AD 2324 Social Science Section 2: General-Purpose Electronic Computers

The calculations to be performed using electricity was considered to have been a result of

coalition of physicists and mathematicians in the US during WWII

In 1943, the US artillery guns had a problem of ..

lacking firing tables

The firing table tells these variables

distance, wind speed, direction, humidity, elevation, temperature

The trajectory of a shell can be easily represented as a ...

straightforward differential equation

Most firing tables were created primarily at the ...

Ballistics Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground

Dr. Herman Goldstine

assigned to supervise the computer team in 1943 to compute firing tables more quickly

The Differential Analyzer had one major problem

it broke down too often

Goldstine sent his wife Adele to ...

recruit students with math skills who could help out in Pennsylvania

John Mauchly

newly hired instructor at the University of Pennsylvania that was fascinated by a machine using only electrical circuits

John Mauchly was ignored by the administration of the U of Pennsylvania thinkings...

it was too outlandish to consider

Mauchly was joined by ..

J. Presper Eckert, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania

Mauchly knew the only reason that the proposal to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds was even getting considered was due to ...

the exigencies of teh war

ENIAC

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

Who gave the funding for the start of the ENIAC

the Aberdeen Proving Grounds directors

The ENIAC had 12 people who were each ...

assigned to engineer a specific piece

Eckert's major point of concern was over the ...

vacuum tube

vacuum tube had a similar appearance to ...

the common lightbulb

The vacuum tubes were notorious for ...

breaking down

The ENIAC was superior to previous calculators in at least two ways

1. Speed due to being done all electronically

2. ability to do conditional branching

The ENIAC was a general purpose computing machine meaning ...

it could perform any type of calculation

The 6 original women programmers of the ENIAC

Frances Bilas

Spence, Jean Bartik, Ruch Lichterman Teitelbaum,

Kathleen McNulty, Elizabeth Snyder Holberton,

and Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer.

ENIAC was more complex than necessary since...

it was designed and built hastily due to wartime urgency

John von Neumann

famous mathematician who helped design the Atomic bomb

von Neumann and Goldstine met coincidentally at

the Aberdeen train station

EDVAC

Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer

After von Neumann asserted more influence on the team ___ and ___ felt more like outsiders

Eckert and Mauchly

The First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC

1945; the summarized plan for the EDVAC

The EDVAC was supposedly documented to have 3 key innovations different from the ENIAC

1. larger memory and would perform arithmetic in binary

2. stored program concept

3. instructions would be set as a system of binary codes, that would eliminate the need to rewire the machine for every calculation

The ENIAC completed version was ....

30 tons, 1,800 sq ft, 48 foot tall wooden cabinets, arranged in a U-shape

In 1846, the ENIAC ...

was revealed to the public at a press conference

The ENIAC continued in commission until...

1955 in the Aberdeen Proving Grounds

"Moore School Lectures"

a summer school sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania to teach the principles of electronic computing to interested students

IAS Computer

a working stored program computer built by von Neumann's team in 1951

The problem with the von Neumann architecture

the ideas of electronic computing is believed to have originated solely from von Neumann

England had a pool of engineers with experience building electronic devices because ...

of the codebreaking efforts during the WWII

Max Newman

professor of Mathematics at Manchester University

Williams tube

cathode-ray tube, memory storage,

Manchester Baby

Built buy Newman's group to be used as a testbed for the William tube technology and the stored-program concept

The 'baby' ran its first successful program, marking its...

self as the world's first stored-program computer

Maurice Wilkes

a physicist at Cambridge University

Wilkes decided to use a ... instead of a Williams tube in his computer

mercury delay line

EDSAC

Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator

The EDSAC completed its first program successfully in May 6, 1949 making it the ...

first practical stored program computer

The _____ had a contractual obligation to build the EDVAC

The University of Pennsylvania

Eckert and Mauchly resigned from the Uni. of Pennsylvania due to ...

the disputes over patent rights, where the two hoped to commercialize their invention

The EDVAC ran its first successful program in 1951 but it was too late to be considered the ...

first stored-program computer

Eckert and Mauchly rejected the job offers from ...

the IBM

EMCC

The Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation

UNIVAC

Universal Automatic Computer; first commercially successful electronic digital computer

Eckert and Mauchly failed to raise funds to develop the UNIVAC by having....

fixed price contracts

fixed price contract

buyer pays for product at a predetermined price regardless of the input price

cost-plus-developmental contract

buyer pays the seller for its development expenses, plus an additional pre-negotiated amount for profit

EMCC had negotiated 270,000 with the US Bureau of Standards however, they spent...

$980,000 developing it

BINAC

Binary Automatic Computer; developed for the Northrup Aircraft Company

The BINAC did not work properly in Northrup when reassembled possibly due to ...

damage in transit or reassembling it incorrectly

In 1950, Eckert and Mauchly approached the IBM but they declined since...

they were already developing their own lin e of computers

Remington Rand offered Eckert and Mauchly ....

to pay off EMCC's debts and buy the company outright

In ___ the UNIVAC was completed.

March 1951

The UNIVAC was superior to the EMCC in these ways

used high-speed magnetic tape for input and output and used only 5,000 vacuum tubes

How did Remington Rand pull of a publicity stunt for the election in November 1952 with CBS?

He persuaded CBS to predict the results, voting that Eisenhower would have 438 electoral votes

The final outcome of the president elections in 1952 were ...

Eisenhower with 442 to 39

From 1951, ... became the primary focus of the IBM

developing electronic computers

The IBM 701

hired John von Neumann, resulting in a similar design to the IAS and used William Tubes

The IBM 702

announced in Sept 1953; marketed towards business data processing

The IBM 650

used magnetic drums for storage that were slower but more reliable

By 1955, the IBM surpassed the UNIVAC due to the...

success of the IBM 650

Remington Rand had troubles within itself in 1952 due to ...

the infighting between the UNIVAC and ERA divisions of the company

The Remington Rand's upper management was afraid that ..

computers would compete with its existing installed base of office equipment

Remington Rand was eventually acquired by ...

Sperry Gyroscope

The Burroughs company became an important force in the computing industry by ...

buying the a startup company, the Electrodata who had already created a computer

NCR bought the ... Corporation in 1953

Computer Research Corporation

Control Data Corporation was ...

founded by former Sperry Rand employees

By the 1950s there were 8 players in the computer industry

IBM, Sperry Rand,

Burroughs, NCR, RCA, Honeywell, General Electric,

and CDC.

Explain "IBM and the Seven Dwarfs"

IBM had 65 percent of the market share

Explain "BUNCH"

IBM's competitors consisting of Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, CDC, and Honeywell.

The CPU is the ...

"brains" of the computer that coordinated the operations of the computer

Vacuum tubes were able to ...

be turned off and on rapidly, simulating counting and thus performing arithmetic

Shortcomings of the vacuum tubes

requires alot of electricity, generates alot of heat, and has a short lifespan

The transistor

performs same function of vacuum tubes; smaller, more durable, requries less power

Transistors were invented in 1940 at ...

Bell Labs, a subsidiary of AT&T

Microchips were invented independently by

Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby

Microchip

combines multiple transistors together into one bock of silicon, making it more compact

Delay lines

metal tube with a thin column of liquid(mercury) inside. An electronic current is applied to one end of the tube causing vibrations. This is read and connected back to the other end. How they continuously stored the signals as long as they can

The EDVAC required a 5 foot long column of ...

mercury

Delay line memory has disadvantages

mercury is toxic, has to kept at high temperatures, could be also unreliable

Williams Tube

a stream of electrons is repeatedly fired from one end of the tube to the other end creating a visible pattern

magnetic drum memory

metal drum with a magnetic coating would rotate several hundred times, skimming the surface to read and write data as needed

The magnetic drum memory had sizes of ...

four inches to 3 feet in diamater

The magnetic drum was considered slow since...

it relied on moving parts

What is the core in core memory

small, donut-shaped piece of magnetic matieral

core memory

thousands of cores are threaded on a lattice of crisscrossing metal wires. An electric current passes through, the core at the center of a horizonal and vertical wire is magnetized, being read as a 0 or 1

Relay lines use...

sequential access

sequential access

values are read in the order that they appear

RAM

random access memory

The IBM included the core memory in these computers

701, 702, 704, 705

Core memories were manufactured until the 1970s primarily due to ...

being ten times cheaper than the microchips

The ENIAC used ...

punched cards

The IBM 701 and 702 used ...

magnetic tapes that were made of thin plastic rather than metal

Advantages of the tape storage

faster, could sotre more data, reusable,

downside of tape storage

could be only read by computer and not human