a history of modern computing 2nd edition phần 9 pps

Cortada, Before the Computer Princeton: ton University Press, 1993; Arthur Norberg, ‘‘High Technology Calculation inthe Early Twentieth Century: Punched Card Machinery in Business and Go

by miniature digital computers programmed to emulate them; mostordinary radios, for example, had lost their tuning dial by 1973 and were

‘‘tuned’’ by digital keypads Ten years later, Time proclaimed the ter ‘‘Machine of the Year’’ for 1983, with the opening headline ‘‘TheComputer Moves In.’’5

compu-The latest manifestation of this takeover is the Internet, embracedacross the political and cultural spectrum, by Newt Gingrich, Al Gore,Stewart Brand, the late Timothy Leary, ‘‘Generation X,’’ and numerouspeople in between Most accounts describe it as a marriage of commu-nications and computing.6The evidence presented here suggests other-wise; that the Internet simply represents yet another takeover, by digitalcomputing of an activity (telecommunications) that had a long historybased on analog techniques

Those who so glowingly describe the World Wide Web as the tion of fifty years of prologue either do not know or have forgottenhistory The very same statements were made when the first UNIVACswere installed, when minicomputers and time-sharing appeared, andwhen the personal computer was introduced (figure C.1) This will not

culmina-be the last time these words are spoken But promises of a technologicalUtopia have been common in American history, and at least a fewchampions of the Internet are aware of how naive these earlier visionswere.7Silicon Valley has some of the most congested real highways in thecountry, as people commute to work with a technology that Henry Fordinvented to reduce urban congestion Most people have some sense of thefact that the automobile did not fulfill many of Ford’s promises simplybecause it was too successful The word ‘‘smog’’ crept into the Englishlanguage around the time of Ford’s death in the late 1940s; ‘‘gridlock,’’

‘‘strip malls,’’ and ‘‘suburban sprawl’’ came later What equivalent willdescribe the dark side of networked digital computing? And will those

‘‘side effects’’ become evident only fifty years from now, as was the casewith automobiles? Can we anticipate them before it is too late or toodifficult to manage them?

Each transformation of digital computing was propelled by individualswith an idealistic notion that computing, in its new form, would be aliberating force that could redress many of the imbalances brought on

by the smokestack of the ‘‘second wave,’’ in Alvin Toffler’s phrase.UNIVAC installations were accompanied by glowing predictions thatthe ‘‘automation’’ they produced would lead to a reduced workweek Inthe mid-1960s enthusiasts and hackers saw the PDP-10 and PDP-8 asmachines that would liberate computing from the tentacles of the IBM

Figure C.1

Digital Utopia, as depicted on the cover of Byte magazine ( January 1977) Byte’scover illustrations stood out among all the computer publications (Source :Robert Tinney.)

octopus The Apple II reflected the Utopian visions of the San FranciscoBay area in the early 1970s And so it will be with universal access to theInternet.

In each case the future has turned out to be more complex, and lessrevolutionary, than its proponents imagined The UNIVAC did not solvethe problem of unemployment Personal computers did not put ordin-ary individuals on an equal footing with those in positions of power Itdid find a market that exceeded all expectations—but in the office andnot the home, as a tool that assisted the functions of the corporateworkplace.8Looking out over the polluted and decayed landscape of the1970s-era industrial Rustbelt, young people programmed their personalcomputers to model a middle landscape; one that gave its inhabitants allthe benefits of industrialization with none of the drawbacks But thesocial problems of the outside world remained Utopia stayed inside thecomputer screen and stubbornly refused to come out Computermodeling evolved into ‘‘virtual reality’’—a new variant of the mind-altering drugs in vogue in the 1960s Timothy Leary argued that virtualreality was more effective than LSD as a way to bring humans back to theGarden of Eden So far that is not happening, and perhaps this is a goodthing, given the level of thought that characterizes most visions of whatDigital Utopia ought to look like

We have seen that political and social forces have always shaped thedirection of digital computing Now, with computing among the defin-ing technologies of American society, those forces are increasingly out inthe open and part of public discussion Politicians and judges as much asengineers decide where highways and bridges get built, who may serve aregion with telephone service, and how much competition an electricutility may have These legislators and jurists rely upon industry lobbyists

or specialists on their staff to guide them through the technical sion of their policies All the while, new technologies (such as directbroadcast satellite television) disrupt their plans But that does not stopthe process or shift decision-making away from these centers

dimen-Computing is no different The idea of politicians directing ogy is still distasteful to computer pioneers, many of whom are still aliveand retain a vivid memory of how they surmounted technical, notpolitical, challenges But when a technology becomes integrated intothe affairs of ordinary daily life, it must acknowledge politics Somegroups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (founded by MitchKapor), are doing this by stepping back to try to identify the digitalequivalents of ‘‘smog’’ and ‘‘gridlock.’’ But historically the United States

technol-has promoted as rapid a deployment of technology as possible, and technol-hasleft it to future generations to deal with the consequences It is notsurprising, therefore, that attempts to regulate or control the content ofthe Internet have so far been clumsy and have failed How that plays outremains to be seen.

A century and a half ago, Henry David Thoreau observed withsuspicion the technophilic aspect of American character Railroadswere the high technology of his day, but he did not share the public’senthusiasm for the Fitchburg line, whose tracks ran behind WaldenPond ‘‘We do not ride on the railroad; it rides on us,’’ he said What thenation needs is ‘‘a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life.’’ A fewmiles west of Thoreau’s cabin, the Fitchburg railroad built a branch toserve the Assabet Mills, which by the time of the Civil War was one of thecountry’s largest producers of woolen goods A century later these samemills were blanketing the Earth with PDP-8s One wonders what Thoreauwould have made of this connection.9 Would he have seized theopportunity to set up his own Walden Pond home page, to let othersknow what he was up to? Or would he have continued to rely on thepencils he made for himself?

We created the computer to serve us The notion that it might becomeour master has been the stuff of science fiction for decades, but it wasalways hard to take those stories seriously when it took heroic efforts just

to get a computer to do basic chores As we start to accept the WorldWide Web as a natural part of our daily existence, perhaps it is time torevisit the question of control My hope is that, with an understanding ofhistory and a dash of Thoreauvian skepticism, we can learn to use thecomputer rather than allowing it to use us

2 Some of the early automatic machines were called ‘‘calculators,’’ as in theHarvard Mark I, or ‘‘Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.’’ But the letter

‘‘C’’ in ENIAC, designed at the Moore School in the early 1940s and dedicated in

1946, stood for ‘‘Computer.’’

3 Amy Friedlander, Natural Monopoly and Universal Service: Telephones and graphs in the U.S Communications Infrastructure, 1837–1940 (Reston, VA: CNRI,1995)

Tele-4 If anything, it might go the other way: historians of technology are turningtheir attention to the mundane; and studies of computing are so common theysurprise no one See, for example, Henry Petroski, The Pencil: a History of Designand Circumstance (New York: Knopf, 1990), and Robert Friedel, Zipper: anExploration in Novelty (New York: W.W Norton, 1994)

5 See, for example I Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1985)

6 I had not heard of the World Wide Web when I began working on this study,although I was aware of the existence of the Internet Although touted asrevolutionary by Time on its cover in 1983, the personal computer is nowdisparaged as crippled by its crude user interface and lack of connectivity tothe Web

7 My unscientific basis for this observation is the vigorous activity in the history

of technology being undertaken by scholars on the World Wide Web I have alsonoted that historians are among the first to adopt the latest word processing andscholars’ database tools

8 See, for example, Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Morrow, 1980)

9 Even the best sociological studies of computing ignore its historical evolution,

as if the technology sociologists observe is a given and not something that israpidly evolving; for example, Shoshanna Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine(New York: Basic Books, 1988), and Sherry Turkle, The Second Self, Computers andthe Human Spirit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984)

10 See, for example, James W Cortada, Before the Computer (Princeton: ton University Press, 1993); Arthur Norberg, ‘‘High Technology Calculation inthe Early Twentieth Century: Punched Card Machinery in Business and Govern-ment,’’ Technology and Culture 31 (October 1990): 753–779; and JoAnne Yates,Control Through Communication: the Rise of System in American Management (Balti-more: John Hopkins University Press, 1989)

Prince-11 See, for example, James R Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological andEconomic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1986)

12 For example, the Annals of the History of Computing, the journal of record forthe study of this subject, seldom publishes papers that connect computingwith, say, radar, ballistic missiles, or nuclear weapons history, other than onthe role of the computer as an aide to those technologies On the other side,one finds histories of modern 20th century technology that make no mention

of the computer at all, as in Thomas Parke Hughes, American Genesis: A Century

of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970 (New York: Viking,1989)

13 Thomas Parke Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society,1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983)

14 The most accessible of the many works written on this topic is Wiebe E.Bijker, Thomas P Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds., The Social Construction ofTechnological Systems (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987)

15 The most important is Donald MacKenzie See, for example, InventingAccuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge: MITPress, 1990), and ‘‘Negotiating Arithmetic, Constructing Proof: the Sociology

of Mathematics and Information Technology,’’ Social Studies of Science 23 (1993):37–65 Another practitioner is Bryan Pfaffenberger; see his ‘‘The Social Meaning

of the Personal Computer, or Why the Personal Computer Revolution was noRevolution,’’ Anthropological Quarterly 61: 1 (1988): 39–47

16 See, for example Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984); and Paul Freiberger, Fire in the Valley: theMaking of the Personal Computer (Berkeley: Osborne=McGraw-Hill, 1984).

17 William Aspray, John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990)

18 Tomas J Misa, ‘‘Military Needs, Commercial Realities, and the Development

of the Transistor, 1948–1958,’’ in Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterprise andTechnological Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985): 253–287

19 Michael A Dennis, ‘‘A Change of State: the Political Cultures of gical Practice at the MIT Instrumentation Lab and the Johns Hopkins UniversityApplied Physics Laboratory, 1930–1945’’ (Ph.D diss., Johns Hopkins University,1990)

Technolo-20 Manuel DeLanda, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge: MITPress, 1991); also Chris Hables Gray, ‘‘Computers as Weapons and Metaphors:The U.S Military 1940–1990 and Postmodern War,’’ (Ph.D diss., University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz, 1991)

21 Charles Bashe, Lyle R Johnson, John H Palmer, and Emerson Pugh, IBM’sEarly Computers (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); Emerson Pugh et al., IBM’s 360and Early 370 Systems (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); and Emerson Pugh, BuildingIBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995)

22 The term seems to have come into use around 1959

23 George H Mealy, ‘‘Operating Systems,’’ in Saul Rosen, ed., ProgrammingSystems and Languages (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967): 517–518

24 JoAnne Yates, Control Through Communication: the Rise of System in AmericanManagement (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); David F Noble,Forces of Production (New York: Knopf, 1984); James R Beniger, The ControlRevolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1986)

25 Brian Randell, ed., The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers, 2nd ed.(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1975): 327–328; Peter J Bird, LEO: the First BusinessComputer (Berkshire, UK: Hasler Publishing Ltd., 1994)

26 Kenneth Flamm, Creating the Computer: Government, Industry, and High nology (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1988): 134; see also MartinCampbell-Kelly, ICL: a Business and Technical History (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1989)

Tech-27 Edward Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck, The Fifth Generation: ArtificialIntelligence and Japan’s Computer Challenge to the World (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1983); Michael Cusumano, ‘‘Factory Concepts and Practices in SoftwareDevelopment,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 13: 1 (1991): 3–32

28 Seymour E Goodman, ‘‘Soviet Computing and Technology Transfer: anOverview,’’ World Politics 31: 4 (July 1979): 539–570.

29 Using the computer for centralized planning has been touted by American

‘‘futurists’’ such as Herman Kahn and R Buckminster Fuller After completingProject Whirlwind, J Forrester turned to an application he called ‘‘SystemDynamics.’’ In 1996, large-scale computer modeling of the U.S governmentwas vigorously promoted by presidential candidate H Ross Perot, the founder ofElectronic Data Systems

Chapter 1

1 Testimony by Cannon, Hagley Museum, Honeywell v Sperry Rand papers,Series III, Box 140, p 17,680; see also Harold Bergstein, ‘‘An Interview withEckert and Mauchly,’’ Datamation (April 1962): 25–30 A more detailed analysis ofAiken’s observation is discussed in a forthcoming book by I Bernard Cohen onthe life and work of Howard Aiken I am grateful to Professor Cohen for makingdrafts of the relevant chapters of this book available to me before its publication

2 Note that in 1994 the U.S government suspended support for the conducting Super Collider (SSC) So it appears there that the total world

Super-‘‘market’’ has peaked at about a dozen cyclotrons, a scientific instrumentinvented around the same time as the electronic computer with about thesame cost and complexity

3 For example, in an address by von Neumann to the Mathematical ComputingAdvisory Panel of the U.S Navy in May 1946, he compares the electroniccomputers then under development to ‘‘ what is at present still the majorpractical mode of computing, namely, human procedure with an electromecha-nical desk multiplier.’’ Published in the Annals of the History of Computing 10(1989): 248

4 For an account of the early development of this activity, see JoAnne Yates,Control Through Communication: the Rise of System in American Management (Balti-more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); also James Beniger, The ControlRevolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986)

5 Arthur Norberg, ‘‘High Technology Calculation in the Early TwentiethCentury: Punched Card Machinery in Business and Government,’’ Technologyand Culture 31 (1990): 753–779; also Martin Campbell-Kelly, ICL: a Business andTechnical History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)

6 The following discussion on punched-card computation is derived fromMartin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Punched-Card Machinery,’’ in William Aspray, ed.,Computing Before Computers (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990), chapter4; also Campbell-Kelly, ICL; and Edmund C Berkeley, Giant Brains, or Machinesthat Think (New York: Wiley, 1949), chapter 4

7 Campbell-Kelly, in Aspray, ed., Computing Before Computers; also the review ofCampbell-Kelly’s ICL by Kenneth Flamm in Annals of the History of Computing 13: 1(1991).

8 Wallace J Eckert, Punched Card Methods in Scientific Computation (New York:The Thomas J Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau, Columbia University,1940): 22

15 Charles J Bashe, Lyle R Johnson, John H Palmer, and Emerson Pugh, IBM’sEarly Computers (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986): 44–46, 59–68

16 Ibid., 67

17 William Woodbury, ‘‘The 603-405 Computer,’’ in Proceedings of a SecondSymposium on Calculating Machinery; Sept 1949 (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1951): 316–320; also Michael R Williams, A History of Computing Technology(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985): 256

18 G J Toben, quoted in Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 69

19 Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 68–72; also John W Sheldon and ListonTatum, ‘‘The IBM Card-Programmed Electronic Calculator,’’ Review of ElectronicDigital Computers, Joint IRE-AIEE Conference, February 1952, 30–36

20 Paul Ceruzzi, Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age (Cambridge: MITPress, 1989), chapter 2; see also Smithsonian Videohistory Program, RANDCorporation interviews, June 12–13, 1990; interview with Clifford Shaw, 12 June

1990, 13

21 In France, Compagnie des Machines Bull introduced, in 1952, a machinehaving a similar architecture Called the ‘‘Gamma 3,’’ it was very successful andwas one of the first products produced in France to achieve a critical mass of

sales See Bruno LeClerc, ‘‘From Gamma 2 to Gamma E.T.: The Birth ofElectronic Computing at Bull,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 12: 1 (1990):5–22.

22 See, for example, Computer Research Corporation, ‘‘Comparison of theCard-Programmed Computer [sic] with the General-Purpose Model CRC 102-A,’’ 16 page pamphlet (1953) National Air & Space Museum, NBS archive

23 David Alan Grier, ‘‘The ENIAC, the Verb ‘to program’ and the Emergence ofDigital Computers,’’ Annals of the History of Computers 18: 1 (1996): 51–55

24 ‘‘Historical Comments,’’ in L R Johnson, System Structure in Data, Programs,and Computers (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970): 185 A copy of theoriginal memorandum is in the University of Pennsylvania archives

25 For a discussion of the fate of the EDVAC see Michael Williams, ‘‘TheOrigins, Uses, and Fate of the EDVAC,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 15(1993): 22–38

26 A copy of the First Draft is in the National Air and Space Museum Archives,NBS Collection

27 It also comes from the fact that the IAS machine was copied in a number oflocations

28 Herman Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1972): 182

29 Because the term ‘‘programming’’ had not yet come into use, I use ‘‘set up’’

in this section

30 John Mauchly, ‘‘Preparation of Problems for EDVAC-Type Machines,’’Harvard University, Proceedings of a Symposium on Large-Scale Digital CalculatingMachinery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948): 203–207

31 Eckert, ‘‘Disclosure ,’’ written January 29, 1944; reprinted in HermanLukoff, From Dits to Bits: A Personal History of the Electronic Computer (Portland, OR:Robotics Press): 207–209

32 J Presper Eckert, ‘‘Disclosure of a Magnetic Calculating Machine,’’ sity of Pennsylvania, Moore School of Electrical Engineering, memorandum ofJanuary 29, 1944; in Lukoff, From Dits to Bits, 207–209; also J Presper Eckert andJohn Mauchly, ‘‘Automatic High Speed Computing: A Progress Report on theEDVAC,’’ portions reprinted in Johnson, System Structure in Data, Programs, andComputers, 184–187 There are many accounts of the relationship of vonNeumann with Eckert and Mauchly, and of the relative contributions eachmade to the EDVAC report See Goldstine, Computer From Pascal to von Neumann;Mauchly’s own account is told in ‘‘Amending the ENIAC Story,’’ Datamation(October 1979): 217–220 The details of these events were covered in the trialHoneywell v Sperry Rand, Inc., concluded in 1974

Univer-33 The above discussion makes no mention of the possible contribution of AlanTuring, who stated something very much like this principle in theoretical termslong before Turing may have inspired those working on the EDVAC design, butthat is unknown at this time.

34 For more on who invented the Stored-Program Principle, see Annals of theHistory of Computing 4 (October 1982): 358–361

35 Moore School of Electrical Engineering, ‘‘Theory and Techniques forDesign of Electronic Digital Computers; Lectures Given at the Moore School

of Electrical Engineering, July 8–August 31, 1946’’ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985[reprint])

36 The acronym EDSAC stands for ‘‘Electronic Delay Storage AutomaticCalculator’’; BINAC stands for ‘‘Binary Automatic Computer.’’

37 The term ‘‘word’’ as applied to a chunk of digits handled in a computerprobably also came from von Neumann

38 A typical modern description of the architecture is described in ‘‘DigitalComputer Architecture,’’ in Jack Belzer, Albert Holzman, and Allen Kent, eds.,Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, vol 7 (New York: Dekker, 1970):289–326

39 For an example of how this subject is treated in introductory college-leveltextbooks, see Helene G Kershner, Introduction to Computer Literacy (Lexington,MA: D C Heath, 1990), Jack B Rochester and Jon Rochester, Computers for People(Homewood, IL: Richard D Irwin, 1991) See also W Danniel Hillis, ‘‘TheConnection Machine,’’ Scientific American (June 1987): 108–115, for an explicitstatement of the ‘‘non-von-Neumann’’ nature of parallel designs Ironically, Hillisincorrectly identifies the ENIAC as a sequential machine; in fact, the ENIAC was

a parallel processing machine

40 Alan Perlis, ‘‘Epigrams on Programming,’’ ACM Sigplan Notices (October1981): 7–13

41 In the following discussion I rely heavily on the arguments and data in NancyStern, From ENIAC to UNIVAC: an Appraisal of the Eckert-Mauchly Computers(Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1981), especially chapter 5

42 Mauchly, memorandum of 3=31=1948; Hagley Museum, Sperry UnivacCompany Records, Series I, Box 3, folder ‘‘Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corpora-tion; Mauchly, John.’’

43 Von Neumann to Herman Goldstine, letter of May 8, 1945; Hagley Museum,Sperry Univac Corporate Records; Series II, Box 74, folder ‘‘May 1945–October1945.’’

44 Howard H Aiken, ‘‘The Future of Automatic Computing Machinery,’’Elektronische Rechenmaschinen und Informationsverarbeitung; Beihefte derNTZ, Band 4, 1956, pp 31–35 Incredibly, he made this statement in 1956, by

which time there was ample evidence that such machines not only existed butwere becoming rather common Wallace Eckert commented on computers vs.punched card machines at one of several conferences on high speed computingmachinery held at Harvard in the late 1940s.

45 Stern, From ENIAC to UNIVAC, 91 Stern believes that ‘‘the two men were,

in fact, fired.’’

46 Mauchly to J P Eckert Jr et al, 1=12=1948; Hagley Museum, Sperry UNIVACCompany Records, Series I, Box 3, folder ‘‘Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corpora-tion; Mauchly, John.’’

47 Computers and Their Future (Lladudno, Wales, 1970): 7–8

48 Stern, From ENIAC to UNIVAC, 148–151 In Britain, the LEO computer rantest programs on the premises of the J Lyons Catering Company of London byFebruary 1951, a month before the UNIVAC delivery However, it was not untillate 1953 before LEO was considered finished See S H Lavington, Early BritishComputers (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1980): 72–73; also Peter Bird, ‘‘LEO, thePride of Lyons,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 14: 2 (1992): 55–56

49 Oral History Session, UNISYS Corporation, May 17–18, 1990, SmithsonianInstitution, Washington, DC

50 L R Johnson, ‘‘Installation of a Large Electronic Computer,’’ in Proceedings ofthe ACM Meeting (Toronto, September 8–10, 1952): 77–81

51 J Presper Eckert, ‘‘Thoughts on the History of Computing,’’ IEEE Computer(December 1976): 64

52 Luther A Harr, ‘‘The Univac System, a 1954 Progress Report’’ (RemingtonRand Corporation, 1954): 6

53 James C McPherson, ‘‘Census Experience Operating a UNIVAC System,’’Symposium on Managerial Aspects of Digital Computer Installations (30 March, 1953,Washington, DC): 33

54 Lukoff, From Dits to Bits, chapter 9

55 Roddy F Osborn, ‘‘GE and UNIVAC: Harnessing the High-Speed ter,’’ Harvard Business Review (July–August 1954): 102

Compu-56 McPherson, ‘‘Census Experience Operating a UNIVAC System,’’ 30–36

57 Remington Rand Corporation, ‘‘Univac Fac-Tronic System,’’ Undatedbrochure, ca 1951, Unisys Archives; also McPherson, ‘‘Census ExperienceOperating a UNIVAC System.’’

58 Paul E Ceruzzi,‘‘The First Generation of Computers and the AerospaceIndustry,’’ National Air and Space Museum Research Report (1985): 75–89; alsoRobert Dorfman, ‘‘The Discovery of Linear Programming,’’ Annals of the History

of Computing 6: 3 (1984): 283–295, and Mina Rees, ‘‘The Computing Program at

the Office of Naval Research,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 4: 2 (1982): 102–120.

59 L R Johnson, ‘‘Installation of a Large Electronic Computer,’’ In Proceedings

of ACM Meeting (Toronto, 1952): 77–81

60 Luther Harr, ‘‘The UNIVAC System, a 1954 Progress Report,’’ (RemingtonRand Corporation, 1954) UNISYS Archives

Compu-64 John Diebold, Automation (New York: Van Nostrand, 1952)

65 John Diebold, ‘‘Factories Without Men: New Industrial Revolution,’’ TheNation (1953): 227–228, 250–251, 271–272 See also David F Noble, Forces ofProduction: A Social History of Industrial Automation (New York: Knopf, 1986),chapter 4

66 Roddy Osborn, ‘‘GE and UNIVAC,’’ 99

67 Ibid., 103; also UNIVAC Oral History, Smithsonian Institution Archives

68 Ibid., 104

69 Ibid., 107

70 Harr, ‘‘The UNIVAC System: A 1954 Progress Report,’’ 1 UNISYS Archives

71 Smithsonian=UNISYS UNIVAC Oral History Project, May 17–18 (1990)

72 Emerson W Pugh, Memories that Shaped an Industry (Cambridge: MIT Press,1984): 30

73 Saul Rosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers: a Historical Survey,’’ Computing Surveys 1(March 1969): 7–36

74 Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 161–162

75 Cuthbert C Hurd, ‘‘Edited Testimony,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 3(April 1981): 168

80 Ibid., 173–178.

81 Erwin Tomash and Arnold A Cohen ‘‘The Birth of an ERA: EngineeringResearch Associates, Inc., 1946–1955,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 1: 2(1979): 83–97; also Charles J Murray, The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray andthe Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer (New York: Wiley, 1997)

82 Seymour Cray, ‘‘What’s All This About Gallium Arsenide?’’ Videotape in theauthor’s possession of a talk given at the ‘‘Supercomputing ’88’’ conference inOrlando, Florida, November 1988; also Murray, The Supermen, 44–45

83 Tomash and Cohen, ‘‘The Birth of an ERA,’’ 90

84 Seymour R Cray, ‘‘Computer-Programmed Preventative Maintenance forInternal Memory Sections of the ERA 1103 Computer System,’’ in Proceedings ofWESCON (1954): 62–66

85 Samuel S Snyder, ‘‘Influence of U.S Cryptologic Organizations on theDigital Computer Industry,’’ Journal of Systems and Software 1 (1979): 87–102

86 Ben Ferber, ‘‘The Use of the Charactron with the ERA 1103,’’ Proceedings ofWJCC (February 7–9, 1956): 34–35

87 Alice R and Arthur W Burks, The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), chapter 1; also J PresperEckert, ‘‘A Survey of Digital Computer Memory Systems,’’ in Proceedings of IRE(October 1953): 1393–1406

88 Perry O Crawford Jr., ‘‘Automatic Control by Arithmetic Operations’’(Master’s thesis, MIT, 1942) The bulk of Crawford’s thesis discussed photo-graphic rather than magnetic storage techniques, but it appears that this thesiswas partially the inspiration for work that Eckert later did at the Moore School

89 Tomash and Cohen, ‘‘The Birth of an ERA,’’ 83–97

90 Engineering Research Associates, Inc., High-Speed Computing Devices (NewYork: McGraw Hill, 1950; reprinted 1983, Los Angeles: Tomash Publishers): 322–339

91 Richard E Sprague, ‘‘The CADAC,’’ U.S Navy, Symposium on CommerciallyAvailable General-Purpose Electronic Digital Computers of Moderate Price (Washington,DC: 1952): 13–17

92 Richard E Sprague, ‘‘A Western View of Computer History,’’ Comm ACM 15(July 1972): 686–692

93 E D Lucas, ‘‘Efficient Linkage of Graphical Data with a Digital Computer,’’

in Proceedings of WESCON (1954): 32–37

94 Willis E Dobbins, ‘‘Designing a Low-Cost General Purpose Computer,’’ inProceedings of ACM Meeting (Toronto, September, 1952): 28–29

95 Sprague, ‘‘A Western View of Computer History,’’ CACM: 686–692.

96 C Gordon Bell and Allen Newell, Computer Structures: Readings and Examples(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971): 217

97 B E Carpenter and R W Doran, ‘‘The Other Turing Machine,’’ ComputerJournal 20 (August 1977): 269–279

98 Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Programming the Pilot ACE: Early Programming atthe National Physical Laboratory,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 3 (1981):133–162

99 Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 168

100 Tomash and Cohen, ‘‘The Birth of an ERA,’’ 83–97

101 Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, chapters 3 and 5

106 J C Chu and R J Klein, ‘‘Williams Tube Selection Program,’’ in ProceedingsACM Meeting (Toronto, September, 1952): 110–114

3 The property is called ‘‘hysteresis,’’ after the Greek word to denote

‘‘deficiency’’ or ‘‘lagging,’’ because the rate at which the material becomesmagnetized lags behind the rate at which a magnetizing current can affect it

4 Emerson Pugh, Memories that Shaped an Industry: Decisions Leading to IBMSystem=360 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), chapter 2

5 Kent C Redmond and Thomas M Smith, Project Whirlwind: The History of aPioneer Computer (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1980): 206; ‘‘Engineering Report onthe Static Magnetic Memory for the ENIAC,’’ Burroughs Corporation, Reportprepared for the Ballistics Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground,Philadelphia, 31 July, 1953; also Electronics (May 1953): 198 and 200 TheSmithsonian’s National Museum of American History has one of the survivingremnants of a Mark IV shift register that used Wang’s invention.

9 Gordon Bell, ‘‘The Computer Museum Member’s First Field Trip: TheNorthbay [sic] AN=FSQ SAGE Site,’’ CACM 26: 2 (1983): 118–119

10 Edmund Van Deusen, ‘‘Electronics Goes Modern,’’ Fortune (June 1955): 132–

16 For an insider’s view of Honeywell’s decision, see interview with RichardBloch, Smithsonian Computer History Project; also W David Gardner, ‘‘Chip offthe Old Bloch,’’ Datamation (June 1982): 241–242

17 Fortune 52 (July 1955), supplement, 2–5

18 Robert W House, ‘‘Reliability Experience on the OARAC,’’ in ProceedingsEastern Joint Computer Conference (1953): 43–44; also Robert Johnson, Interview,Annals of the History of Computing 12: 2 (1990): 130–137; and George Snively,

‘‘General Electric Enters the Computer Business, Annals of the History of ing 10: (1988): 74–78.

Comput-19 Homer R Oldfield, King of the Seven Dwarfs: General Electric’s AmbiguousChallenge to the Computer Industry (Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer SocietyPress, 1996)

20 Fishman, Computer Establishment, 164–165

21 W K Halstead et al., ‘‘Purpose and Application of the RCA BIZMACSystem,’’ in Proceedings Western Joint Computer Conference (1956): 119–123; alsoRosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers,’’ 16–17

22 Rosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers,’’ 16–17; W K Halstead, et al., ‘‘Purpose andApplication of the RCA BIZMAC System,’’ 119–123

23 R P Daly, ‘‘Integrated Data Processing with the UNIVAC File Computer,’’Proceedings Western Joint Computer Conference (1956): 95–98

24 Franklin Fisher, James McKie, and Richard Mancke, IBM and the U.S DataProcessing Industry (New York, Praeger, 1983): 53

25 See, for example, T A Heppenheimer, ‘‘How von Neumann Showed theWay,’’ American Heritage of Invention & Technology (Fall 1990): 8–16

26 The following description is taken from several texts, including John L.Hennessy and David A Patterson, Computer Architecture: a Quantitative Approach(San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 1990); Simon Lavington, Early BritishComputers (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1980): 106–119; C Gordon Bell andAllen Newell, Computer Structures: Readings and Examples (New York: McGraw-Hill,1971)

27 Bell and Newell, Computer Structures, 224; also Adams Associates, ‘‘ComputerCharacteristics Chart,’’ Datamation (November=December, 1960): 14–17

28 Simon Lavington, History of Manchester Computers (Manchester, UK: NCCPublications, 1975): 12

29 C C Hurd, ‘‘Early IBM Computers: Edited Testimony,’’ Annals of the History

33 Richard E Smith, ‘‘A Historical Overview of Computer Architecture,’’Annals of the History of Computing 10: 4 (1989): 286.

34 T H Myer and I E Sutherland, ‘‘On the Design of Display Processors,’’Communications of the ACM 11: 6 (June 1968): 410–414; also C Gordon Bell, J.Craig Mudge, and John McNamara, Computer Engineering: a DEC View of HardwareSystems Design (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1978): 202

35 Bell, Mudge, and McNamara, Computer Engineering, 256–257

36 Gerald Brock, The Telecommunications Industry: the Dynamics of Market Structure(Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1981): 187–194 Little of the litigation had to do withthe transistor; much, however, concerned Bell’s Western Electric subsidiary’srole as manager of the Sandia Corporation, a military installation in New Mexicothat manufactured atomic bombs

37 Thomas J Misa, ‘‘Military Needs, Commercial Realities, and the ment of the Transistor, 1948–1958,’’ in Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterpriseand Technological Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985): 253–287; also J H.Felker, ‘‘Performance of TRADIC System,’’ in Proceedings Eastern Joint ComputerConference (1954): 46–49 These machines were used point-contact transistors,which were not only unreliable but difficult to produce in large quantities

Develop-38 John Allen, ‘‘The TX-0: its Past and Present,’’ Computer Museum Report #8(Spring 1984): 2–11

39 Samuel Snyder, ‘‘Influence of U.S Cryptologic Organizations on the DigitalComputer Industry,’’ Journal of Systems and Software 1 (1979): 87–102

40 Ibid.; also telephone conversation with Ray Potts, March 31, 1995

41 Herman Lukoff, From Dits to Bits: a Personal History of the Electronic Computer(Portland, OR: Robotics Press, 1979); J L Maddox et al., ‘‘The TRANSAC S-1000Computer,’’ in Proceedings Eastern Joint Computer Conference (December 1956): 13–16; also Saul Rosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers: a Historical Survey.’’

42 Ibid., 89

43 Fisher, IBM and the U.S Data Processing Industry, 87

44 L P Robinson, ‘‘Model 30-201 Electronic Digital Computer,‘‘ Symposium onCommercially-available General-purpose Digital Computers of Moderate Price (Washing-ton, DC, 14 May 1952): 31–36

45 Fisher, IBM and the U.S Data Processing Industry, 83

46 For many years this computer was on display at the Smithsonian Institution’sNational Museum of American History The claim is taken from a brochureBurroughs made available for that exhibit Oral histories of several Burroughsemployees are on file with the Smithsonian Computer History Project, including

an interview with Robert Campbell, 11 April 1972

47 William Rodgers, Think: a Biography of the Watsons and IBM (New York, Stein

54 Mitchell E Morris, ‘‘Professor RAMAC’s Tenure,’’ Datamation (April 1981):195–198

55 This story has been independently told to the author by several people,including at least one person who worked on the BMEWS system at the time.Charles Bashe, et al, in IBM’s official history, mentions a ‘‘very taut schedule’’ butdoes not repeat this story See Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1986): 446–449

56 For a period of two years at its Federal Systems Division, IBM did not allowinteractive terminals at the sites where its programmers were working Allprograms had to be submitted on the standard forms A more typical situationwas to have the programmers use the forms, letting keypunchers prepare thedecks, but providing a single 029 punch so that he or she could punch one ortwo cards from time to time See Robert N Britcher, ‘‘Cards, Couriers, and theRace to Correctness,’’ Journal of Systems and Software 17 (1992): 281–284

57 Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 468–469

58 Bell and Newell, Computer Structures, chapter 18; also Fisher et al., IBM and theU.S Data Processing Industry, 53

3 National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC Press release dated 6October 1993.

4 Susan Lammers, ed., Programmers at Work (Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press,1989), 278

5 Margaret Hamilton, interview with the author, 6 April 1992; J David Bolter,Turing’s Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1984)

6 Alan Perlis has said of this, ‘‘Beware of the Turing tar-pit in which everything

is possible but nothing is easy.’’ In Perlis, ‘‘Epigrams on Programming,’’ ACMSIGPLAN Notices (October 1981): 10

7 Barry Boehm, ‘‘Software Engineering,’’ IEEE Transactions on Computers C25(December 1976), 1226–1241; for a refutation of Boehm’s thesis, see WernerFrank, ‘‘The History of Myth #1,’’ Datamation (May 1983): 252–263

8 Brian Randell, ‘‘Epilogue,’’ in Charles and Ray Eames, A Computer Perspective:Background to the Computer Age, new edition, foreword by I Bernard Cohen(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990): 163

9 Harvard University Computation Laboratory, A Manual of Operation for theAutomatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, Charles Babbage Institute Reprint series,vol 8 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985; originally published 1946)

10 Hopper, quoted in ‘‘Computers and Their Future: Speeches Given at theWorld Computer Pioneer Conference,’’ Lladudno, Wales, July 1970, (Lladudno:Richard Williams and Partners): 7=3–7=4

11 Grace Hopper, Log Book for the ASCC, April 7–Aug 31, 1994; SmithsonianInstitution Archives; a description of Baker’s problem is found in HerbertGrosch, Computer: Bit Slices from a Life (Novato, CA: Third Millennium Books,1991): 51–52

12 Some of these concepts predate the digital era and can be traced to, forexample, the MIT Differential Analyzer, an analog machine that wasprogrammed by sequences of tapes See interview with Perry Crawford, Smith-sonian Computer History Project, 29 October 1970

13 Konrad Zuse, ‘‘Planfertigungsgera¨te,’’ 1944; Bonn, Gesellschaft fu¨ r matik und Datenverarbeitung, Zuse Archive, folder 101=024

Mathe-14 Konrad Zuse, ‘‘Der Programmator,’’ Zeitschrift fu¨ r Angewandte Mathematik undMechanik 32 (1952): 246; Heinz Rutishauser, ‘‘Rechenplanfertigung beiprogrammgesteuerten Rechenmaschinen,’’ Mitteilungen aus dem Institut fu¨rangewandte Mathematik der ETH, no 3, 1952; also F L Bauer, ‘‘BetweenZuse and Rutishauser: the Early Development of Digital Computing in CentralEurope,’’ in N Metropolis, J Howlett, and Gian-Carlo Rota, eds., A History ofComputing in the Twentieth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1980): 505–524

15 Rutishauser, ‘‘Automatische Rechenplanfertigung bei programmgesteuertenRechenmaschinen,’’ ZAMP 3 (1952): 312–313 (author’s translation).

16 Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Programming the EDSAC: Early ProgrammingActivity at the University of Cambridge,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 2(1980): 7–36; Also Maurice Wilkes, D J Wheeler, and Stanley Gill, The Preparation

of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer (Cambridge: Addison-Wesley, 1951)

17 Maurice Wilkes, Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985):142–144

18 Smithsonian Institution, NMAH Archives, Grace Hopper Papers, Box 5,folder #1, program of ACM Meeting, Oak Ridge, April 1949

19 J W Mauchly, memorandum to EMCC executive committee, 16 August1948; Hagley Museum, Accession 1825, Series I, Box 3: Mauchly, John; alsoRichard Pearson, ‘‘Admiral Hopper Dies; Pioneer in Computers,’’ WashingtonPost (January 2, 1992)

20 Grace Hopper, ‘‘Compiling Routines,’’ internal memorandum, Mauchly Computer Corporation, Philadelphia, 31 December 1953; Box 6,folder 9, Hopper Papers, Smithsonian Archives

Eckert-21 Ibid

22 Hopper papers, NMAH, Box 5, folder 7 Here she uses the term ‘‘generator’’

in a sense that one might use ‘‘compiler’’ today

23 For a concise definition of the terms ‘‘compiler’’ and ‘‘interpreter’’ as theywere initially used, see Grace M Hopper, ‘‘Compiling Routines,’’ Computers andAutomation 2 (May 1953): 1–5 In Hopper’s words: ‘‘The interpretive method ofusing subroutines consists of fixing the location of the subroutine in thecomputer memory, and causing the main program to interpret what may becalled a ‘‘pseudo-code,’’ and thus refer to the subroutine and perform it Thecompiling method of using subroutines consists of copying the subroutine in tothe main routine, adjusting memory locations as necessary to position thesubroutine properly in the program and to supply arguments and results’’ (p 2)

24 Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill discuss a program they call an ‘‘assembly tine,’’ which does the same thing They also describe something similar that theycall ‘‘interpretive’’ routines: See Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill, The Preparation ofPrograms for an Electronic Digital Computer, 26–37 These terms survive to thepresent day but with different meanings Suffice it to say that in the early 1950s ithad become clear that the computer could be instructed to take over many ofthe chores of producing programs, but just how much, and in what form, was lesscertain See Also Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Programming the EDSAC: EarlyProgramming Activity at the University of Cambridge,’’ Annals of the History ofComputing, 2 (1980): 7–36

subrou-25 Michael Mahoney, ‘‘Software and the Assembly Line,’’ paper presented atWorkshop on Technohistory of Electrical Information Technology, DeutschesMuseum, Munich, December 15–19, 1990.

26 J H Laning and N Zierler, ‘‘A Program for Translation of MathematicalEquations for Whirlwind I,’’ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Engineering Memorandum

no E-364, January 1954) National Air and Space Museum, NBS Collection, Box

39, Folder 8

27 See John Backus, ‘‘Programming in America in the 1950s—Some PersonalRecollections,’’ in Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota, eds History of Computing in theTwentieth Century, 125–135, especially pp 133–134

28 Laning and Zierler, ‘‘A Program for Translation of Mathematical EquationsFor Whirlwind I,’’ (1954) frontispiece In the copy that I examined, fromthe library of the National Bureau of Standards, someone—possibly SamuelAlexander—crossed out the word ‘‘interpretive’’ and wrote in pencil above

it ‘‘translated.’’

29 Backus, ‘‘Programming in America.’’

30 Charles W Adams and J H Laning Jr., ‘‘The MIT Systems of AutomaticCoding: Comprehensive, Summer Session, and Algebraic,’’ in Symposium onAutomatic Programming of Digital Computers (Washington, DC: U.S Navy, 1954): 64

31 Donald Knuth, ‘‘The Early Development of Programming Languages,’’ inMetropolis, Howlett, and Rota, eds., History of Computing in the Twentieth Century,239

32 Paul Armer, ‘‘SHARE—a Eulogy to Cooperative Effort,’’ Annals of the History

of Computing, 2: 2 (April 1980): 122–129 Armer says that ‘‘SHARE’’ did not standfor anything; others say it stood for ‘‘Society to Help Avoid Redundant Effort.’’

33 Donald Knuth, Sorting and Searching (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1973): 3

34 See, for example, the work of C A R Hoare See also Knuth, Sorting andSearching

35 Von Neumann to Herman Goldstine, 8 May 1945; Hagley Museum, sion 1825, Box 74, series II, Chron File, May 1945–October 1945

Acces-36 Donald Knuth, ‘‘Von Neumann’s First Computer Program,’’ ComputingSurveys 2 (December 1970): 247–260

37 Between 1947 to June of 1950 Holberton went by the surname Snyder.See interview with Holberton, UNIVAC Oral History Conference, SmithsonianInstitution, May 17–18, 1990, 52; Smithsonian Institution Archives Soon afterRemington Rand acquired EMCC, she left for the U.S Navy’s David TaylorModel Basin just outside Washington, D.C., where she continued work as aprogrammer on UNIVAC #6