine,
with 20000 digits of memory. Around 1973 I worked with a Varian 620,
which was a 16-bit word machine. Neither of these had bytes as such.
I also worked with various plugboard machines that, like ENIAC
(I think) did not store programs in memory. Thus, modern concepts
of RAM do not directly apply to something like ENIAC.

--
<J Q B>

Chris Stassen

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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Paul H. Henry wrote:
> ENIAC was a digital computer (wasn't it?), so I have to assume that its

> main memory could be measured in bytes. How large was it? Was it in the
> kilobyte range? Did it have a clock speed as we recognize it today? How
> fast was it? Was ENIAC as powerful as an original IBM PC? A Trash-80? The
> fancy Texas Instruments pocket calculator I bought in college? Someone
> please express these things in terms we understand today: RAM, bps,
> megahertz, whatever.

ENIAC could "remember" twenty ten-digit numbers. (It takes about three
bytes to store a ten-digit number, so that's equivalent to about sixty
bytes.) However, this is data storage only -- ENIAC's programs were
never stored in memory. Originally it was programmed by wiring on a
plugboard, and later (1952) modified to run programs from cards.

My sources (Encyclopedia Britannica and a couple of web sites) say that
ENIAC performed "7.5 operations per second," but they are not specific
on
exactly what these operations were. (Were only one pair of numbers
operated
upon at a time, or was every number in memory moved through the wired
operation and re-stored in a single cycle?)

This is not anywhere close to being in the league of an IBM-PC or even a
TRS-80. The TRS-80, for example, came out around 1978 with 4k of memory
standard (and supported up to 48k). The TRS-80's Z-80 processor ran
with
a clock in the serveral-megahertz range (though most operations required
multiple clock cycles).

Roughly speaking, a *minimal* TRS-80 compared to ENIAC: had 70 times
as much memory, could add numbers 50,000 times faster, and consumed
1/1,000 of the power. (Give or take a factor of two...) Your TI pocket
calculator was probably orders of magnitude faster than ENIAC, and
probably
could perform dozens of operations that ENIAC couldn't be programmed to
do (e.g. log/exp and trig functions).

See "http://www.digitalcentury.com/encyclo/update/comp_hd.html" for a
discussion (with pictures) of several ancient computers.

--
Chris Stassen http://www.nextek.net/stassen/
ch...@stassen.com 614-366-9628

Perry Farmer

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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-> Paul H. Henry wrote:

-> > ENIAC was a digital computer (wasn't it?), so I have to assume that
-> > main memory could be measured in bytes.

-> Why do you *have to* assume something that is false?
-> Up to 1967 I worked with an IBM 1620, which was a BCD machine,
-> with 20000 digits of memory. Around 1973 I worked with a Varian 620,
-> which was a 16-bit word machine. Neither of these had bytes as such.
-> I also worked with various plugboard machines that, like ENIAC
-> (I think) did not store programs in memory. Thus, modern concepts
-> of RAM do not directly apply to something like ENIAC.

-> --
-> <J Q B>

With digital computers, modern concepts of ram certainly do so they
store binary information as bits.

You most likely could compare the memory of new against old using the
term bytes since it is just a grouping.

Perry

Perry Farmer

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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-> Path: nwfocus1.wa.com!nwnews.wa.com!uunet!in3.uu.net!128.230.129.106!
-> From: Jim Balter <j...@netcom.com>
-> Newsgroups: alt.fan.cecil-adams
-> Subject: Re: Computing power of ENIAC?
-> Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 03:05:52 -0800
-> Organization: JQB Enterprises
-> Lines: 8
-> Message-ID: <332931...@netcom.com>
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-> X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I)
-> Xref: nwfocus1.wa.com alt.fan.cecil-adams:38072

-> Perry Farmer wrote:

-> > My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.

-> Understanding based on what?

-> --
-> <J Q B>

Based on what I read in an issue of Popular Science last year that had a
feature story on Eniac.

The problem with comparison is that you don't have an equal set of
benchmarks.

Perry

Perry Farmer

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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-> In article <phenry-1203...@blv-pm109-ip12.halcyon.com>,
-> Paul H. Henry <phe...@halcyon.com> wrote:
-> >I've read several stories about ENIAC, the 30-ton, room-sized monstr
-> >from 1945 that is considered by some to be the first computer ever m
-> >
-> Computer is a pretty broad term and can refer to a lot of things, but
-> generally people mean digital electronic computers. ENIAC was a digital
-> electronic computer, but it was not the first. The Atanasoff-Berry
-> Computer, built at Iowa State in 1939, was. Parts of ENIAC are on di
-> in the EECS Building here on the North Campus of the University of
-> Michigan. The display calls ENIAC the first "general-purpose" digital
-> electronic computer. Big deal. We don't honor Curtiss for his aviation
-> "firsts" (e.g. flying over kilometer) so how come ENIAC got a big 50th
-> anniversary celebration last year?

You forget the Baggage Engine and the election machines that existed
before either of these.

There were also several looms.

Perry

Jim Balter

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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houghi wrote:

> >My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.
>

> Depends on what you want it to do. For the specific task it was build
> for I presume it would be even faster. But do not try to run Windows
> on it. Or Dos.
> The "computer" they jused to compute the way a bomb would fly during
> WWII was a mechanic one, and in calculating these was faster than a
> Pentium. But just for this one task.

This is simply false. The ENIAC was digital (which is the issue,
not "mechanic"), and way way slower than a Pentium, which can do
thousands of the same computations simultaneously in the same amount of
time.

--
<J Q B>

Jim Balter

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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But you are making one anyway, eh? By any reasonable standard of
comparison, the ENIAC was nowhere near the league of a PC.
The same kinds of tracking problems solved by the ENIAC are solved
by digital computers today; solved much more quickly and accurately.
Remember, the ENIAC used *vacuum tubes*, which are inherently slow,
though not as slow as the relays that preceded them.

--
<J Q B>

Jim Balter

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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Perry Farmer wrote:

> You most likely could compare the memory of new against old using the
> term bytes since it is just a grouping.

As I said, the fact that the ENIAC did not store programs in memory
makes the concept not apply. There is also the incommensurability
between modern twos-complement binary storage and the decade counters
used by early machines; they just ain't the same thing. And, RAM stands
for "random access memory", but the memory of the ENIAC was not
randomly accessible. One can compare the number of numbers that
can be stored, in the different machines, but that does not translate
directly into bytes, since many different things can be stored in a
byte.

You are naively assuming that both the ENIAC and the PC are random
access stored program binary devices, but it just ain't so.
Nonetheless, the ENIAC stored 20 10-digit numbers and did about 5000
adds or 14 multiplies per second, a minute fraction of the capabilities
of a PC.

--
<J Q B>

Jim Balter

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Mar 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/14/97

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Perry Farmer wrote:

> You forget the Baggage Engine and the election machines that existed
> before either of these.

That's "Babbage", but his machines, while designed, were never
realized. Nonetheless, Countess Ada Lovelace (for whom the programming
language is named) wrote the first computer programs for them.
Herman Hollerith's census machines came later.

> There were also several looms.

Lorillard looms, which inspired Herman Hollerith's punched cards.

But long before any of these, in the 1600's, were Leibniz' digital
calculators.

--
<J Q B>

Perry Farmer

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

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-> On Thu, 13 Mar 1997 07:58:22 GMT, Perry Farmer wrote:

-> >-> ENIAC was a digital computer (wasn't it?), so I have to assume th
-> >-> main memory could be measured in bytes. How large was it? Was it
-> >-> kilobyte range? Did it have a clock speed as we recognize it toda
-> >-> fast was it? Was ENIAC as powerful as an original IBM PC? A Trash
-> >-> fancy Texas Instruments pocket calculator I bought in college? So
-> >-> please express these things in terms we understand today: RAM, bps,
-> >-> megahertz, whatever.
-> >

-> >My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.

-> Depends on what you want it to do. For the specific task it was build
-> for I presume it would be even faster. But do not try to run Windows
-> on it. Or Dos.
-> The "computer" they jused to compute the way a bomb would fly during
-> WWII was a mechanic one, and in calculating these was faster than a
-> Pentium. But just for this one task.

In making comparisons of relative power you can eliminate the task for
the most part. Normally you compare number of instructions executed over
time.

Perry

Mark Brader

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

[Canned article follows -- last substantively modified Sept. 26, 1996.
For a direct response in the ENIAC thread, see my parallel posting.]

[This article was prepared using the ISO 8859-1 character set. If you
see an i-circumflex in "naquît" and a u-umlaut in "Tübingen", that's
correct. If not, be aware that several other words and names here and
there through the article will also look wrong for you.]

What was the first computer and who built it?

It turns out that this is more a question of definition than a
question of fact. The computer, as we now understand the word,
was very much an evolutionary development rather than a simple
invention. This article traces the sequence of the most important
steps in that development, and in the earlier development of
digital calculators without programmability. It may help you
to decide for yourself whether you think the first computer was
the ABC, the Z3 (aka V3), the ENIAC, the SSEC, the Manchester
Mark I (aka Baby), the EDSAC, or perhaps yet another machine --
and how to apportion the honor of invention among John Atanasoff,
Charles Babbage, Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, Alan Turing, John
von Neumann, Konrad Zuse, and others.

----------------------------------------------------

This article has evolved from an original version that I drafted
in 1988, and has been posted to various Usenet groups several times.
It has been prepared primarily from two sources:

"Bit by Bit: An Illustrated History of Computers"
by Stan Augarten
1984, Ticknor and Fields, New York
ISBN 0-89919-268-8, 0-89919-302-1 paperback

"A History of Computing Technology"
by Michael R. Williams
1985, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
ISBN 0-13-389917-9

Either of these books is well worth a trip to the library to read.
(Unfortunately, finding either one in a bookstore today would be an
unlikely proposition.) Augarten is a journalist; he writes very
readably, but occasionally does not say exactly what he means.
Williams is a computer science professor; his book is superior in
technical depth, and covers additional subject areas including
analog computing and computing in ancient times.

For some material I also consulted the following books.

"The Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age"
by Jon Palfreman and Doron Swade
1991, BBC Books, London
ISBN 0-563-36221-9

The book of the TV series of the same title, which changed to "The
Machine that Changed the World" when it was shown in the US on PBS.
I enjoyed the content but found the typographic design so hideously
mannered as to be distracting. This book has less technical detail
than the two mentioned above, and a greater emphasis on the impact of
computers on the modern world; a considerable fraction of its length
is about the uninteresting :-) period after the end of this chronology.

"Portraits in Silicon"
by Robert Slater
1987, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
ISBN 0-262-69131-0

Articles about, and interviews with, 34 of the people to whom goes
much of the credit for the computer world being the way it is, from
Charles Babbage to Donald Knuth.

"The Computer Pioneers"
by David Ritchie
1986, Simon & Schuster, New York
ISBN 0-671-52397-X

This one concentrates in the late 1930s and the 1940s, with one chapter
for each of the key inventors or groups of that period. The author is
a journalist and the book is very readable.

"The Computer -- My Life"
Original German version by Konrad Zuse:
"Der Computer -- mein Lebenswerk"
1993, Springer-Verlag, Berlin
ISBN 3-540-56292-3
English translation by Patricia McKenna and J. Andrew Ross
1993, Springer-Verlag, Berlin and New York
ISBN 0-387-56453-5 (New York), 3-540-56453-5 (Berlin).

An autobiography.

"Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering", 2nd ed.
editor Anthony Ralston, associate Editor Edwin D. Reilly Jr.
1983, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York
ISBN 0-442-24496-7

The title is self-explanatory.

"The Computer Comes of Age"
Original French version by R. Moreau:
"Ainsi naquît l'informatique"
1981
English translation by J. Howlett
1984, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
ISBN 0-262-36103-2

Concentrating on the period from the mid 1940s to mid 1960s, and
with a noticeably IBMish viewpoint.

Two articles from Scientific American were also sources. One in the
August 1988 was about the Atanasoff-Berry machines, and one in the
February 1993 issue of was about Babbage's difference engines and the
modern-day completion of one of them.

Information about the cipher-breaking machines came primarily from
two books:

"Seizing the Enigma: the Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes,
1939-1943"
by David Kahn
1991, Houghton Mifflin, Boston
ISBN 0-395-42739-8

"Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park"
edited by F.H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp
1993, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York
ISBN 0-19-820327-6

Kahn is also the author of the monumental cryptological history "The
Codebreakers"; this book is oriented more to a popular readership but
still contains plenty of technical detail. The second book collects
articles by various individuals involved with the cipher-breaking work;
some are quite technical and others not.

A few items of information come from other sources, not listed
individually here.

And finally, the book

Faster than Thought
editor B. V. Bowden
1953, Pitman, New York and London

provided an interesting early perspective, and the signature quote.

----------------------------------------------------

I've tried to mention in this chronology each machine within the
relevant time period that meets the following criteria. First, it
must use a digital technique to do arithmetic or other logic. This
eliminates, for instance, the slide rule and the differential analyzer,
while allowing the cipher-breaking machines of the Second World War
to be included.

Second, it must actually do the arithmetic or other work rather than
just assisting the user's memory. I consider this to eliminate the
abacus as well as, say, Napier's Bones.

Third, to count as being able to do an operation, the machine must do
essentially the whole computation, with little or no assistance from the
user. You could subtract 16 on a 6-digit Pascaline by adding 999,984,
but this doesn't mean we should say that a Pascaline could subtract.

Fourth, it must work on user-supplied operands. In 1364, Giovanni
de' Dondi completed a clock that used chains of various lengths to
represent calendar cycles and compute the date of Easter, but this
does not qualify even if the chains advanced in discrete "digital"
steps (I haven't seen a description detailed enough to say whether
they did).

And finally, the machine must have either been technologically
innovative, or else well known and influential. For certain concepts
of special importance, I have also listed the first time they were
*described*, although they were not implemented at that time.

Where I do not describe the size of a machine, it is generally
suitable for desktop use if it has no memory and is unprogrammable
or if it is a small prototype, but would about fill a small room if
it has memory or significant programmability.

The term "full-scale" is used, in contrast to "prototype", to refer
to a machine with sufficient capacity to do regular useful work.
For the sorts of machines described toward the end of the chronology,
I generally consider them "completed" when they first run a program,
even though they may be subject to further modifications and debugging.
Unfortunately, sources referring to the "completion" of a machine are
not always clear as to exactly what they mean by it.

----------------------------------------------------
A Chronology of Digital Computing Machines (to 1952)
----------------------------------------------------

1623. Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635), of Tübingen, Württemberg
(now in Germany), makes his "Calculating Clock". This is a
6-digit machine that can add and subtract, and indicates overflow
by ringing a bell. Mounted on the machine is a set of Napier's Rods
(or Bones), a memory aid facilitating multiplications. The machine
and plans are lost and forgotten in the war that is going on.

The plans will finally be rediscovered in 1935, only to be lost in war
again, and then re-rediscovered in 1956 by the same man! The machine
will be reconstructed in 1960, and found to be workable.

(Schickard is a friend of the astronomer Kepler.)

(According to an informal communication, Schickard sometimes uses
the device for 7-digit calculations, counting rings of the overflow
bell by putting rings on one of his, uh, personal digits...)

1644-5. Blaise Pascal (1623-62), of Paris, makes his "Pascaline".
This 5-digit machine uses a different carry mechanism from
Schickard's, with rising and falling weights instead of a direct
gear drive; it can be extended better to support more digits, but
it cannot subtract, and probably is less reliable than Schickard's
simpler method.

Where Schickard's machine is forgotten -- and indeed Pascal is
apparently unaware it ever existed -- Pascal's becomes well known
and establishes the computing machine concept in the intellectual
community. He makes more machines and sells about 10-15 of them,
some supporting as many as 8 digits. (Several survive to the
present day.) Patents being a thing of the future, others also
sell copies of Pascal's machine.

(Pascal is also the inventor of the bus.)

c.1668. Sir Samuel Morland (1625-95), of England, produces a
non-decimal adding machine, suitable for use with English
money. Instead of a carry mechanism, it registers carries on
auxiliary dials, from which the user must reenter them as addends.

1674. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), of Leipzig,
designs his "Stepped Reckoner", which is constructed by a
man named Olivier, of Paris. It uses a movable carriage so that it
can multiply, with operands of up to 5 and 12 digits and a product
of up to 16. The user has to turn a crank once for each unit in
each digit in the multiplier; a fluted drum translates the turns
into additions. But the carry mechanism requires user intervention,
and doesn't really work in all cases anyway.

Leibniz's machine doesn't get forgotten, but it does get misplaced
in an attic within a few years -- and will stay there until 1879 when
it will be noticed by a man working on the leaky roof!

(Leibniz, or Leibnitz, is also the co-inventor of calculus.)

1775. Charles, the third Earl Stanhope, of England, makes a
successful multiplying calculator similar to Leibniz's.

1770-6. Mathieus Hahn, somewhere in what will be Germany, also makes
a successful multiplying calculator.

1786. J. H. Müller, of the Hessian army, conceives the idea of
what came to be called a "difference engine". That's a
special-purpose calculator for tabulating values of a polynomial,
given the differences between certain values so that the polynomial
is uniquely specified; it's useful for any function that can be
approximated by a polynomial over suitable intervals. Müller's
attempt to raise funds fails and the project is forgotten.

1820. Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (1785-1870), of France,
makes his "Arithmometer", the first mass-produced calculator.
It does multiplication using the same general approach as Leibniz's
calculator; with assistance from the user it can also do division.
It is also the most reliable calculator yet. Machines of this general
design, large enough to occupy most of a desktop, continue to be sold
for about 90 years.

1822. Charles Babbage (1792-1871), of London, having reinvented
the difference engine, begins his (government-funded)
project to build one by constructing a 6-digit calculator using
gear technology similar to that planned for the difference engine.

1832. Babbage and Joseph Clement produce a prototype segment of
his difference engine, which operates on 6-digit numbers
and 2nd-order differences (i.e. can tabulate quadratic polynomials).

The complete engine, which would be room-sized, is planned to be
able to operate both on 6th-order differences with numbers of about
20 digits, and on 3rd-order differences with numbers of 30 digits.
Each addition would be done in two phases, the second one taking
care of any carries generated in the first. The output digits
would be punched into a soft metal plate, from which a plate for a
printing press could be made.

But there are various difficulties, and no more than this prototype
piece is ever assembled.

1834. George Scheutz, of Stockholm, produces a small difference
engine in wood, after reading a brief description of
Babbage's project.

1834. Babbage conceives, and begins to design, his "Analytical
Engine". Whether or not this machine, if built, would
constitute a computer depends on exactly how "computer" is being
defined. One essential feature of present-day computers is absent
from the design: the "stored-program" concept, which is necessary
for implementing a compiler. The program would have been in
read-only memory, specifically in the form of punch cards. (In
this chronology, such machines will be called "programmable cal-
culators".)

Babbage continues to work on the design for years, though after
about 1840 the changes are minor. The machine would operate on
40-digit numbers; the "mill" (CPU) would have 2 main accumulators
and some auxiliary ones for specific purposes, while the "store"
(memory) would hold perhaps 100 more numbers. There would be
several punch card readers, for both programs and data; the cards
would be chained and the motion of each chain could be reversed.
The machine would be able to perform conditional jumps. There
would also be a form of microcoding: the meaning of instructions
would depend on the positioning of metal studs in a slotted
barrel, called the "control barrel".

The machine would do an addition in 3 seconds and a multiplication
or division in 2-4 minutes.

1842. Babbage's difference engine project is officially canceled.
(The cost overruns have been considerable, and Babbage is
spending too much time on redesigning the Analytical Engine.)

1843. Scheutz and his son Edvard Scheutz produce a 3rd-order
difference engine with printer, and the Swedish government
agrees to fund their next development.

1847-9. Babbage designs an improved, simpler difference engine,
which will operate on 7th-order differences and 31-digit
numbers, but nobody is interested in paying to have it built.

(In 1989-91, however, a team at London's Science Museum will do
just that. They will use components of modern construction, but
with tolerances no better than Clement could have provided... and,
after a bit of tinkering and detail-debugging, they will find that
the machine does indeed work.)

1853. To Babbage's delight, the Scheutzes complete the first
full-scale difference engine, which they call a Tabul-
ating Machine. It operates on 15-digit numbers and 4th-order
differences, and produces printed output as Babbage's would have.
A second machine is later built to the same design by the firm
of Brian Donkin of London.

1858. The first Tabulating Machine is bought by the Dudley
Observatory in Albany, New York, and the second one by
the British government. The Albany machine is used to produce
a set of astronomical tables; but the observatory's director is
then fired for this extravagant purchase, and the machine is
never seriously used again, eventually ending up in a museum.
(The second machine, however, will have a long and useful life.)

1871. Babbage produces a prototype section of the Analytical
Engine's mill and printer.

1878. Ramon Verea, living in New York City, invents a calculator
with an internal multiplication table; this is much faster
than the shifting carriage or other digital methods. He isn't
interested in putting it into production; he just wants to show that
a Spaniard can invent as well as an American.

1879. A committee investigates the feasibility of completing the
Analytical Engine and concludes that it is impossible now
that Babbage is dead. The project is then largely forgotten and is
unknown to most of the people mentioned in the last part of this
chronology -- though Howard Aiken is an exception.

1885. A multiplying calculator more compact than the Arithmometer
enters mass production. The design is the independent, and
more or less simultaneous, invention of Frank S. Baldwin, of the
United States, and T. Odhner, a Swede living in Russia. The fluted
drums are replaced by a "variable-toothed gear" design: a disk with
radial pegs that can be made to protrude or retract from it.

1886. Dorr E. Felt (1862-1930), of Chicago, makes his "Comptometer".
This is the first calculator where the operands are entered
merely by pressing keys rather than having to be, for example, dialed
in. It is feasible because of Felt's invention of a carry mechanism
fast enough to act while the keys return from being pressed.

1889. Felt invents the first printing desk calculator.

1890. US Census results are tabulated for the first time with sig-
nificant mechanical aid: the punch card tabulators of Herman
Hollerith (1860-1929) of MIT, Cambridge, MA. This is the start of
the punch card industry. The cost of the census tabulation is 98%
*higher* than the previous one, in part because of the temptation to
use the machines to the fullest and tabulate more data than formerly
possible, but the tabulation is completed in a much shorter time.
Another precedent is that the cards are read electrically.

(Contrary to popular impression and to earlier versions of this
chronology, Hollerith's cards of 1890 are not the same size as
US paper money of the time; they are much smaller. Other sizes of
punch cards will also appear within a few years.)

1892. William S. Burroughs (1857-98), of St. Louis, invents a
machine similar to Felt's but more robust, and this is the
one that really starts the office calculator industry.

(This machine is still hand powered, but it won't be many years
before electric calculators appear.)

1906. Henry Babbage, Charles's son, with the help of the firm of
R. W. Munro, completes the mill of his father's Analytical
Engine, just to show that it would have worked. It does. The
complete machine is never produced.

1919. W. H. Eccles and F. W. Jordan publish the first flip-flop
circuit design.

c.1920. Eugène Carissan of France constructs a machine for factoring
whole numbers, based on 14 rotating metal rings studded with pegs.

1926. Derrick Henry Lehmer, at Berkeley, CA, constructs a machine for
factoring whole numbers, based on 19 bicycle chains. A later
machine will use punched tape -- not paper tape, but film stock.

(Lehmer is the son of mathmatician Derrick Norman Lehmer.)

1931-2. E. Wynn-Williams, at Cambridge, England, uses thyratron
tubes to construct a binary digital counter for use in
connection with physics experiments.

1932. Lehmer adds an optical reader to his punched-film factoring
machine. It is now capable of 5,000 operations per second.

1935. International Business Machines introduces the "IBM 601",
a punch card machine with an arithmetic unit based on relays
and capable of doing a multiplication in 1 second. The machine
becomes important both in scientific and commercial computation,
and about 1,500 of them are eventually made.

Jun 1937. Konrad Zuse (1910-95) of Berlin writes in his diary a
synopsis of the stored-program concept: "Die Operationen
folgen einem Plan ähnlich einem Rechenplan. Mit Ausgangsbedingungen
und Resultat. Dementsprechend Speicherplan. Jedoch kann der
Speicher- oder Arbeitsplan sich aus den vorhergehenden Operationen
ergeben (z.B. die Nummern der Speicherzellen) und sich so aus sich
selbst aufbauen (vgl. 'Keimzelle')." That is, "The operations follow
a plan similar to a computing plan. With initial conditions and
result. Accordingly, a storage plan. However, the storage or work
plan can still result from the preceding operations (e.g. the
numbers in the storage cells) and in this way be built from itself
(cf. 'germ cell')."

Nov 1937. George Stibitz (c.1904 - 1995) of the Bell Telephone Labor-
atories (Bell Labs), New York City, constructs on his kitchen
table the "K-Model": a demonstration 1-bit binary adder using relays.

1937. Alan M. Turing (1912-54), of Cambridge University, England,
publishes a paper on "computable numbers". This paper solves
a mathematical problem, but the solution is achieved by reasoning
(as a mathematical device) about the theoretical simplified computer
known today as a Turing machine.

Nov 1938. Marian Rejewsky (a man, c.1906 - ?) and his group, working
for Poland's Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Office), complete the first
"bomba", a machine using electromechanical digital logic for trying
out combinations of letters to solve the Germans' Enigma cipher.
The Enigma machine uses a series of disks ("rotors") with sets of
26 contacts wired so as to permute and repermute the alphabet; the
sequence of rotors and their initial settings are changed from time
to time, forming a key.

The bomba contains its own set of rotors like the Enigma's, and its
function is to determine, through a combination of logic with an
exhaustive search of rotor positions, whether a particular short
piece of guessed plaintext and a particular piece of encrypted text
could correspond. If the plaintext was correctly guessed, then the
key can be derived from the bomba results, and not only the rest of
that message, but all others using the same key can then be decrypted.
And if it wasn't, then the same guess will be tried against other
messages.

(But the next month, the Germans will add a selection of additional
rotors to their Enigma machines. The Poles, not having the resources
to build more bomby, in July 1939 will turn over all their discoveries
to the British and the French.)

1938. Claude E. Shannon (1916-) publishes a paper on the implement-
ation of symbolic logic using relays.

1938. Helmut Schreyer, of Berlin, designs logic circuitry based on
a combination of vacuum tubes and neon lamps. (By 1940 he
will have produced a 10-bit adder and a prototype memory unit.)

1938. Zuse, with some assistance from Schreyer, completes a
prototype electromechanical binary programmable calculator,
called the "V1" at the time but retroactively renamed "Z1" after the
war. It works with floating point numbers having a 7-bit exponent,
16-bit mantissa, and a sign bit. The memory uses sliding metal parts
to store 16 such numbers, and works well; but the arithmetic unit,
using secondhand relays and stepping switches, is less successful.

The program is read from punched tape. Like Lehmer, Zuse uses film
rather than paper for his tape; specifically, discarded 35 mm movie
film. Data values can be entered from a numeric keyboard, and
outputs are displayed on electric lamps.

Nov 1939. John V. Atanasoff (1903-95) and graduate student Clifford
Berry (?-1963), of Iowa State College (now the Iowa State
University), Ames, Iowa, complete a prototype 25-bit adder. This
is the first machine to calculate using vacuum tubes. To store the
operands, it has 2 25-bit words of memory in the form of capacitors
(with refresh circuits using more vacuum tubes -- the first regen-
erative memory) mounted one word on each side of a revolving disk.
There is no input device; the user enters the operands directly into
memory, by tapping the appropriate capacitors with a wire!

Nov 1939. At Bell Labs, Samuel Williams and Stibitz complete a
calculator which can operate on complex numbers, and give it
the imaginative name of the "Complex Number Calculator"; it is later
known as the "Model I Relay Calculator". It uses telephone switching
parts for logic: 450 relays and 10 crossbar switches. Numbers are
represented in "plus 3 BCD"; that is, for each decimal digit, 0 is
represented by binary 0011, 1 by 0100, and so on up to 1100 for 9;
this scheme requires fewer relays than straight BCD.

Rather than requiring users to come to the machine to use it, the
calculator is provided with three remote keyboards, at various
places in the building, in the form of teletypes. Only one can be
used at a time, and the output is automatically displayed on the
same one.

1939. Zuse and Schreyer begin work on the "V2" (later "Z2"),
which will marry the Z1's existing mechanical memory unit to
a new arithmetic unit using relay logic. The project is interrupted
for a year when Zuse is drafted.

(Zuse is a friend of Wernher von Braun, who will later develop the
*other* "V2", and after that, play a key role in the US space program.)

Early 1940. Turing and Gordon Welchman (c.1905 - ?), working for
the British government codebreaking department deceptively
named the Government Code and Cypher School, at Bletchley Park,
Bletchley, England, successively improve the design of the bomba
by adding further logic circuits. These greatly reduce the number
of false solutions. With quantity production of these machines, now
called bombes, the full-scale breaking of Enigma ciphers becomes a
practical proposition.

(After the US joins the war, they will make and use them too.
Improvements on the machines will continue, as the Germans also
improve the cipher.)

1940. Zuse is released from the army and completes the Z2.
It works better than the Z1, but isn't reliable enough.
(Later he is drafted again, and released again.)

Sep 1940. Stibitz, attending a mathematical conference in Hanover,
NH, to present a paper on the Complex Number Calculator,
demonstrates operation of the machine from a remote location by
teletype connection.

Summer 1941. Atanasoff and Berry complete a special-purpose calcu-
lator for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations,
later called the "ABC" ("Atanasoff-Berry Computer"). This uses the
same regenerative capacitor memory as their prototype, but with 60
50-bit words of it, mounted on two revolving drums. The clock speed
is 60 Hz, and an addition takes 1 second. (For the purposes of this
calculator, multiplication is not required.) There are circuits to
convert between binary and decimal for input and output; the machine
includes several hundred vacuum tubes altogether.

For secondary memory the ABC uses punch cards, moved around by the
user. The holes are not actually punched in the cards, but burned
by an electric spark. The card system is a partial failure; its
error rate of 0.001% is too high to solve large systems of equations.

(Atanasoff will leave Iowa State after the US enters the war, and
this will end his work on digital computing machines. The ABC will
largely forgotten within a few years, and dismantled in 1946 when
the storage space is needed.)

Dec 1941. Now working with limited backing from the DVL (German Aero-
nautical Research Institute), Zuse completes the "V3" (later
"Z3"): the first operational programmable calculator. It works with
floating point numbers having a 7-bit exponent, 14-bit mantissa
(with a "1" bit automatically prefixed unless the number is 0),
and a sign bit. The memory uses relays; with a capacity of 64 words,
it needs over 1,400 of them. There are 1,200 more relays in the
arithmetic and control units. The machine is the size of a closet.

The program, input, and output are implemented as described above for
the Z1. Conditional jumps are not available. The machine can do 3-4
additions per second, and takes 3-5 seconds for a multiplication.
Zuse considers the machine a prototype; it doesn't have enough memory
to be much use for the equation-solving problems that the DVL was
mostly interested in.

(In 1943, an air raid will destroy Zuse's workshop, and the Z3 with
it, as well as his home nearby. A replica Z3 will be built in 1960
for the Deutsches Museum in Munich. And in 1967, the Patent Office
of West Germany will finally rule on Zuse's 1941 application for to
patent the Z3, rejecting the application "mangels Erfindungshöhe":
"for an insufficient degree of invention"!)

1942. Zuse completes the S1, the first digital machine for process
control. Attached sensors measure the profile of the wing of
a flying bomb under construction; the readings are converted to dig-
ital and computations are run to determine how much the wing deviates
from the ideal shape and needs to be adjusted. (This is cheaper than
making it accurately in the first place.) The machine contains 800
relays; the program is literally wired in, each instruction being read
by advancing a set of stepping switches.

Jan 1943. Howard H. Aiken (1900-73) and his IBM-backed team at
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, complete the "ASCC Mark I"
("Automatic Sequence-Controlled Calculator Mark I"), also called the
"Harvard Mark I". This electromechanical machine is the first pro-
grammable calculator to be widely known: Aiken is to Zuse as Pascal
to Schickard.

The machine is 51 feet long, weighs 5 tons, and incorporates 750,000
parts. It includes 72 accumulators, each incorporating its own arith-
metic unit as well as a mechanical register with a capacity of 23
digits plus sign. (See the ENIAC entry, below, for a more detailed
description of such an architecture.) The arithmetic is fixed-point,
with a plugboard setting determining the number of decimal places.
I/O facilities include card readers, a card punch, paper tape readers,
and typewriters. There are 60 sets of rotary switches, each of which
can be used as a constant register -- sort of a mechanical read-only
memory. An addition takes 1/3 second, and a multiplication, 1 second.

The program is read from one paper tape; data can be read from the
other tapes, or the card readers, or from the constant registers.

Conditional jumps are not available. However, in later years the
machine is modified to support multiple paper tape readers for the
program, with the transfer from one to another being conditional,
sort of like a conditional subroutine call. Another addition allows
the provision of plugboard-wired subroutines callable from the tape.

Apr 1943. Max Newman, Wynn-Williams, and their team at Bletchley
Park, complete the "Heath Robinson". This is a prototype
machine for breaking the new German ciphers collectively codenamed
the "Fish" ciphers, which are based on bit-level manipulations rather
than permutations of the alphabet. The machine uses a combination
of electronics and relay logic. It reads data optically at 2,000
characters per second from 2 closed loops of paper tape, each
typically about 1,000 characters long.

(Newman had taught Turing at Cambridge, and had been the first person
to see a draft of Turing's 1937 paper. Heath Robinson is the name of
a British cartoonist known for drawings of comical machines, like
the American Rube Goldberg. Two later machines in the series will be
named for London stores with "Robinson" in their names!)

Apr 1943. John W. Mauchly (pronounced Mawkly; 1907-80), J. Presper
Eckert (1919-95), and John Brainerd at the Moore School of
Electrical Engineering, of the University of Pennsylvania, Phila-
delphia, write a "Report on an Electronic Diff. Analyzer" for the
US Army's Ballistics Research Lab. The abbreviation "Diff." is
intended to reflect the fact that the proposed machine, eventually
named the ENIAC ("Electronic Numerator, Integrator, Analyzer, and
Computer"; some sources have "and Calculator"), is to use *differ-
ences* to compute digitally the same results that a *differential*
analyzer would compute by analog means. The BRL, which has a great
interest in calculating shell trajectories to produce gun aiming
tables, accepts the proposal and work on the ENIAC begins in secret.

Sep 1943. Williams and Stibitz complete the "Relay Interpolator",
later called the "Model II Relay Calculator". This is a
programmable calculator; again, the program and data are read from
paper tapes. An innovative feature is that, for greater reliability,
numbers are represented in a biquinary format using 7 relays for
each digit, of which exactly 2 should be "on": 01 00001 for 0,
01 00010 for 1, and so on up to 10 10000 for 9.

(Some of the later machines in this series will use the biquinary
notation for the digits of floating-point numbers.)

Dec 1943. Tommy Flowers and his team at Bletchley Park complete
the first "Colossus". This full-scale successor to the
"Robinson" series machines is entirely electronic, incorporating
2,400 vacuum tubes for logic. It has 5 paper tape loop readers,
each working at 5,000 characters per second.

(10 Colossi will eventually be built, then destroyed after the war
to maintain secrecy. Turing also has an important role at Bletchley
Park, but does not work directly on the machines. In the 1990s
Bletchley Park will become a museum, and in 1996 a replica Colossus
will be completed there.)

1944-5. Zuse almost completes his first full-scale machine, the "V4"
(later "Z4"), which resembles his earlier designs. Its
memory reverts to the Z1's mechanical design, storing 1,000 words of
32 bits in less then a cubic meter; the equivalent in relays would
have filled a large room.

As the war begins to go very badly for Germany, Zuse's work suffers
major disruptions. The Z4 is moved three times within Berlin, then
to Göttingen, and finally to the Bavarian village of Hinterstein
where it is hidden. Here it survives the war, but the Allies don't
understand what it is, and nobody in Germany is in a position to pay
Zuse for more work.

1945. Zuse invents a programming language called Plankalkül.

Jun 1945. John von Neumann (1903-57), having joined the ENIAC
team, drafts a report describing the future computer
eventually built as the "EDVAC" ("Electronic Discrete Variable
Automatic Computer" (!)); this is the first detailed description
of the design of a stored-program computer, and gives rise to the
term "von Neumann computer".

The first draft of the report fails to credit other team members
such as Eckert and Mauchly; when this version becomes widely
circulated, von Neumann gets somewhat too much credit for the
design. The final version corrects the oversight, but too late.

(Von Neumann, also noted for his mental calculating ability, is
the only one of the principal computer pioneers in the US familiar
with Turing's 1937 paper.)

Nov 1945. Mauchly and Eckert and their team at the Moore School
complete the ENIAC. It's too late for the war, and the
total cost of $486,800 far exceeds the original budget of $150,000
(problems that Eckert and Mauchly will face again on later projects),
but it works.

The ENIAC's architecture resembles that of the Harvard Mark I, but
its components are entirely electronic, incorporating 17,468 vacuum
tubes and more then 80,000 other components. The machine weighs 30
tons, covers about 1,000 square feet of floor, and consumes 130 or
140 kilowatts of electricity. Many of the modules are made to plug
into the mainframe, to shorten the repair time when a tube or other
component fails. The cost and downtime are further reduced by using
circuits designed to work even if the components are off-specification.

The machine incorporates 20 accumulators (the original plan was for 4).
The accumulators and other units are all connected by several data
buses, and a set of "program lines" for synchronization. Each accum-
ulator stores a 10-digit number, using 10 bits to represent each digit,
plus a sign bit, and also incorporates circuits to add a number from
a bus ("digit trunk") to the stored number, and to transmit the stored
number or its complement to a bus.

A separate unit can perform multiplication (in about 3 milliseconds),
while another does division and square roots; the inputs and outputs
for both these units use the buses. There are constant registers, as
on the Harvard Mark I: 104 12-digit registers forming an array called
the "function table". 100 of these registers are directly addressable
by a 2-digit number from a bus (the others are used for interpolations).
Finally, a card reader is available to input data values, and there
is a card punch for output.

The program is set up on a plugboard -- this is considered reasonable
since the same or similar program would generally be used for weeks
at a time. For example, connecting certain sockets would cause
accumulator 1 to transmit its contents onto data bus 1 when a pulse
arrived on program line 1; meanwhile several accumulators could be
adding the value from that data bus to their stored value, while
others could be working independently. The program lines are pulsed
under the control of a master unit, which can perform iterations.

The ENIAC's clock speed is 100 kHz.

Mauchly and Eckert apply for a patent. The university disputes this
at first, but they settle. The patent is finally granted in 1964,
but is overturned in 1973, in part because of the previous work by
Atanasoff, whom Mauchly had visited in June 1941.

Feb 1946. The ENIAC is revealed to the public. A panel of lights is
added to help show reporters how fast the machine is and what
it is doing; and apparently Hollywood takes note.

Jul-Aug 1946. The Moore School gives a course on "Theory and Techniques
for Design of Electronic Computers"; lectures are given by
Eckert, Mauchly, Stibitz, von Neumann, and Aiken among others. The
course leads to several projects being started, among them the EDSAC.

Jul 1947. Aiken and his team complete the "Harvard Mark II", a large
programmable calculator using relays both for its 50 floating-
point registers and for the arithmetic unit, 13,000 of them in all.

Sep 1947. A moth (?-1947) makes the mistake of flying into the Harvard
Mark II. A whimsical technician makes the logbook entry "first
actual case of bug being found", and annotates it by taping down the
remains of the moth.

(The term "bug" was of course already in use; that's why it's funny.
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-92), a programmer on the machine, will tell
the story so many times in later years that people will come to think
she found the moth herself.)

Oct 1947. Freddie C. Williams (1911-77) and Thomas Kilburn (1921-),
working under Newman at Manchester University, complete a new
type of digital memory (possibly from an original suggestion by Presper
Eckert), which comes to be called the Williams tube or CRT memory.
It uses the residual charges left on the screen of a CRT after the
electron beam has been fired at it; the bits are read by firing
another beam through them and reading the voltage at an electrode
beyond the screen, then rewriting. The technique is a little
unreliable, but is fast, and also relatively cheap because it can
use existing CRT designs; and it is much more compact than any other
memory existing at the time. A further advantage is that if the CRT
face is exposed to view, the values in the memory are visible!

1947. Frederick Viehe (?-1960), of Los Angeles, applies for a patent
on an invention which is to use magnetic core memory.

1947. Aiken predicts that the United States will need a total of six
electronic digital computers.

c.1947. The magnetic drum memory is independently invented by several
people, and the first examples are constructed.

(As noted below, some early machines will use drums as main memory
rather than secondary memory.)

Jan 1948. Wallace Eckert (1902-71, no relation to Presper Eckert)
of IBM, with his team, completes the "SSEC" ("Selective
Sequence Electronic Calculator"). This technological hybrid has
8 vacuum tube registers, 150 words of relay memory, and 66 paper
tape loops storing a total of 20,000 words. The word size is
20 digits, stored in BCD in the registers.

As with the Harvard Mark I in its later form, the machine can be
switched to read instructions from any of the paper tapes. There
is also some use of plugboards in its programming. But it can
also cache some instructions in memory and read them from there;
thus, in effect, it can operate either as a stored-program computer
(with a very small program memory) or not. Because it can do this,
IBM's point of view is that this is the first computer.

Jun 1948. Williams, Kilburn, and their team complete a prototype
computer. This is the first machine that everyone would
call a computer, because it's the first with a true stored-program
capability. At this point it has no formal name, though one paper
calls it the "Small-Scale Experimental Machine"; later the machine
will become known as the "Manchester Mark I", while its initial
form at this date will be nicknamed the "Baby".

The machine's main memory of 32 32-bit words occupies a single
Williams tube. (There are others on the machine, but less densely
used: one contains only an accumulator.)

The machine's programs are initially entered in binary on a keyboard,
and the output is read in binary from the face of another Williams
tube. Later Turing joins the team (see also the "Pilot ACE", below)
and devises a primitive form of assembly language, one of several
developed at about the same time in different places.

(In the 1990s a replica of the Baby is to be constructed, with
completion scheduled for the 50th anniversary year of 1998.)

Sep 1948. The ENIAC is improved, using ideas from Richard F. Clipper
of the BRL and Nicholas Metropolis of Los Alamos. Each program
line is permanently wired for a different operation, and a new converter
unit allows them to be addressed by a program, the way the function
table can -- thus implementing, in effect, opcodes. With this change,
the program can now be entered via the *function table*.

(This conversion will sometimes be described as making the ENIAC into a
stored-program computer, but the program memory is still read-only.
However, setting up a program now takes a matter of hours, rather than
days as before. The ENIAC will also acquire a magnetic core memory in
1952, but will survive only until 1955.)

Fall 1948. IBM introduces the "IBM 604", a programmable calculator
and card punch using vacuum tubes. It can read a card,
perform up to 60 arithmetic operations in 80 milliseconds, and punch
the results on the same card. The programming is by plugboard.

All machines first mentioned in the chronology from here on are
stored-program computers.

1949-51. Jay W. Forrester and his team at MIT construct the
"Whirlwind" for the US Navy's Office of Research and
Inventions. The vague date is because its advance to full-time
operational status is gradual. Its original form has 3,300 tubes
and 8,900 crystal diodes. It occupies 2,500 square feet of floor.
Its 2,048 16-bit words of CRT memory use up $32,000 worth of tubes
each month. There is also a graphical I/O device consisting of a
CRT (only one dot can be displayed at a time) and a light pen.
This allows the machine to be used for air traffic control.

The Whirlwind is the first computer designed for real-time work;
it can do 500,000 additions or 50,000 multiplications per second.

Spring 1949. Forrester conceives the idea of magnetic core memory as
it is to become commonly used, with a grid of wires used to
address the cores. The first practical form, in 1952-53, will replace
the Whirlwind's CRT memory and render obsolete all types of main
memory then existing.

April 1949. The Manchester Mark I, no longer the Baby as its main
memory has been upgraded to 128 40-bit words (on two CRTs),
acquires a secondary memory in the form of a magnetic drum holding
a further 1,024 words. Also at about this time, two index registers
are added to the machine.

(The index register's contents are added, not to the address taken
from an instruction, but to the entire instruction, thus potentially
changing the opcode! Calling Mel...)

May 1949. Maurice Wilkes (1913-) and his team at Cambridge Uni-
versity complete the "EDSAC" ("Electronic Delay Storage
Automatic Computer"), which is closely based on the EDVAC design
report from von Neumann's group -- Wilkes had attended the 1946
Moore School course. The project is supported both financially
and with technical personnel from J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., a large
British firm in the food and restaurant business.

This is the first operational full-scale stored-program computer,
and is therefore the final candidate for the title of "the first
computer".

Its main memory is of a type that had existed for some years, but
had not been used for a computing machine: the "ultrasonic delay
line" memory. It had been invented originally by William Shockley
of Bell Labs (also one of the co-inventors of the transistor, in
1948), and Presper Eckert had made an improved version in connection
with radar systems. It works by repeatedly converting from the usual
electrical data pulses to ultrasonic pulses directed along, typical-
ly, the length of a tank of mercury; on arrival at the other end,
the pulses are converted back to electrical form. The memory must
be maintained at a particular temperature, and only the few bits
currently in electrical form are accessible. In the EDSAC, 16 tanks
of mercury give a total of 256 35-bit words (or 512 17-bit words).

The clock speed of the EDSAC is 500 kHz; most instructions take
about 1.5 ms to execute. Its I/O is by paper tape, and a set of
constant registers is provided for booting.

The software eventually supports the concept of relocatable proce-
dures with addresses bound at load time.

Aug 1949. Presper Eckert and Mauchly, having formed their own company,
complete the "BINAC" ("Binary Automatic Computer") for the
US Air Force. Designed as a first step to in-flight computers, this
has dual (redundant) processors each with 700 tubes and 512 31-bit
words of memory. Each processor occupies only 4 square feet of floor
space and can do 3,500 additions or 1,000 multiplications per second.

The designers are thinking mostly of their forthcoming "UNIVAC"
("Universal Automatic Computer") and don't spend much time making
the BINAC as reliable as it should be, but the tandem processors
compensate somewhat.

Sep 1949. Aiken's team completes the "Harvard Mark III". This
computer has separate magnetic drum memories for data and
instructions. Only some of the data drums can be addressed by
the CPU; the others serve as secondary memory. The total memory
capacity is 4,000 instructions, 350 16-bit words in the main data
drums, and 4,000 words more in the secondary memory. The machine
contains over 5,000 vacuum tubes and 2,000 relays, and can do about
80 multiplications per second.

May 1950. A group at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington,
England, complete the "Pilot ACE" (pilot project for an
"Automatic Computing Engine"). This had been largely designed by
Turing when he was there in 1945-47; he had left and gone to Manches-
ter because the designs were not being implemented. The main memory
of this computer is in the form of 200 separate ultrasonic delay
lines, thus allowing better addressability than other ultrasonic-
based machines. An additional group of short delay lines serve as
registers, each of which performs a particular operation automatic-
ally on a number directed to it. Most operations then consist simply
of routing a number, or a counted stream of numbers, from one delay
line to another. Punch cards are used for input and output; a drum
will be added later for secondary memory.

(A successor to this machine will be named "DEUCE".)

May 1950. A group at the US National Bureau of Standards, Washington,
which had found itself unable to wait for commercial computers
to appear, completes "SEAC" (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer").
The design was kept simple for the sake of rapid implementation.
To keep the number of vacuum tubes down, 12,000 of the new germanium
diodes are used. The ultrasonic delay line memory holds 512 45-bit
words.

July 1950. SEAC's western counterpart "SWAC", in Los Angeles, is
completed and becomes the fastest computer in the world.
It has Williams tube memory, which has problems because the tubes'
phosphor layers were contaminated by lint at the former mattress
factory where the tubes were made, and only 256 37-bit words of
main memory are operable. But it can do an addition in 64 micro-
seconds, and a drum is added later to augment the memory.

1950. Zuse's Z4 is finally completed and goes into service at
ETH (Federal Polytechnical Institute) in Zurich, Switzerland.
The design is modified so that it can do conditional jumps. The
machine also implements a form of instruction pipelining, with the
program tape being read 2 instructions ahead and various optimiz-
ations performed automatically.

The Z4 remains in use for 5 years at ETH and 5 more in France, and
Zuse soon begins making his machines commercially. He eventually
sells some 300 machines before being bought out by Siemens.

1950. Douglas Hartree (the leading expert in the country on the
specialized computing machines called differential analyzers)
gives his professional opinion to Ferranti Ltd., of Manchester:
as the 3 existing computer projects will suffice to handle all the
calculations that will ever be needed in England, Ferranti would be
well advised to drop the idea of making computers for commercial sale.

Feb 1951. A rather more optimistic Ferranti Ltd. completes the first
commercial computer. This is yet another "Mark I", but is
also known as the "Manchester Mark II", "MUDC", "MUEDC", and "MADAM"!
It has 256 40-bit words of main memory and 16K words of drum, and
includes 8 index registers (they work the same way as on the Manchester
Mark I, which this machine was derived from). An eventual total of 8
of these machines are sold.

Mar 1951. Presper Eckert and Mauchly, having sold their company to
Remington Rand, complete the first "UNIVAC", which is the
first US commercial computer. (The US census department is the first
customer.) It has 1,000 12-digit words of ultrasonic delay line memory
and can do 8,333 additions or 555 multiplications per second; it con-
tains 5,000 tubes and covers 200 square feet of floor. For secondary
memory it uses magnetic tapes of nickel-coated bronze; these are 1/2
inch wide, and store 128 characters per inch.

Fall 1951. The Lyons company receives its reward for supporting the
EDSAC, as T. Raymond Thompson, John Simmons, and their team
complete the "LEO I" ("Lyons Electronic Office I"), which is modeled
closely after the EDSAC. Its ultrasonic memory is 4 times as large,
and avoids the usual temperature dependency by using one delay line
as a master and synchronizing the others to it instead of to a clock.

The Lyons company wants the LEO I for its own use -- payroll, inven-
tory, and so on; it is the first computer used for commercial calcul-
ations. But other companies now turn out to be interested in the LEO,
and Lyons will soon find itself in the computer manufacturing business
as well.

1951. Grace Murray Hopper, now of Remington Rand, invents the
modern concept of the compiler.

1952. The EDVAC is finally completed. It has 4,000 tubes, 10,000
crystal diodes, and 1,024 44-bit words of ultrasonic memory.
Its clock speed is 1 MHz.

1952. The IBM "Defense Calculator", later renamed the "701", the
first IBM computer unless you count the SSEC, enters
production at Poughkeepsie, New York. (The first one is delivered
in March 1953; 19 are sold altogether. The machine is available
with 2,048 or 4,096 36-bit words of CRT memory; it does 2,200 multi-
plications per second.)

(IBM stayed out of the computer market for some time because its
president, Thomas Watson Sr., didn't want the company competing
against its own business machines. His son and eventual successor,
Thomas Jr., disagreed, and realized that if it was the US *military*
that wanted to buy a computer, Thomas Sr. would not say no to them.)

1952. Grace Murray Hopper implements the first compiler, the "A-0".
(But as with "first computer", this is a somewhat arbitrary
designation.)

----------------------------------------------------

A few things have happened since then, too, but this margin is too
narrow...

--
Mark Brader \"The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, econ-
m...@sq.com \ omists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto \ of Europe is extinguished for ever." -- Burke, 1792

This article is in the public domain.

Jim Balter

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

Perry Farmer wrote:

> -> >My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.

> In making comparisons of relative power you can eliminate the task for

> the most part. Normally you compare number of instructions executed over
> time.

And by that measure, the ENIAC was nowhere near the range of a PC.
The ENIAC did 14 multiplies per second. I've got a piece of code
in front of me that finds the integer square root of any 32-bit number
in 500 nanoseconds on my Pentium 166.

--
<J Q B>

Mark Brader

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

I'll repost as a separate article, parallel to this one in the thread, my
chronology of early digital computing. In this article I specifically
discuss the various claims to being the first computer, and the capabilities
of the ENIAC.

Paul H. Henry:
> > I've read several stories about ENIAC, the 30-ton, room-sized monstrosity
> > from 1945 that is considered by some to be the first computer ever made,

What it certainly was was the first digital electronic computing device
that was *well known*. Among other things, a press conference was held
where a bunch of lights were attached to the machine to plainly show the
values in its registers -- thus establishing the way that computers were
depicted in most films and TV shows for something like 40 years.

Matthew D Eayre:

> Computer is a pretty broad term and can refer to a lot of things, but

> generally people mean digital electronic computers.

Some of us would take it to mean *stored-program* digital electronic
computers. By that definition, there weren't any computers until 1948:
watch for the 50th anniversary celebrations next year in Manchester,
England. (And even that machine was considered a prototype; machines
large enough for useful calculation followed a year or so later.)

Others would allow "computer" to include a digital electronic device
controllable by an external, read-only program. By this standard the
ENIAC was indeed the fisrt computer. It was originally programmed by
wiring together holes in a plugboard, and later by setting an array
of rotary switches on a panel.

Other people would delete the word "electronic" and include digital,
externally programmable computing devices with mechanical or electro-
mechanical memory. The first of these to be constructed was the Z3,
built by Konrad Zuse; it read its program from punched tape. (The
tape used was discarded movie film, by the way, not paper tape.)
The first *design* for such a machine was Babbage's Analytical Engine,
which would have been entirely mechanical and used punched cards for
the external program.

Yet another definition deletes the requirement for programmability,
and includes any digital electronic computing device that automatically
performs a sequence of operations. By this standard the claim that:

> ENIAC was a digital electronic computer, but it was not the first.
> The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, built at Iowa State in 1939, was.

is acceptable. The ABC was not programmable in any way. The only
operation it could do was the solution of systems of multiple simultaneous
linear equations, the mathematically equivalent, using a sequence of the
basic arithmetic operations.

The ABC was also the first digital electronic computing device to use the
word "computer" in its name. But I don't think this means anything when
evaluating whether to call it one today. The normal meaning of the word
in those days, and for some time afterwards, was that of a human who
performed computations.

> The display [at the University of Michican] calls ENIAC the first
> "general-purpose" digital electronic computer. Big deal.

But this is indeed a big deal if you believe that, of all the various
characteristics of a modern computer, the most important one is that
it is programmable. From this point of view the word "general-purpose"
is exactly the point, and the ABC was merely a sideshow. As noted, if
you additionally require the program to be stored in writable memory,
then the ENIAC joins the sideshow as well.

> According to the display, ENIAC had 20 accumulators which could each store
> a ten digit number and collectively it could add 5000 numbers per second
> and the multipliers could collectively perform 400 multiplications per
> second. So I guess that gave it a RAM of 200 bytes.

No, that's 200 decimal digits, plus 20 sign bits. If it had stored the
numbers in binary, it would have required 35 bits for each signed number
or, if we take 8 bits to the byte, a total of 87.5 bytes.

I don't know exactly how large the plugboard used for programming was.
In the later form of the machine with the rotary switches, there were
1,200 10-position switches, so the number of possible combinations was
comparable to those representable in 500 bytes of 8 bits. The program
representation was nothing at all like that of later machines.

> I'm not sure how to compare its speed to modern devices.

Well, on one of the Suns we have here, the loop

for (x = 0; x < 100000000; ++x) ;

compiles into 3 instructions for the loop body -- add, compare, and branch
-- and executes in 1.4 seconds. Presumably the number of additions per
second would be something like 200 million -- or say 40,000 times faster
than the ENIAC.

For a particular calculation, of course, the effective ratio of speed may
be significantly different. Among other things, the ENIAC anticipated
the multiple-CPU designs of a much later era to some extent: arithmetic
was done within the register units, and hence could be done in different
registers in parallel.
--
Mark Brader, m...@sq.com, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto
Until 3,000 million years ago we can say not a lot happened
although further study would not come amiss. Then signs of life
appeared, including some large reptiles and, very recently, bipeds.
It is too soon to say whether these bipeds will play an important
part in the world's story. -- Colin Morris in "History Today"

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Greg Goss

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

perry....@thefarm.wa.com (Perry Farmer) wrote:
>You forget the Baggage Engine and the election machines that existed
>before either of these.

Babbage's machines were a theoretical concept that never got built
until the late NINETEEN eighties. (it worked when they (some
university which I forget) built it according to the plans.)

>There were also several looms.

The looms (and the similar pianos) were just a playback device. There
was no response to input. All the data flowed one direction, from the
punchcards to the cloth. For *MY* definition of a computer involves
something more than just a playback.
-------------------------------------------------
.... to let you say "up periscope" in the sea of knowledge that is the Internet.
(from a Rogers Cable "Wave" ad)

Perry Farmer

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

-> Yet another definition deletes the requirement for programmability,
-> and includes any digital electronic computing device that automatically
-> performs a sequence of operations. By this standard the claim that:

-> > ENIAC was a digital electronic computer, but it was not the first.
-> > The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, built at Iowa State in 1939, was.

-> is acceptable. The ABC was not programmable in any way. The only
-> operation it could do was the solution of systems of multiple simulta
-> linear equations, the mathematically equivalent, using a sequence of the
-> basic arithmetic operations.

After going through several books and looking at Eniac, one thing comes
to mind as far as a common term goes - Automatic. This seems to be one
thing that defines it as something different than what preceded it.

Perry

Perry Farmer

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

-> Perry Farmer wrote:

-> > -> >My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.

-> > In making comparisons of relative power you can eliminate the task for
-> > the most part. Normally you compare number of instructions executed
-> > time.

-> And by that measure, the ENIAC was nowhere near the range of a PC.
-> The ENIAC did 14 multiplies per second. I've got a piece of code
-> in front of me that finds the integer square root of any 32-bit number
-> in 500 nanoseconds on my Pentium 166.

-> --
-> <J Q B>

If you go back and look at the original post, you would see that the
original poster had a group of computers that would most likely include
the original pc and not a Pentium.

The poster stated IBM PC, not Intel Pentium!

Perry

Perry Farmer

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

-> Perry Farmer wrote:

-> > You most likely could compare the memory of new against old using the
-> > term bytes since it is just a grouping.

-> As I said, the fact that the ENIAC did not store programs in memory
-> makes the concept not apply. There is also the incommensurability
-> between modern twos-complement binary storage and the decade counters
-> used by early machines; they just ain't the same thing. And, RAM stands
-> for "random access memory", but the memory of the ENIAC was not
-> randomly accessible. One can compare the number of numbers that
-> can be stored, in the different machines, but that does not translate
-> directly into bytes, since many different things can be stored in a
-> byte.

New machines don't store programs in memory either, they store
numberical values of ones and zeros. The machines simply work on these
stored values.

-> You are naively assuming that both the ENIAC and the PC are random
-> access stored program binary devices, but it just ain't so.
-> Nonetheless, the ENIAC stored 20 10-digit numbers and did about 5000
-> adds or 14 multiplies per second, a minute fraction of the capabilities
-> of a PC.

So how does this compare to the PC in the original post, not the Pentium
that was just dug up for comparison purposes?

Perry

Perry Farmer

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

-> Perry Farmer wrote:

-> > You forget the Baggage Engine and the election machines that existed
-> > before either of these.

-> That's "Babbage", but his machines, while designed, were never
-> realized. Nonetheless, Countess Ada Lovelace (for whom the programming
-> language is named) wrote the first computer programs for them.
-> Herman Hollerith's census machines came later.

-> > There were also several looms.

-> Lorillard looms, which inspired Herman Hollerith's punched cards.

-> But long before any of these, in the 1600's, were Leibniz' digital
-> calculators.

-> --
-> <J Q B>

Before any of these were the Chinese.

Perry

Perry Farmer

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Mar 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/15/97

to

-> houghi wrote:

-> > >My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.
-> >

-> > Depends on what you want it to do. For the specific task it was build
-> > for I presume it would be even faster. But do not try to run Windows
-> > on it. Or Dos.
-> > The "computer" they jused to compute the way a bomb would fly during
-> > WWII was a mechanic one, and in calculating these was faster than a
-> > Pentium. But just for this one task.

-> This is simply false. The ENIAC was digital (which is the issue,
-> not "mechanic"), and way way slower than a Pentium, which can do
-> thousands of the same computations simultaneously in the same amount of
-> time.

-> --
-> <J Q B>

The Eniac may be way slower than a Pentium, but then the PC referred to
in the original post is also.

Perry

sj...@aol.com

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Mar 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/16/97

to

>Paul H. Henry:
>> > I've read several stories about ENIAC, the 30-ton, room-sized
monstrosity from 1945 that is considered by some to be the first
computer ever made<< <
>

Mark Brader:
>What it certainly was was the first digital electronic computing
device that was *well known*. Among other things, a press conference

was held where a bunch of lights were attached to the machine to
plainly show the values in its registers -- thus establishing the way
that computers were depicted in most films and TV shows for
something like 40 years.<

Hmmm. I wonder if ENIAC was the model for the title character
in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "EPICAC"? I read that story in
junior high, and was much taken with the story of the feisty
but vulnerable computer who doesn't get the girl in the end.
Thirteen year olds are suckers for romantic tragedy.

Regards from Deborah

http://members.aol.com/SJF37/homepage-sjf37-index.html
http://members.aol.com/SJF37/index.html
http://members.aol.com/SJF37/web-page-links-index.html

Matthew D Eayre

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Mar 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/16/97

to

In article <1997Mar15....@sq.com>, Mark Brader <m...@sq.com> wrote:
>Matthew D Eayre:

>
>Others would allow "computer" to include a digital electronic device
>controllable by an external, read-only program. By this standard the
>ENIAC was indeed the fisrt computer. It was originally programmed by
>wiring together holes in a plugboard, and later by setting an array
>of rotary switches on a panel.

[snip]

>Yet another definition deletes the requirement for programmability,
>and includes any digital electronic computing device that automatically
>performs a sequence of operations. By this standard the claim that:
>
>> ENIAC was a digital electronic computer, but it was not the first.
>> The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, built at Iowa State in 1939, was.
>
>is acceptable. The ABC was not programmable in any way. The only
>operation it could do was the solution of systems of multiple simultaneous
>linear equations, the mathematically equivalent, using a sequence of the
>basic arithmetic operations.
>

But don't all computer operations eventually come down to the basic
arithmetic operations? That and shuffling numbers around?

[snip]

>> The display [at the University of Michican] calls ENIAC the first
>> "general-purpose" digital electronic computer. Big deal.
>
>But this is indeed a big deal if you believe that, of all the various
>characteristics of a modern computer, the most important one is that
>it is programmable. From this point of view the word "general-purpose"
>is exactly the point, and the ABC was merely a sideshow. As noted, if
>you additionally require the program to be stored in writable memory,
>then the ENIAC joins the sideshow as well.
>

And if you believe the most important characteristics of a modern computer
are the use of binary numbers, electronic memory and vacuum tubes (or
their modern equivalent) then the ABC was the first. As you have said, it
really depends on one's definitions and where one wants to make cut-offs.
Granted that all science is built on the work of predecessors, but
considering that Mauchly clearly based much of his ENIAC work directly on
the work of Atanasoff and Berry, it seems a bit strange to me to declare
the starting point at ENIAC.

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/16/97

to

-> perry....@thefarm.wa.com (Perry Farmer) wrote:
-> >You forget the Baggage Engine and the election machines that existed
-> >before either of these.

-> Babbage's machines were a theoretical concept that never got built
-> until the late NINETEEN eighties. (it worked when they (some
-> university which I forget) built it according to the plans.)

-> >There were also several looms.

-> The looms (and the similar pianos) were just a playback device. There
-> was no response to input. All the data flowed one direction, from the
-> punchcards to the cloth. For *MY* definition of a computer involves
-> something more than just a playback.
-> -------------------------------------------------
-> .... to let you say "up periscope" in the sea of knowledge that is th
-> (from a Rogers Cable "Wave" ad)

Actually there was a response to input, just that there were no inputs
to cause directional changes.

The definition of what a computer is, actually has a parallel in what a
radio is. Take away the output device and do you have a radio?

Perry

Hoyt

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Mar 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/16/97

to

sj...@aol.com wrote in article
<19970316182...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...
> >Paul H. Henry:

>
> Hmmm. I wonder if ENIAC was the model for the title character
> in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "EPICAC"? I read that story in
> junior high, and was much taken with the story of the feisty
> but vulnerable computer who doesn't get the girl in the end.
> Thirteen year olds are suckers for romantic tragedy.
>

I do recall an anecdote about a computer named Braniac and a Superman comic
book character of the same name. I think the character came first.

I thought epicac was some kind of medicine for babies.

73,
Hoyt

Shack Toms

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Mar 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/17/97

to

mea...@frogger.rs.itd.umich.edu (Matthew D Eayre) wrote:

>But don't all computer operations eventually come down to the basic
>arithmetic operations? That and shuffling numbers around?

Do you really need anything other than a subtract instruction?
(Together with sufficiently rich addressing modes.)

I haven't really done the work to verify this, it just seemed
like it would work. With subtract, you can get a "clear" (x -
x), a "negate" (0 - x), an "add" (x - (0 - y)). By adding to a
base address you can get a table lookup. By looking up amounts
to subtract from the program counter you can get conditional
branching. And so on...

Interestingly, an add instruction isn't as useful.

Shack

Chris Stassen

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Mar 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/17/97

to

Someone else (attributions lost) wrote:
>> Nonetheless, the ENIAC stored 20 10-digit numbers and did about 5000

>> adds or 14 multiplies per second, a minute fraction of the capabilities

>> of a PC.

Perry Farmer replied:

> So how does this compare to the PC in the original post, not the Pentium
> that was just dug up for comparison purposes?

The PC is still faster, but the gap (about 1-3 orders of magnitude)
depends greatly on the benchmark you use. The 8086 is optimized
for smaller numbers than the ones ENIAC works with.

My rough estimates for an 8086 running at just under 4Mhz (which I
recall to be the original IBM PC):

1,200,000 per second - 16-bit ADD (register to register)
100,000 per second - 16-bit ADD (memory to memory)
50,000 per second - 32-bit add program (mem-mem)

30,000 per second - 16-bit MUL (register to register)
25,000 per second - 16-bit MUL (memory to memory)
5,000 per second - 32-bit multiply program (mem-mem)

If you make the PC work with ENIAC-sized numbers (32-bit ~ 10-digit),
then you are timing small assembly-language programs rather than
single CPU instructions. I used a very rough estimate of the
instructions that would be involved in such a program.

In later processors, these would be single machine instructions.
For example, the 8086 takes about 120 clock cycles for a single
16-bit multiply, and at least four such would be required for a
32-bit multiplication. The 80386 performs a 32-bit multiply in
a single instruction that takes under 40 cycles (of a clock that
is much faster than the 8086's!).

--
Chris Stassen
NOTE: "Reply" address of this message is bogus, for the sake of avoiding
E-mail
spam. In order to reach me via E-mail, replace "occupant" with my first
name.

Jim Balter

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Mar 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/17/97

to

Perry Farmer wrote:

>
> -> Perry Farmer wrote:
>
> -> > You forget the Baggage Engine and the election machines that existed
> -> > before either of these.
>

> -> That's "Babbage", but his machines, while designed, were never
> -> realized. Nonetheless, Countess Ada Lovelace (for whom the programming
> -> language is named) wrote the first computer programs for them.
> -> Herman Hollerith's census machines came later.
>

> -> > There were also several looms.
>

> -> Lorillard looms, which inspired Herman Hollerith's punched cards.
>
> -> But long before any of these, in the 1600's, were Leibniz' digital
> -> calculators.
>

> -> --
> -> <J Q B>
>

> Before any of these were the Chinese.

I've never seen an automated abacus.

--
<J Q B>

Jim Balter

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Mar 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/17/97

to

Perry Farmer wrote:
>
> -> houghi wrote:
>
> -> > >My understanding is that it was in the range of the PC.
> -> >
> -> > Depends on what you want it to do. For the specific task it was build
> -> > for I presume it would be even faster. But do not try to run Windows
> -> > on it. Or Dos.
> -> > The "computer" they jused to compute the way a bomb would fly during
> -> > WWII was a mechanic one, and in calculating these was faster than a
> -> > Pentium. But just for this one task.
>
> -> This is simply false. The ENIAC was digital (which is the issue,
> -> not "mechanic"), and way way slower than a Pentium, which can do
> -> thousands of the same computations simultaneously in the same amount of
> -> time.
>

> -> --
> -> <J Q B>
>

> The Eniac may be way slower than a Pentium, but then the PC referred to
> in the original post is also.

By several fewer orders of magnitude. Not to mention that
"the PC referred to" was not identified, but I believe you did refer
to a magazine article a year ago, when Pentiums existed. When someone
compares something to "a PC", there is no reason to take that to refer
to something that hasn't been built in years and can only be found
in junkheaps. But even *those* PC's were more powerful than ENIACs.

--
<J Q B>

Jim Balter

unread,

Mar 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/17/97

to

Perry Farmer wrote:
>
> -> Perry Farmer wrote:
>

> -> > You most likely could compare the memory of new against old using the
> -> > term bytes since it is just a grouping.
>
> -> As I said, the fact that the ENIAC did not store programs in memory
> -> makes the concept not apply. There is also the incommensurability
> -> between modern twos-complement binary storage and the decade counters
> -> used by early machines; they just ain't the same thing. And, RAM stands
> -> for "random access memory", but the memory of the ENIAC was not
> -> randomly accessible. One can compare the number of numbers that
> -> can be stored, in the different machines, but that does not translate
> -> directly into bytes, since many different things can be stored in a
> -> byte.
>
> New machines don't store programs in memory either, they store
> numberical values of ones and zeros. The machines simply work on these
> stored values.

They store a representation of a program. There are no ones and
zeros, only electrical signals, but this is no way to understand
programmable computers. In any case, ENIAC did not contain a program or
any representation of one, which is the point that your quibble doesn't
address.

> -> You are naively assuming that both the ENIAC and the PC are random
> -> access stored program binary devices, but it just ain't so.

> -> Nonetheless, the ENIAC stored 20 10-digit numbers and did about 5000
> -> adds or 14 multiplies per second, a minute fraction of the capabilities
> -> of a PC.

>
> So how does this compare to the PC in the original post, not the Pentium
> that was just dug up for comparison purposes?

Since you are the one who said that the ENIAC was comparable to a PC,
how the heck do I know which one you were referring to? But it doesn't
matter; an IBM XT was considerably more powerful than an ENIAC.

--
<J Q B>

sj...@aol.com

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

In article <01bc3265$93e3d940$462292cf@hoyt>,
"Hoyt" <hdu...@worldnet.att.net> writes:

>
>I thought epicac was some kind of medicine for babies.<

I think it's Impecac. Also used by adolescent and adult
bulemics to emulate Karen Carpenter's deathstyle.

Edward Rice

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

In article <5gg94a$4...@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>,

mea...@frogger.rs.itd.umich.edu (Matthew D Eayre) wrote:

>But don't all computer operations eventually come down to the basic
>arithmetic operations? That and shuffling numbers around?

Yes, but what about an atomic instruction on an early computer that
would...

Add (A) to (B) putting the results in (C) and branching to D if the
result was negative?

Is that one instruction? Five? With what should it be compared on a
modern computer? And if a modern computer has a full Cobol Edit
instruction, as a fair number do, then would the performance of that
computer be compared to the entire subroutine necessary to emulate that
single instruction on an older (or less CISC) system?

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

-> Perry Farmer wrote:
-> >

-> > -> Perry Farmer wrote:
-> >

-> > -> > You forget the Baggage Engine and the election machines that e
-> > -> > before either of these.
-> >
-> > -> That's "Babbage", but his machines, while designed, were never
-> > -> realized. Nonetheless, Countess Ada Lovelace (for whom the prog
-> > -> language is named) wrote the first computer programs for them.
-> > -> Herman Hollerith's census machines came later.
-> >
-> > -> > There were also several looms.
-> >
-> > -> Lorillard looms, which inspired Herman Hollerith's punched cards.
-> >
-> > -> But long before any of these, in the 1600's, were Leibniz' digital
-> > -> calculators.
-> >
-> > -> --

-> > -> <J Q B>

-> >
-> > Before any of these were the Chinese.

-> I've never seen an automated abacus.

In the strict definition of "Computer", the abacus may well fit the
bill. The first use of the term appears to be about 1646 according to
Webster's and simply means - one that computes.

While not an ancient term, it appears that the term was used to identify
modern day machines by function, not invented to fulfill a need for a
term not already in existence.

Perry

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

-> > -> As I said, the fact that the ENIAC did not store programs in memory
-> > -> makes the concept not apply. There is also the incommensurability
-> > -> between modern twos-complement binary storage and the decade cou
-> > -> used by early machines; they just ain't the same thing. And, RA
-> > -> for "random access memory", but the memory of the ENIAC was not
-> > -> randomly accessible. One can compare the number of numbers that
-> > -> can be stored, in the different machines, but that does not tran
-> > -> directly into bytes, since many different things can be stored in a
-> > -> byte.
-> >
-> > New machines don't store programs in memory either, they store
-> > numberical values of ones and zeros. The machines simply work on these
-> > stored values.

-> They store a representation of a program. There are no ones and
-> zeros, only electrical signals, but this is no way to understand
-> programmable computers. In any case, ENIAC did not contain a program or
-> any representation of one, which is the point that your quibble doesn't
-> address.

Oh but it did. Instead of being hard wired into Rom or stored on a hard
drive it was indeed stored on plug board.

The difference in the case of the ENIAC is that the program existed in
the form of how the plug board was wired and was stored on paper for
reference to the plug board. The program in essence was the routing of
instructions.

This is different then the modern day concepts which showed up with
EDSAC and EDVAC.

In their cases they stored the instructions.

However a stored program is a stored program, doesn't matter if it is
represented by stored cpu instructions or stored routing information for
those instructions. It doesn't matter if they exist on magnetic media,
paper tape, or punch cards. They still represent a program which is
simply information on how to work out a sequence of operations to be
performed for a given task.

Perry

Greg Goss

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

"Hoyt" <hdu...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>sj...@aol.com wrote in article

>>
>> Hmmm. I wonder if ENIAC was the model for the title character
>> in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "EPICAC"? I read that story in
>> junior high, and was much taken with the story of the feisty
>> but vulnerable computer who doesn't get the girl in the end.
>> Thirteen year olds are suckers for romantic tragedy.
>>
>
>I do recall an anecdote about a computer named Braniac and a Superman comic
>book character of the same name. I think the character came first.

All of the computers of that era were acronyms ending in "Numeric
Integrator And Computer".

There was a real computer built called "maniac" though I forget what
the acronym stood for.
-----------------------------------------------------
Mindlink R.I.P . 1986-1997 Ten years at one ISP.
We shall remember our cyber village. Sigh!

Edward Rice

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

In article <3329FD...@netcom.com>,
Jim Balter <j...@netcom.com> wrote:

>Perry Farmer wrote:
>
>> There were also several looms.
>

>Lorillard looms, which inspired Herman Hollerith's punched cards.
>

>But long before any of these, in the 1600's, were Leibniz' digital

>calculators.

P. Lorillard makes cigarettes. M. Jacquard made looms. Some are still in
operation -- some OLD ones, I mean. Jacquard still makes looms, and for a
while the A. M. Jacquard division of Addressograph-Multigraph made
computers.

If you're even in Kannapolis, NC (not far north of Charlotte), the Canon
Mills textile factory offers a fantastic tour, and people who go on the
tour get (or got, when I was there) a souvenir washcloth made on a Jacquard
non-computerized loom. (The new ones are computerized, the wheel is now
full circle.)

Nick Spalding

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

.Jim Balter <j...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
> They store a representation of a program. There are no ones and

> zeros, only electrical signals, but this is no way to understand

> programmable computers. In any case, ENIAC did not contain a program or

> any representation of one, which is the point that your quibble doesn't

> address.

I thought ENIAC was programmed with a plug board or boards, all same
unit record machines. I certainly regard a plug board I made up to
make a 421 tab evaluate square roots a program. What ENIAC did not
have was the ability to modify the program while running but that is
anathema these days anyway!
--
Nick Spalding

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

-> Someone else (attributions lost) wrote:
-> >> Nonetheless, the ENIAC stored 20 10-digit numbers and did about 5000
-> >> adds or 14 multiplies per second, a minute fraction of the capabil

-> >> of a PC.

-> Perry Farmer replied:
-> > So how does this compare to the PC in the original post, not the Pe
-> > that was just dug up for comparison purposes?

-> The PC is still faster, but the gap (about 1-3 orders of magnitude)
-> depends greatly on the benchmark you use. The 8086 is optimized
-> for smaller numbers than the ones ENIAC works with.

-> My rough estimates for an 8086 running at just under 4Mhz (which I
-> recall to be the original IBM PC):

-> 1,200,000 per second - 16-bit ADD (register to register)
-> 100,000 per second - 16-bit ADD (memory to memory)
-> 50,000 per second - 32-bit add program (mem-mem)

-> 30,000 per second - 16-bit MUL (register to register)
-> 25,000 per second - 16-bit MUL (memory to memory)
-> 5,000 per second - 32-bit multiply program (mem-mem)

-> If you make the PC work with ENIAC-sized numbers (32-bit ~ 10-digit),
-> then you are timing small assembly-language programs rather than
-> single CPU instructions. I used a very rough estimate of the
-> instructions that would be involved in such a program.

Typical comparison benchmarks often use the number of cpu instructions
over time. This is where we probably need to make the comparison also.

If we compare Macs to Apples this way, and if we compare Amigas to Macs
this way, and if we compare the Eagle's computer to that of the modern
pc in this way, then it is logical to compare the ENIAC to the pc in the
same way.

So how do they compare - instructions per second?

Perry

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/18/97

to

-> > -> This is simply false. The ENIAC was digital (which is the issue,
-> > -> not "mechanic"), and way way slower than a Pentium, which can do
-> > -> thousands of the same computations simultaneously in the same am
-> > -> time.

-> >
-> > -> --
-> > -> <J Q B>
-> >

-> > The Eniac may be way slower than a Pentium, but then the PC referre
-> > in the original post is also.

-> By several fewer orders of magnitude. Not to mention that
-> "the PC referred to" was not identified, but I believe you did refer
-> to a magazine article a year ago, when Pentiums existed. When someone
-> compares something to "a PC", there is no reason to take that to refer
-> to something that hasn't been built in years and can only be found
-> in junkheaps. But even *those* PC's were more powerful than ENIACs.

There is several reasons to take those that are suppose to be in the
dump as a comparison. One is that the original poster grouped a set of
computers that existed in the same time period.

Second, he stated "IBM PC". With that statement he further cut done on
the reference. The new Pentium's are not "IBM PCs", they are Pentiums
and when someone refers to what type of computer they have, they often
use the term "IBM" to infer it is IBM compatible, or they will often
state something like Pentium, 586, and so on.

The term "Personal Computer" actually predates the "IBM PC" which is
recognized by those of us who owned them.

Perry

John Grimes

unread,

Mar 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/19/97

to

sj...@aol.com writes:

>>Paul H. Henry:
>>> > I've read several stories about ENIAC, the 30-ton, room-sized
>monstrosity from 1945 that is considered by some to be the first
>computer ever made<< <
>>

>Hmmm. I wonder if ENIAC was the model for the title character

>in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "EPICAC"? I read that story in
>junior high, and was much taken with the story of the feisty
>but vulnerable computer who doesn't get the girl in the end.
>Thirteen year olds are suckers for romantic tragedy.

Isn't Epicac a commercial emetic? Would that somehow reflect a
13 year old boy's reaction to a romantic tragedy?

john

Jeffrey Quan

unread,

Mar 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/19/97

to

Actually it's ipecac. Syrup of ipecac may be administered to induce
vomiting when advised by a Poison Control Center (PCC) or attending
physician. Ipecac is a poison by itself and usually must be diluted before
administration.

When in doubt about inducing vomiting, call 911, (or local emergency
medical service if no access to 911) or the nearest PCC.

Best regards from Jeff
(a full-fledged, card-carrying, Emergency Medical Technician in Texas)

sj...@aol.com wrote in article
<19970318135...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/19/97

to

-> In article <5gg94a$4...@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>,
-> mea...@frogger.rs.itd.umich.edu (Matthew D Eayre) wrote:

-> >But don't all computer operations eventually come down to the basic
-> >arithmetic operations? That and shuffling numbers around?

-> Yes, but what about an atomic instruction on an early computer that
-> would...

-> Add (A) to (B) putting the results in (C) and branching to D if the
-> result was negative?

-> Is that one instruction? Five? With what should it be compared on a
-> modern computer? And if a modern computer has a full Cobol Edit
-> instruction, as a fair number do, then would the performance of that
-> computer be compared to the entire subroutine necessary to emulate that
-> single instruction on an older (or less CISC) system?

This brings up an interesting point, since instructions completed don't
always equal machine cycles necessary for their completion.

So do we base a comparison on number of instructions completed or number
of machine cycles possible within a given time?

I would think it would be machine cycles times number of paths that can
contain differentiating data over time.

Perry

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/19/97

to

-> .Jim Balter <j...@netcom.com> wrote:
-> >
-> > They store a representation of a program. There are no ones and
-> > zeros, only electrical signals, but this is no way to understand
-> > programmable computers. In any case, ENIAC did not contain a progr
-> > any representation of one, which is the point that your quibble doe
-> > address.

-> I thought ENIAC was programmed with a plug board or boards, all same
-> unit record machines. I certainly regard a plug board I made up to
-> make a 421 tab evaluate square roots a program. What ENIAC did not
-> have was the ability to modify the program while running but that is
-> anathema these days anyway!
-> --
-> Nick Spalding

Nick,

That is how it was programmed. Those that followed it stored their
programs as a set of operating instructions. However this difference
doesn't mean that the first was not programmed.

Perry

sj...@aol.com

unread,

Mar 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/19/97

to

>Hmmm. I wonder if ENIAC was the model for the title character
>in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "EPICAC"? I read that story in
>junior high, and was much taken with the story of the feisty
>but vulnerable computer who doesn't get the girl in the end.
>Thirteen year olds are suckers for romantic tragedy.

>>Isn't Epicac a commercial emetic? Would that somehow
reflect a 13 year old boy's reaction to a romantic tragedy?<<

As other have confirmed, Ipecac is the emetic. (Actually,
I made a typo in a previous posting, and spelled it
"Impecac.")

And by the way, at the age of 13, I was a girl - excuse me,
young woman - not a boy.

Chris Stassen

unread,

Mar 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/19/97

to Perry Farmer

[Posted and E-mailed]

Perry Farmer wrote:
[In response to my benchmarks for ENIAC versus original IBM PC
for adding/multiplying numbers.]

> Typical comparison benchmarks often use the number of cpu instructions
> over time.

Those sorts of benchmarks are only meaningful when comparing
CPUs with equivalent instruction sets, though. Otherwise you
are "comparing apples and oranges" -- such a benchmark can be
misleading, because there might be a great disparity in the
number of "instructions" required to accomplish a given task.
(And in that case, a benchmark of the time required to perform
a specific function -- which is what I supplied last time --
is preferred.)

ENIAC operated on a 200ms cycle time (5,000 cycles per second).
Would you count that as 5,000 "instructions" per second?

Maybe that number is too small. An ADD operation (one cycle)
used only two of the 20 accumulators. I don't think that the
other 18 accumulators had to sit idle (as do the uninvolved
registers of a modern CPU). ENIAC could probably perform
ten parallel ADD operations in one cycle. Would you count
that as 50,000 "instructions" per second?

Maybe that number is too large. It was probably impossible
to have a (meaningful) program that constantly used all of the
accumulators. And other operations (multiply = 2.6ms, divide
= 25ms) occupied more (four) accumulators and were much slower.

Do you see the problems with converting this into a single
number that can be used for comparison purposes? You would
have to guess at "typical" usage patterns. The most that
I'd feel comfortable claiming is that the first rough estimate
(5,000 "instructions" per second) is within a factor of ten
of what most ENIAC programs could achieve.

For comparison: the original TRS-80 had a 1.77Mhz Z-80 that
took 4-10 clock cycles for most of the simple instructions
(about 1/4 million instructions per second), and the original
IBM PC had a 4.77Mhz 8088 that took 2-6 clock cycles for most
of the simple instructions (about 1 million instructions per
second, though as little as 500,000 for slower memory-access
stuff).

However, all of three (ENIAC, Z-80, 8088) have very different
instruction sets, so I'm not sure of the validity of such a
comparison. The 8088 in particular has all sorts of complex
address computations built-in to the instruction set. (Even
the Z80 had instructons which operated on the value out of
memory at a specified offset from an index register -- meaning
that an "add" operation was involved in order to figure out
where to get the value from memory. These instructions
involving IX/IY all take on order of 20 clock cycles.)

See:

Z-80 instruction set with timing values:
http://www.freeflight.com/fms/MSX/Z80-2.txt

TRS-80 hardware description:
http://www.kjsl.com/model1hw.html

80*86 instruction set with timing values:
http://www.vadsbogymn.mariestad.se/tillval/c-kurs/pcgpc/intel.txt

Hardware description of many computers (in French, but the
long table is quite readable):
http://www.mlink.net/~shuot/hist.html

--
Chris Stassen
NOTE: The "Reply-To" address of this message is bogus, for the sake

Seth & Ted Rosenberg

unread,

Mar 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/19/97

to

now on the IBM 650, much later than ENIAIC, an add of two numbers might
go as follows:
1) take number from card buffer and place in distributor
2) take number from distributor and place in accumulator
3) read card to card buffer
4) if card is not data goto [3]
5) take number from card buffer and place in distributor
6) take number from distributor and add to accumulator
9) test upper accumulator for overflow
10) if overflow goto error handling routine
11) take number from accumulator and place in distributor
12) take number from distributor and send to output device (printer or
card punch)

That, of course does not show the overhead of maintaining and reading
the program

Now if we wanted to actually STORE any of these numbers, we would have
to place each one in a stated memory location. To store or retrieve, we
would have to optimize to allow for the long waits that might occur
waiting for the drum to come around again. As for core memory, we had
ONE word of it, sorta like a single register which was much faster than
the other registers

Ted
--
Seth Aaron Rosenberg Theodore M. Rosenberg
Webmaster
Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
Http://www.tc.net/~poly
Seth_Ro...@acm.org TedRos...@ibm.net

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 20, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/20/97

to

-> [Posted and E-mailed]

-> Perry Farmer wrote:
-> [In response to my benchmarks for ENIAC versus original IBM PC
-> for adding/multiplying numbers.]
-> > Typical comparison benchmarks often use the number of cpu instructions
-> > over time.

-> Those sorts of benchmarks are only meaningful when comparing
-> CPUs with equivalent instruction sets, though. Otherwise you
-> are "comparing apples and oranges" -- such a benchmark can be
-> misleading, because there might be a great disparity in the
-> number of "instructions" required to accomplish a given task.
-> (And in that case, a benchmark of the time required to perform
-> a specific function -- which is what I supplied last time --
-> is preferred.)

Replied to in email.

Basically I believe the best comparison would be machine cycles times
data paths.

Perry

curtis cameron

unread,

Mar 20, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/20/97

to

Greg Goss wrote:
>
> "Hoyt" <hdu...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >sj...@aol.com wrote in article
> >>

> >> Hmmm. I wonder if ENIAC was the model for the title character
> >> in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "EPICAC"? I read that story in
> >> junior high, and was much taken with the story of the feisty
> >> but vulnerable computer who doesn't get the girl in the end.
> >> Thirteen year olds are suckers for romantic tragedy.
>

> All of the computers of that era were acronyms ending in "Numeric
> Integrator And Computer".

IIRC, the "C" in ENIAC actually stood for "calculator". A computer
in those days was a lady who sat in a room all day long and
computed ballistic trajectories.

-Curtis Cameron

Klaus Ole Kristiansen

unread,

Mar 21, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/21/97

to

curtis cameron <curt...@airmail.net> writes:

Remember Superman's robot enemy Brainiac?

Klaus O K

Jim Ward

unread,

Mar 21, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/21/97

to

sj...@aol.com wrote:

: And by the way, at the age of 13, I was a girl - excuse me,

: young woman - not a boy.

According to Webster's a girl is a "young unmarried woman". Are you
indicating that you married young?

Perry Farmer

unread,

Mar 21, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/21/97

to

-> > >> Hmmm. I wonder if ENIAC was the model for the title character
-> > >> in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "EPICAC"? I read that story in
-> > >> junior high, and was much taken with the story of the feisty
-> > >> but vulnerable computer who doesn't get the girl in the end.
-> > >> Thirteen year olds are suckers for romantic tragedy.
-> >
-> > All of the computers of that era were acronyms ending in "Numeric
-> > Integrator And Computer".

-> IIRC, the "C" in ENIAC actually stood for "calculator". A computer
-> in those days was a lady who sat in a room all day long and
-> computed ballistic trajectories.

-> -Curtis Cameron

Correct!

ASCC (MARK 1, 1944) - Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator

ENIAC (1946) - Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator

EDSAC (1949) - Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator

EDVAC (1949) - Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer

Unless my sources are incorrect it appears EDVAC is the first of the
early series to use "Computer".

UNIVAC (1952) - Universal Automatic Computer

Gamma 3 (1952 - First computer to use semiconductors in the
form of germanium diodes.

Perry

sj...@aol.com

unread,

Mar 22, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/22/97

to

*snort*

When I was 13, it was 1974, and the women's movement
had appeared on the scene - "Ms." had been in circulation
for over a year.

Webster had been dead for, what? something like 200
years.

:-)

John Grimes

unread,

Mar 25, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/25/97

to

sj...@aol.com writes:

>>Hmmm. I wonder if ENIAC was the model for the title character

>>in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "EPICAC"? I read that story in

>>junior high, and was much taken with the story of the feisty

>>but vulnerable computer who doesn't get the girl in the end.

>>Thirteen year olds are suckers for romantic tragedy.

>>>Isn't Epicac a commercial emetic? Would that somehow

>reflect a 13 year old boy's reaction to a romantic tragedy?<<

>As other have confirmed, Ipecac is the emetic. (Actually,
>I made a typo in a previous posting, and spelled it
>"Impecac.")

>And by the way, at the age of 13, I was a girl - excuse me,

>young woman - not a boy.

Yes, my dear, I've seen the picture, and unless it's a cunning
forgery, clearly thou art a woman.

I think what I was referring to was the lack of gender
pronoun in your post, implying that any thirteen year old would
have been a sucker for the romantic tragedy and contrasting it
with my impression of a 13 year old _boy_'s reaction to the
scenario you outlined. I figure it'd be something like

"And there was this cool computer that talked, but some dumb
old girl kept talking to it til it broke."

john, perhaps a tad developmentally delayed, but working on it.