2,919 research outputs found
Setting-up early computer programs: D. H. Lehmer's ENIAC computation
A complete reconstruction of Lehmer's ENIAC set-up for computing the exponents of p modulo two is given. This program served as an early test program for the ENIAC (1946). The reconstruction illustrates the difficulties of early programmers to find a way between a man operated and a machine operated computation. These difficulties concern both the content level (the algorithm) and the formal level (the logic of sequencing operations)
A week-end off: the first extensive number-theoretical computation on the ENIAC
The first extensive number-theoretical computation run on the ENIAC, is reconstructed. The problem, computing the exponent of 2 modulo a prime, was set up on the ENIAC during a week-end in July 1946 by the number-theorist D.H. Lehmer, with help from his wife Emma and John Mauchly. Important aspects of the ENIAC's design are presented-and the reconstruction of the implementation of the problem on the ENIAC is discussed in its salient points
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Pioneers on the air: BBC radio broadcasts on computers and A.I., 1946-56
Between 1946 and 1956, a number of BBC radio broadcasts were made by pioneers in the fields of computing, artificial intelligence and cybernetics. Although no sound recordings of the broadcasts survive, transcripts are held at the BBC's Written Archives Centre at Caversham in the UK. This paper is based on a study of these transcripts, which have received little attention from historians.
The paper surveys the range of computer-related broadcasts during 1946–1956 and discusses some recurring themes from the broadcasts, especially the relationship of 'artificial intelligence' to human intelligence. Additionally, it discusses the context of the broadcasts, both in relation to the BBC and to contemporary awareness of computers
The ingenuity of common workmen: and the invention of the computer
Since World War II, state support for scientific research has been assumed crucial to technological and economic progress. Governments accordingly spent tremendous sums to that end. Nothing epitomizes the alleged fruits of that involvement better than the electronic digital computer. The first such computer has been widely reputed to be the ENIAC, financed by the U.S. Army for the war but finished afterwards. Vastly improved computers followed, initially paid for in good share by the Federal Government of the United States, but with the private sector then dominating, both in development and use, and computers are of major significance.;Despite the supposed success of public-supported science, evidence is that computers would have evolved much the same without it but at less expense. Indeed, the foundations of modern computer theory and technology were articulated before World War II, both as a tool of applied mathematics and for information processing, and the computer was itself on the cusp of reality. Contrary to popular understanding, the ENIAC actually represented a movement backwards and a dead end.;Rather, modern computation derived more directly, for example, from the prewar work of John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, a physics professor and graduate student, respectively, at Iowa State College (now University) in Ames, Iowa. They built the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC), which, although special purpose and inexpensive, heralded the efficient and elegant design of modern computers. Moreover, while no one foresaw commercialization of computers based on the ungainly and costly ENIAC, the commercial possibilities of the ABC were immediately evident, although unrealized due to war. Evidence indicates, furthermore, that the private sector was willing and able to develop computers beyond the ABC and could have done so more effectively than government, to the most sophisticated machines.;A full and inclusive history of computers suggests that Adam Smith, the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, had it right. He believed that minimal and aloof government best served society, and that the inherent genius of citizens was itself enough to ensure the general prosperity
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