In computer news this week, 02/21/2006
Lead: Even the world's first computer had a lot of bugs...
The world's first electronic computer was the ENIAC - electronic numerical indicator and calculator, developed at the University of Pennsylvania as part of the 2nd World War effort and funded by the U.S. Army.
The Army needed a faster way to calculate artillery shell trajectories.. At the time it took over a month to calculate and produce a complete firing table. These calculations were done by a team of hundreds of women using desk calculators. These women were called "computers" and the term transferred to the ENIAC.
The inventors of the ENIAC were John Mauchly and J. Presbert Eckert; 2 very different individuals. Mauchly was a physicist; obsessed with theories. Eckert was an engineer, whose mind dealt only with realities. Mauchly came from a working class background, Eckert from very high society.
There had been other calculating devices before ENIAC. In the mid 1800's a British inventor named Charles Babbage came up with the idea of an Analytical Engine based on a weaving machine, the loom, which could create complicated designs by reading instructions which were punched onto cards. The cards were strung together into a chain of continuous instructions.
The inventors of the ENIAC had no knowledge of Babbage's
theories and might have benefited from them, as the ENIAC was extremely
difficult to program. 6 of the women who
operated the desk calculators were picked to program the ENIAC and became the
first modern computer programmers.
At the time, other inventors were trying to create a similar computer based on electromechanical devices, or analog electrical devices. The ENIAC was a digital electronic system, which used binary logic, and consisted of early electronic devices - vacuum tubes - 0ver 17,000 of them, half a million soldered joints, 70,000 resistors and 10,000 capacitors. It ended up costing half a million dollars and taking over 200,000 manhours to complete.
Vacuum tubes were notoriously unreliable, and Eckert ended up choosing tubes which had been used by the telephone company for the transatlantic cable, and running them at less then 1/10th the normal power. He experimented with many types of wire, and put starved mice in a cage with different types of wire, and used the least appetizing brand. Eckert also designed the ENIAC with modular components, for easy replacement.
The modern computer term "bug" is attributed a moth flying into the circuitry of the ENIAC - being burnt up - and creating a short in the wiring.
Mauchly had no real interest in theoretical computing; his main interest was to be able to build a machine that could calculate weather patterns; his obsession. Eckert's father was a captain of industry and Eckert had business ideas for his invention. Both men later went on to start the Univac Coporation.
As with the computers we know today, the ENIAC was over budget and behind schedule, and was not completed on time to assist in the war effort.
But it did launch the electronic computer industry.
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