Showing papers in "IEEE Annals of the History of Computing in 1996"

The mythical man-month: Essays on software engineering

Abstract: Like Bahbage, he lobbied for mathematical reform, stumped for the centrality of science in cultural advancement, argued that government support was crucial, and proved a stubborn and crotchety opponent when crossed. And, as Colin Burke reminds us in this fine and fresh new look at Bush, Bush envisioned machines relevant to the history of computing that never lived up to their promise. I doubt that Burke would agree with my description of Bush as a latter-day Babbage; nevertheless, this detailed study makes the comparison almost inevitable. Burke helps us appreciate how Bush's fascination with the mechanization of calculation and comparison caused his inventive work to swirl around problems relevant to the emergence of the modern computer. Moreover, Burke suggests that two of Bush's less familiar engines-one, the Rapid Selector, a bibliographic machine and a close cousin of the Memex of faddish fame; and the other, the Comparator, a cryptanalytic device-provide the stuff to fill in the holes in the history of the computer [p. ix). It is never very clear just what these holes are; this reader, at least, was not convinced that the careers of these two machines were anything but eddies along the shore of the main currents of computer evolution. They were decisive failures, as Burke admits, rooted in a stubborn commitment to intractdbk and ultimately unfashion-able if not outdated technologies. The strengths of this book indeed lie elsewhere. These exotic devices are of interest in themselves and deserve their biographer's attention. Burke details the labors of Bush and friends to use microfilm, electronics, and photoelectricity to mechanize the library-hereby resolving a putative information overload (it turns out that there wasn't one)-and help the U.S. Navy's cryptographers break enemy codes during World War 11. Burke is best, however, when discussing not machines themselves but when individuals and bureaucracies are at loggerheads. Ego, ambition, and organizational and technological vision were at stake. On the military side, and against much intcrnal resistance , Bush allies such as Stanford C. Hooper and Joseph Wenger dreamed of building the next generation of rapid analytic machines and, in doing so, dreamed of upgrading the scientific navy by forging alliances with \" college professors \" like Bush; on the civilian side, Bush and his \" boys \" worked to maneuver the navy into a project that promised much in the way of personal and institutional prestige, income for research, and opportunities for graduate …

The trouble with computers: Usefulness, usability and productivity

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The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)

Abstract: This paper was first published in Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation just after the ENIAC was announced in 1946. It was the major source of technical information about the machine for the scientific world of the time. Even today it ranks as one of the classic descriptions of the ENIAC. This paper is reprinted by the kind permission of the American Mathematical Society and the National Academy of Sciences.

The universal turing machine: a half-century survey

Abstract: large number of repeated myths and oversimplifications that intersperse the text. An editor with a background in the history of computing should have been able to spot the former easily, and a scholar of computing would eliminate the rest. An example of the latter: Consider the very confusing example (p. 18) of context-free context (and Backus-Naur Form), which fails to distinguish between \" parts of speech \" and their textual instances and uses two-word meta-names that contain the same elements as other one-word meta-names. While we agree that the original use of ''? and \" > \" to set meta-names apart might be difficult for the general reader to comprehend, some other simple typesetting artifacts might have presented a less ambiguous example. The readers of this journal will be most offended by the errors of history, many of which have been debunked in these pages. The endpapers include a peculiar time line that presumably is justified as linking the contributions of the 15 chosen scientists. Historians will be unhappy with the omission of any reference to early U.S. computers (such as ENIAC) while Zuse's \" small coin-puter \" is listed in the year 1943. The year 1945 gives credit to John von Neumann as \" [proposing] the stored program concept, \" and while not mentioning the ENIAC builders, at least does suggest that the idea was not original. John Backus is credited with releasing the Fortran \" programming language \" (rather than its first compiler) in 1957 to a \" few companies in the airplane industry. \" I do not recall that Westinghouse was in the airplane business. And then more recently (1994): \" Mathematicians at Intel discover a bug in the division algorithm of [Pentium]. \" My records show that the bug was first publicly identified by a mathematician in a small school in Lynchburg, Virginia. The center of the book contains eight pages of photographs of the scientists, many obviously from the collections of the subjects, thereby giving form to them beyond the simple words. While many computer historians will be pleased to see Grace Murray Hopper included in this photographic collection, she is not included as one of the 15 scientists. However, her presence is marred by the caption, \" Admiral [she is shown in the uniform of a Commander] Grace Hopper (designer of COBOL language). \" We would hope that the publishers will provide an errata …

The women of ENIAC

Abstract: A group of young women college graduates involved with the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) are identified. As a result of their education, intelligence, as well as their being at the right place and at the right time, these young women were able to perform important computer work. Many learned to use effectively "the machine that changed the world" to assist in solving some of the important scientific problems of the time. Ten of them report on their background and experiences. It is now appropriate that these women be given recognition for what they did as "pioneers" of the age of computing.

U.S. technological enthusiasm and British technological skepticism in the age of the analog brain

Abstract: This article is a comparative analysis of the British and U.S. differential analyzers from 1930 to 1945. The author examines the development of the Vannevar Bush and D.R. Hartree analyzers in the context of the U.S. Engineering community and British scientific community, respectively. He argues that this practical machine was more readily and enthusiastically adopted by U.S. Engineers, while British scientists remained skeptical of the differential analyzer due to their theoretical professional style. As a result, Hartree was a "voice in the wilderness" in Britain, while Bush received extensive funding and had the support of an enthusiastic engineering environment.

Fostering a capacity for compromise: business, government, and the stages of innovation in American computing

Abstract: Surveys firms' behaviors and competitive structures in American computing during the past 50 years and places the industry within the context of American political economy. It argues that leading firms such as IBM, Apple and Microsoft have exhibited a capacity to strike compromises between innovation and stability. Through selective enforcement of the antitrust laws, government has tolerated and even encouraged such behavior. The computer industry has thus followed patterns established in other endeavors such as electric power and telephony.

The ENIAC, the verb "to program" and the emergence of digital computers

Abstract: This paper examines the verb "to program" in the context of the ENIAC development to see what light it can shed on the development of the concept, both for the ENIAC and for subsequent stored program computers.

Creating the computer industry

Abstract: The major underlying factors that shaped the computer industry as it emerged, beginning in the mid-1940s, are the focus of this paper. Unlike many accounts that primarily discuss technological developments, this paper examines the interaction of three equally important elements: technology, customers and suppliers. The evolution of the computer industry is shown to have been driven initially by national-security customers, and later by cost-sensitive commercial customers. Technological advances made in response to these two customer types are identified, and the successes and failures of suppliers are analyzed in terms of changing customer requirements.

Exploring the architecture of an early machine: the historical relevance of the ENIAC machine architecture

Abstract: After presenting the historiographical background to the ENIAC development, this paper examines the technical history of the machine. The technical section looks at the architecture of the accumulators and the master programmer unit in an attempt to illustrate both the advantages and the shortcomings of the design. In particular a description of a conditional branch mechanism and parallel operations are provided-together with a discussion of reasons why they were not used in any extensive way.

Svein Rosseland and the Oslo analyzer

Abstract: At one time the world's largest mechanical differential analyzer was located at Blindern, Norway at Oslo University's Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. It was built by a Norwegian instrument firm, borrowing much of its details from the famous MIT design by Vannevar Bush. For a few years this mechanical analytical tool ranked as the world's foremost differential equation solver. The Oslo analyzer was technically advanced, highly accurate, and, surprisingly, it was the most accessible large computational resource available to theoretical physicists in the world. Its success was primarily due to Professor Svein Rosseland. He was a bright, young astrophysicist who had impressed his fellow physicists around the world with his talents and imaginative thoughts.

Information and secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra and the other Memex

Abstract: remarkable for several reasons. Coming at a time when scientific analysis of macroscopic pattern and form was in decline in biology and had never been of more than marginal significance in chemistry-Turing's paper hypothesiLed a set of novel physico-chemical effects, sketched out the means for their mathematical treatment, and speculated that they in fact provided the basis for some of the most mysterious and scientifically intractable features of living organisms. Furthermore, with genetics in the ascendancy in biology (the double helical structure of DNA was elucidated in 1953, the year after Turing's paper appeared) and a cybernetic view of living processes that was strongly influenced by Turing's own strides in the fields of computability and machine intelligence gaining hold in scientific culture, it would have been natural for him to help foster the newly emerging paradigm of the \" genetic program \" (as, for example, theoretical physicist Erwin Schrodinger did in his 1945 book, What Is Life?). It is testimony to Turing's originality and judgment that he instead struck off in the direction he did. The volume under review is one of four recently issued books containing Turing's collected works. While the paper on morpho-genesis stands outside the main body of this work, it seems to have heralded a continuing interest of his in the generation of biological form and pattern, as evidenced by several unpublished manuscripts as well as a master's thesis he supervised on the subject of form generation in plants. These have not previously been available to the scientific public, and their inclusion in this volume by the editor, P.T. Saunders, who has himself worked at the interface of mathematics and biology, enhances its value. The unpublished papers are inconclusive, but provide insight into Turing's thought processes as he formulated a geometrical analysis of the problem of phyllotaxis (the arrangements of plant parts such as leaves and seeds according to striking mathematical regularities) and attempted to account for these regularities with the \" reaction-diffusion \" mechanism presented in the 1952 paper. Saunders also contributes an insightful introduction, placing Turing's biological work in the \" laws of form \" tradition, which also includes D'Arcy W. Thompson's On Growth and Form (1917; 1942), and against the view held in common by Darwin and the Natural Theologians who preceded him that each biological feature is present by virtue of the purpose it serves in the respective organism. The introductory remarks …

Women in computing: historical roles, the perpetual glass ceiling, and current opportunities

Abstract: Over the course of history, women have slowly begun to hold influential roles in the computing industry. Although progress has been made, the precipitous journey is not yet complete. The paper presents a historical analysis of the entrance and role of women in the computing industry, a discussion on the existence and impact of the glass ceiling, and a detailed and informative collection of programs and opportunities established to abet women in succeeding in the industry. The information compiled in this work will prove useful not only to the women already employed in the industry but also to women contemplating entrance.

Where are we going, Phil Morse? Changing agendas and the rhetoric of obviousness in the transformation of computing at MIT, 1939-1957

Abstract: This paper discusses the failure of the attempt to establish a computational center at MIT in the 1930s and the effect it had on the subsequent shift from analog to digital computing during the 1950s

Women's studies and computer science: their intersection

Abstract: Women's studies and computer science both evolved as academic disciplines in the 1960s, but they evolved along very different paths. The differences between science, engineering, and the humanities are discussed, followed by a brief review of women's studies. Feminist epistemology and its dedication to concrete learning introduce new ideas for gaining knowledge that will also make computer science more relevant for minority and low-income students. Children's use of computer technology and Logo software is introduced.

Commercial applications of the digital computer in American corporations, 1945-1995

Abstract: This paper describes the commercial applications of the digital computer in the United States over the past 50 years. It suggests that as technology improved, new uses for computers appeared. Looking at major types of applications common to all industries and then at industry-specific uses, the author identifies several historically important phases in the adoption of applications. He suggests that future research should focus on the history of applications and, more specifically, by industry.

Collected works of A.M. Turing - morphogenesis

Abstract: PEGGY KIDWELL, EDITOR The Reviews Department includes reviews of putrlications, films, audio and video tapes, and exhibits relating to the history of computing. Full-length studies of technical, economic, business, and institutional aspects or other works of interest to Annals readers are briefly noted, with appropriate bibliographic information. Colleagues are encouraged to recommend works they wish to review and to suggest titles to the Reviews Editor.

"Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it": or, Why I study the history of computing

Abstract: The year 1996 marks the 50th anniversary of the public revelation of the ENIAC, the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Large Scale Computing Subcommittee of the AIEE under the chairmanship of Charles Concordia, and the beginning of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM. Within those years, the computer field has not only developed but has had added to it new concepts and ideas that have transmogrified it into an almost unrecognizable entity. We are reaching the stage of development where each new generation of participants is unaware both of their overall technological ancestry and the history of the development of their specialty, and have no past to build upon. In this article, we look at the study of the history of computing and its applicability to today's technological challenges, and conclude with the recommendation that we need to know enough about our history to protect ourselves from it and not be condemned to repeat it, but also to use it to our advantage.

From digital to analog and back: the ideology of intelligent machines in the history of the electrical analyzer, 1870s-1960s

Abstract: The example of the electrical analyzer, a genre of computing artifacts known mainly by their development and use in the context of electrification, is treated as representative of the historical oscillation between analog and digital computing orientations. Artificial electric lines, short-circuit calculating boards, and alternating current network analyzers are discussed as examples of electrical analyzers. Counting on the successful employment of the ideology of intelligent machines in the context of the history of the electrical analyzer, the first part of the article searches for a direct ancestor of the post-World War II computing ideology. The second part of the article proposes to interpret the ideology of intelligent machines as an effect related to the social conditions of the appropriation of computing labor. Overall, the article argues about the historical, i.e., antiessentialist, character of the demarcation of digital from analog orientation.

Constructions of gender in the history of artificial intelligence

Abstract: Key developments in the history of artificial intelligence are described in terms of a model of gender (Man of Reason), drawn from the work of philosopher Genevieve Lloyd, and informed by research in gender and technology and feminist epistemology. Significantly, the model demonstrates the elevation of mental knowledge over corporeal knowledge. Recent attempts to address the problem of embodiment in situated robotics go some way toward overcoming this problem but have yet to address the question of situatedness, which feminist and other social science research suggests should be an integral part of our models of knowers.

On the role of mathematics and mathematical knowledge in the invention of Vannevar Bush's early analog computers

Abstract: The technological, professional, and intellectual context out of which the development of the continuous integraph or product integraph-as the immediate forerunner of Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer-evolved is outlined. In particular the affinity between transmission line research and teaching at MlT's electrical engineering department under Bush's guidance, on the one hand, and the creation of the product integraph for evaluating integrals, which resulted from the appropriate differential equations of the transmission problems, on the other hand, is detailed. I emphasize Bush's perception of promoting engineering by easing the applied mathematics in this field as it appeared in his contribution to the development of operational circuit analysis as an appropriate engineering mathematics as well as in creating analog machinery that was inspired by the formulation of transmission line problems in terms of that very operational methods after Oliver Heaviside.

Early analog computers in Sweden-with examples from Chalmers University of technology and the Swedish aerospace industry

Abstract: This paper gives a short overview of early analog computing in Sweden in the 1940s and 1950s. Being a small country, Sweden tried to catch up with the development of computing that had been going on in the United States and elsewhere during World War II, and in the 1950s Sweden was pioneering this technology. By the late 1960s, Sweden was one of the most computer-intensive countries with a successful domestic computer industry. Unable to maintain a sustainable general computer production, some small sectors of Swedish computer R&D have prospered. In the concluding remarks, I suggest that the concept of "technological niches" is a useful tool, both analytically and for technology policy-making.

Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, an analyst and metaphysician

Abstract: There may be controversy about when the computer revolution began, but to me a revolution begins with an idea, and that idea was Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine conceived in 1834 The computer revolution also began with a woman, Augusta Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, who wrote an article in 1843 that not only gave us descriptive, analytical, contextual, and metaphysical information about the Analytical Engine but also the first program Her prescient comments have stood the test of time Augusta Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace (1815-1852), is regarded by some people as the first programmer and by others as a science fiction archetype, perhaps as "mad and bad" as her illustrious father, Lord Byron At the very least, Ada is one of the most colorful characters in computer history

Women's contributions to early computing at the National Bureau of Standards

Abstract: The U.S. National Bureau of Standards (NBS) was instrumental in the development of what is now known as the field of numerical analysis and had a worldwide influence in defining the role of electronic computers in the scientific community. Women played key roles in all aspects of early computing in the NBS, including mathematics, programming, engineering, and management. The paper outlines some of the substantial contributions of women in the early days of computing at the NBS.

The computer in the United states: from laboratory to market, 1930 to 1960

Abstract: easier to appreciate the importance of a new invention, like the mercury delay line, than of a new and abstract idea. \" Commemorative volumes like The Universal Turing Machine often tell us as much about those who seek to claim continuity and significance with a historical figure as about the subject they hope to illuminate. Davis's assertion of the influence of a theoretician should not surprise us in a largely theoretically oriented book. Most of the contributions to this thought-provoking collection are unashamedly motivated by contemporary research and debates. Retrospective accounts upset the historian. The absence of an index and occasional inconsistencies between bibliographies can annoy anyone. Alternatively, it should be possible and historiog-raphically correct to write a history of Turing's 1936 machines without any reference to the stored-program electronic computer. It is written in much the same style with the same attention to business and social factors that were responsible for the rapid rise of the computer to its preeminent position in our society. This volume is the result of a tremendous amount of research. Many of the bibliographic items on which it is based are essentially unknown to most scholars or very difficult to find even if they are aware of their existence. It is essentially a case study of how computer technology evolved and was viewed by both manufacturers and customers. The author divides this study of the computer into three sections: its creation, its adoption by the manufacturing industry, and its eventual acceptance by the general public. None of these sections can be considered a complete history of the topic. Indeed, some of the details of the development of the technology are quite sketchy, but they are all the reader needs to see the point that Cortada is making about how a technology is created, is produced commercially, and is eventually accepted as part of the standard working and living environment. Cortada makes it quite clear that it is not when the technology is invented that is the major accomplishment. It is when that same technology is used in a cost-effective way that the history of the field changes. This is a recurring theme throughout the volume. The first section of the book traces the rise of computer technology from university, government. and commercial research laboratories. Technical specialists will not find the hundreds of arcane technical details that they might crave, but this is an excellent …

Celebrating the birth of modern computing: the fiftieth anniversary of a discovery at the Moore School of Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: This article presents a brief overview of the ENIAC and its place in history. In order to indicate where a program was or whether a valve was malfunctioning, the ENIAC engineers attached small bulbs throughout the machine, which could convey this information to the programmers. For the purposes of the public demonstration in 1946, these tiny bulbs were made more prominent by the addition of translucent hemispheres that were actually halved ping-pong balls. Long after miniaturization made this feature redundant, sci-fi movies persist in presenting it as an essential element of the all-powerful computers whose control panels flash malevolently as they emit their sinister messages. A more substantial effect of development of the birth of the ENIAC in Philadelphia is that the city acquired a site important for being the place where ideas started a revolution. As the place where the first operating computer of its sort was constructed, the Moore School is one to which historians will continue to look as current events turn into history.

A Brief History of the Japanese Computer Industry Before 1985

Abstract: Some of the software packages used on the 7040/1401 system in the mid-1960s were MAP (machine assembly Program), Fortran II and Cobol compilers, an ALGOL compiler from the University of Grenoble, the LP I11 linear programming system, the BMD Biomedical Statistical Package, and the AGGIE student Fortran I1 compiler, which was soon replaced by WATFOR from the University of Waterloo. One system implemented at the University of Alberta was a simulator for the MENTOR and MENTORSAP languages which were used briefly to teach simplified machine language and assembly language programming. Basic played a minor role in the department until personal computers came into use in the mid 1980s. Neither the first Basic interpreter that was available in the 1960s nor Waterloo Basic, which replaced it in the early 1970s received much use. However, in the 1980s a subset of Basic emphasizing structured programming concepts began to be taught in some courses. The Fortran language has been in continuous use since it frst became available at the University of Alberta on the IBM 1620. Fortran II was soon replaced by various implementations of Fortran IV including WATFOR and WATFIV from the University of Waterloo and other versions more suitable for production work, and finally by Fortran 77 in the 1980s. Fortran was used for a number of years as the fmt conventional hgher-level language in all courses. Only in the past year has it been replaced by Pascal in ENCMP 100 Computer Programming for Engineers, which is taught jointly with the Faculty of Engineering. In about 1970 Algol W replaced Fortran as a first language for computing science students. It was used throughout the 1970s when it was then replaced by Pascal, ‘which was used as an introductory language until 1994 when it was replaced by Modula-2. Both Algol W and Pascal not only encouraged the use of structured progrmming techniques but also introduced the notion of a formal description of a programming language. TEXTFORM, an extremely large, complex and even cumbersome word processing and typesetting package implemented by the department of Computing Services was used in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although primitive when judged by today’s standards for word processors, it was used by countless numbers of faculty, staff and students throughout the University and provided almost all of them with their first introduction to word processing. The introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s had a profound effect on the teaching and practice of programming. The implementation of a language became a programming environment consisting of a compiler or interpreter, or both, together with an editor, debugging tools, program library, online help and tutorial. Many students purchased or had access to computers and could do many of their assignments independently of the University’s computing facilities.

Konrad Zuse Obituary

Abstract: Early Life Zuse was born in BerlinWilmersdorf on June 22, 1910, his parents’ second child. His father, Emil, was a Prussian beamter; or civil servant, a lifelong post office administrator. His mother, Maria Crohn, was his father’s niece. From the age of two he was brought up in Braunsberg in East Prussia. After three years at the Evangelische Hoheve MadchenSchule he was enrolled in the Gymnasium Hosianum at the age of nine. For his entire school career he was always about two years younger than the rest of his classmates which he said made him feel physically inferior. In his fifth year at the Gymnasium his father was transferred to Hoyerswerda where Zuse went to the more modern, progressive Realgymnasium which stressed modern languages, mathematics, and science. Being both artistically and technologically talented, he was torn between these two fields, but in the end engineering won out and he postponed serious sketching and painting until much later in his life.

Changing computing: the computing community and DARPA

Abstract: Between 1962 and 1986, the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) provided significant support for computer science R&D. The design and implementation of the support programs of this office was the responsibility of a small group of computer scientists who emerged from the growing computer science community. Program directors focused on radical technologies, organized programs to develop them, and promoted their use in various settings, with substantial success. A better understanding of the evolution of the Department of Defense's policy for computing R&D can be gained from an analysis of the backgrounds, research experience, interests and methods of the people engaged to design and implement this policy in IPTO.

Ferranti Recollections (1950-1955)

Abstract: I joined Ferranti Ltd. in September 1950 from the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory, where I had been Maurice Wilkes's first research student. I had just spent three years in Cambridge-one helping to design and build EDSAC and two using it-having arrived in the United Kingdom from Australia in September 1947. The Ferranti computing group was part of the sales section associated with the Instrument Department located at Maston, Manchester, and Ferranti had just won a contract, surely a record for its brevity, to "construct an electronic calculating machine to the instructions of Professor F.C. Williams." The contract (to construct the Ferranti Mkl) was signed a few days after the successful demonstration of the Manchester University prototype to Sir Ben Lockspeiser, then the United Kingdom Government Chief Scientist. The Manchester prototype was developed from a test rig for the original Williams CRT store and began operating in June 1948. The Ferranti machine, when installed in the Royal Society Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, was known as MADM (Manchester Automatic Digital Machine).