1945 - 1956
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“You… fellows ought to go back and change your program entirely, stop this… foolishness with
Eckert & Mauchley”
- Howard Aiken, 1948
* Historical Note: there were no computer scientists
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 1880 – US Census Bureau
 1890 – Tabulating Machines
 Tabulating Machines Co.
 International Business Machines
 Unit record equipment
 Decks of punch cards

Basis of IBM’s success
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 Same operation on each record of deck
 Not well suited for scientific applications
 1930’s – Some scientific users
 IBM – through the 1950’s
 Sold thousands of pc systems
 Card Programmed Calculator (CPC)
 Variety of new components
4

 Northrop Aircraft, CA
 Attached printer to punch card machines
 Attached cables
 IBM marketed new set-up
 Transition to electronic computers
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6

 J. Presper Eckert & John Mauchley
 U. of PA Moore School of EE
 Firing tables of US Army
 18,000 vacuum tubes
 Pressure to complete
 1949
 Programming (set up)
 Plug Cables
 Set Switches
7

 Move to Aberdeen delayed due to demand for use
 1948 – fully booked for 2 years
 But…already had better ideas
 Stored program to eliminate plugs & switches
8

 Summer 1946
 Moore School of Engineering @ U of PA with U. S. Military
 Theory & Techniques for Design of
Electronic Digital Computers
 Result of the staff’s inability to accommodate requests for information after unveiling of the ENIAC
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 Harvard mathematician
 MARK I Calculator
 “You fellows ought to go back and change your program entirely, stop this foolishness with Mauchley &
Eckert.”
 US need for only 5 or 6 such machines
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


Electronic Discrete Variable Computer
“An important feature of this device was that operating instructions and function tables would be stored exactly in the same sort of memory device as that used for numbers.”
6 months later – Mauchley & Eckert left to form UNIVAC (stored program computer)
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 Chance Meeting with Herman Goldstine
 “First Draft of a report on EDVAC”
 June 30 th , 1945
 Von Neumann Architecture
 Instruction and data in same memory device
 *Summer 1946- Moore School - 1 st course

“Theory & Techniques for Design of Electronic
Digital Computers”
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 Left PA March 31, 1946
(patent disagreement)
 Incorporated in Dec. 1948
 *DETAILS IN VIDEO*
 Bought by Remington-Rand
 1 st UNIVAC - US Census Bureau
 March 31 st , 1951
 #2 Pentagon: USAF June 1952
 See Table on Pg. 28 for installations
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 One Memory for data & Instructions
(1000 words)
 Binary Coded Decimal
 Clock Speed 2.25 MHz
 465 Multiplications/ Second


Mercury Tubes and Magnetic Tape (no cards)
Excessive Redundancy – reliability
 Alphanumeric Processing


Check Bits & Buffers
Output – high speed line printer
(1954)
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(p.26)
 *Revolutionary: tape replaced punch cards
 Too late for 1950 Census; some state work
 USAF & Atomic Energy Commission
 Pentagon- Project SCOOP
 Scientific Computation of Optimum Problems-
Linear programming discovered
 1952- Presidential Election
 UNIVAC became generic
 G.E: 1 st Payroll Oct. 15, 1954
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 Still selling punch card machines
 May 1952 - IBM 701- 2000 mult/sec (4x UNIVAC)
 Hired Von Neumann as consultant
 1 st 701 - IBM Headquarters, NY, Dec. 1952
 2 nd Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab, ’53
 19 Built- US Def. Dept or military aerospace firms
 Rent Only: $15,000 a month
 September ’53 -702 - built 14
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Railroad Computer 1967
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 Spun off from NAVY - codebreakers
 Seymour Cray, William Norris
 Task 13 – general purpose electronic computer, 1947 to 1951
 Atlas for NAVY; Model 1101 for public-20
 Bought by Remington Rand
 1103 - 1 st core memory (not tubes), binary arithmetic, “interrupt”
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 Late 1930’s –John V. Atanasoff
 ERA developed; 4.3 to 34 inch diameter
 Inexpensive but slow
 Number of inexpensive Computers in 1950’s
 Computer Research Corp., CA
 Bought by National Cash Register
 Labrascope/General Precision
 400@ $30,000, one of cheapest ever
 Small, affordable
Univac Drum
20

 Bendix – Turing vs. von Neumann design
 Minimum latency coding for drum (Turing)
 400 @ $45,000
 Fast but difficult to program
 Bought by Control Data Corp.
Mag Drum 1961
 IBM 650, 1954
(modest computer)
 1000@ $3,500 per month
 Universities 60% discount
 If promised to teach courses
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 First Generation of Computer
 Cards, Tubes, Tapes, Drums, Diodes…
 Numerous start-ups bought out
 IBM & Others quite successful
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