Calculating a Consensus

Published: December 17, discount 2010 The New York Times

Related:    Sunday Book Review: ‘The Man Who Invented the Computer’ by Jane Smiley (November 28, cure 2010)

To the Editor:

Kathryn Schulz’s review of “The Man Who Invented the Computer,” by Jane Smiley, fails to address a basic issue: Is the book true, or at least consistent with the consensus about the development of the computer (“Binary Breakthrough,” Nov. 28)? Contrary to Smiley’s claims, most historians believe that if anyone deserves credit for the invention of the general-purpose electronic computer, it should go to J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who developed the Eniac. Of course, there are many difficult issues over what it means to “invent” any complex technology. But a review of a work of historical biography should at least inform readers that the book challenges a general scholarly consensus, and evaluate whether the book is adequately based on research and facts.

TIM BARTIK
Kalamazoo, Mich.

Excuse me (Bill Mauchly) for being thrilled see Peter Eckstein totally demolish Jane Smiley’s The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, sovaldi sale Digital Pioneer in the Columbia Journalism Review.  See the review and comments here.

The review of the book by Lauren Kirchner first appeared online Nov 24, 2010.  The entire trail of comments is very entertaining in itself.   Gini Calcerano dove in to criticize the book.  Then in a surprise visit by Jane Smiley herself, ambulance the author tries to throw the fight in a different direction by accusing a Gini Calcerano of hiding the fact that she was actually a Mauchly, and even better, a “Mauchlyite.”  Yea, the Mauchlyites were awakened and hit back with renewed force.  As Rick Moranis says in Ghostbusters: “Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!”

Today Peter Eckstein, author and historian, added a highly detailed criticism of Smiley’s factual errors and extreme bias.  Here is his post in its entirety:

______________________________

I am not related to anyone in this controversy, and I never met Mauchly.  I did interview Eckert (and others) extensively and published a long article on his early life in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. My only strong bias is a belief that history should be depicted as accurately as possible.  I have read all parts of the Smiley book concerning American computer developments and found them to be superficially researched, riddled with factual errors, and totally biased—nothing short of a publishing scandal.

Smiley’s thesis is entirely borrowed from previous writers on one side of the issue.  It is that Atanasoff, a brilliant scientist at Iowa State (where Smiley taught for more than a decade), invented “the computer,” later called the ABC.  Then his ideas were stolen by Mauchly (“a space case”) who shared them with Eckert at Penn. Eckert merely “followed through,” making sure that Mauchly’s designs “were properly executed” during World War II in developing the ENIAC computer for the Army. By contrast, many serious computer historians argue that Eckert, who worked closely with Mauchly and others, should be seen as the master engineer of the computer age.

Read more »

The world’s premier computer history museum has opened its biggest exhibit ever, site an ambitious survey of 2000 years of computing. What would be better publicity than a little controversy? They are diving right into it. The opening picture for the exhibit is none other than our favorite, malady the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. On Jan 27 they will welcome Jane Smiley, author of a new book about Atanasoff, for a “conversation” in front of a public audience.
We are not sure how much the Mountain View, California audience will know about or care about the goings on in the 1940s, back when computer memory was measured in words, not gigabytes. What is so interesting about that old battle between the Mauchly-ites and the Atanasoviets, primitive warring tribes from a distant part of the continent?
I guess we will have to wait and see. My experience with computer historians at the museum and elsewhere is that they do not like to be told what is, or what isn’t, a computer. I’m not sure why they would like it any better if it were coming from a non-technical fiction author who usually writes about horses. I guess we will have to wait and see.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer, sales March 6, sale 2000

By Kay Mauchly Antonelli

They were a most unlikely pair. They met at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania. My future husband, John Mauchly, was 34, had a Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University and had just completed eight years as head of the Physics Department at Ursinus College. J. Presper Eckert, 22, had just graduated from Moore School and had stayed on as an electronics lab instructor while beginning work on his master’s degree.

Before they left Moore in 1946, they had designed and built the world’s first electronic computer, ENIAC, and laid the basic design for all future electronic computers.

In the summer of 1941, Mauchly took a course called Emergency Science and Management Defense Training at Moore. The laboratory instructor was Pres Eckert. Mauchly, who had a lifelong dream of forecasting the weather, was hoping he could learn enough advanced electronics to help him with the design of a computer that could speed up his statistical analysis of weather phenomena.

He couldn’t have found anywhere a more receptive ear than Eckert’s. Despite his youth, Eckert was a genius in vacuum tube circuitry. He already had a patent in the television field. The two men spent most of their spare time exploring the possibilities of computing electronically.

When the course was completed in September, Moore School offered Mauchly a teaching position. Mauchly was happy to accept. It meant not only an increase in salary, but also an opportunity to explore with Eckert the possibilities of designing and building some sort of computer.

War was declared on Dec. 8. Within six months, the Ballistics Research Laboratory of Aberdeen Proving Ground had taken over the operation of the differential analyzer (the largest mechanical calculating machine in the world), which was in the basement of Moore. Aberdeen also established a computing laboratory there, for which they hired and trained about 100 women. These women, called “computors,” calculated trajectories to be used in Army firing tables. To compute only one trajectory, it took a computor 20 to 40 hours using an electric desk calculator.

Mauchly saw an immediate need for an electronic computer. In August 1942, he wrote a proposal titled “The Use of High Speed Vacuum Tube Devices for Calculating.” He envisioned an electronic computer that could computer a trajectory in 20 seconds.

This proposal finally came to the attention of a young Army mathematician, Lt. Herman Goldstine, who asked for a full proposal. Eckert and Mauchly worked night and day for several weeks writing up a proposal that the Army accepted on April 12, 1943. The proposed machine would be called ENIAC, an acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It was understood from the beginning that this would be a general-purpose computer.

Eckert was chief engineer and Mauchly consultant in charge of logic and design. With the help and dedication of about a dozen engineers, numerous wise men and assemblers, ENIAC was built on the first floor of Moore School. It had 18,000 vacuum tubes, was 80 feet long and could operate at 100,000 pulses per second.

ENIAC was demonstrated to the public on Feb. 14, 1946. It was a huge success. The New York Times reported “an amazing machine which applies electronic speeds for the first time to mathematical tasks hitherto too difficult and cumbersome for solution.. . . Leaders who saw the device in action for the first time heralded it as a tool with which to begin to rebuild scientific affairs on new foundations.”

While ENIAC was being built, Eckert and Mauchly had many more ideas about how to build a smaller, cheaper, faster, more flexible machine, a stored program which they called Edvac. Forced out over a patent dispute, they left Moore School in March 1946 and formed their own company, Electronic Control Co., to build computers. Many of the engineers who had worked with them on ENIAC joined them.

Astonishingly enough, not a single bank or investment company was willing to lend them money. So with a loan of $25,000 from Eckert’s father and the enthusiastic support of engineers willing to work for next to nothing, the new company was launched. The government gave them a contract to build a computer for the Bureau of Census, which they called Univac. Douglas Aircraft contracted for a small computer called Binac. Eckert was chief engineer, and Mauchly was president and salesman.

The government took a chance, and soon they had contracts to build Univacs for the Army, Navy and Air Force. The company, now renamed Eckert and Mauchly Computer Co., soon attracted the attention of an investor, Henry Straus, who was willing to invest time and money.

Just when things seemed promising, the company suffered two massive blows. First, Straus was killed in a plane crash. Then the McCarthy investigations charged the company with employing engineers who had communist leanings. The company lost its clearance for government work; all contracts with the Army, Navy and Air Force were canceled. As president of the company, Mauchly was charged with hiring communists and ordered off the premises. He fought back, demanded a hearing, and after two years was allowed back on the premises. After intensive investigations, the only charge against Mauchly was that he was “eccentric.”

Meanwhile, the company, managing with a few civilian contracts and the Census Bureau contract, was sold to Remington-Rand, a manufacturer of punch-card equipment, typewriters and other office equipment. Eckert headed the engineering department, constantly developing new, faster and better methods for handling and storing data. Mauchly worked on machine languages and new programming methods. The two worked together all the time, with the dreamer Mauchly constantly coming up with ideas about what a computer should be able to do, Eckert constantly inventing hardware to make these things happen.

When his 10-year contract with Remington-Rand expired in 1960, Mauchly left to form his own company, Mauchly Associates, a construction management company. Eckert stayed with Remington-Rand as vice president of its Univac Division. Through its mergers with Sperry Corp. and later Burroughs, the company came to be called Unisys.

In 1971, Univac sued Honeywell for patent infringement. In the ensuing countersuit, the judge invalidated the ENIAC patents to Eckert and Mauchly, claiming, among other things, that the ENIAC was in public use more than a year before the patent was applied for. The testing of the machine by the Atomic Energy Commission was considered public use.

Eckert and Mauchly remained fast friends throughout their lives. They complemented each other. Mauchly was always the teacher – highly intelligent, witty and compassionate. Described by many as the “visionary of the computer age,” he was interested in developing people as well as ideas. Mauchly died in January 1980 from complications of an inherited blood disease. Speaking at Mauchly’s funeral in January 1980, Eckert said, “He inspired me and he inspired many others. He was not tied down by inhibitions or tradition. He was certainly one of the most brilliant people I ever knew.”

Eckert stayed with the company he had cofounded and retired as vice president of Unisys. This brilliant, original, no-nonsense engineer and spellbinding speaker died in 1995, just a few months before the 50th anniversary of ENIAC. In his later years, he had become a spokesman for the computer industry. He claimed in his speeches that he and Mauchly were the Wright Brothers of computing. He was honored by the IEEE, Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers, as “Engineer of the Century.”

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Kay Mauchly Antonelli, one of the first women programmers on the ENIAC, was married to John Mauchly for 32 years.  She died in 2006.

© 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
The woman knew how to tell a story.  I just made a page for this piece, patient “Their Machine Launched a World of Change” by Kathleen Mauchly Antonelli.  It was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer ten years ago.  Feel the love.
The woman knew how to tell a story.  I just made a page for this piece, sales “Their Machine Launched a World of Change” by Kathleen Mauchly Antonelli.  It was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer ten years ago.  Feel the love.

A fascinating in-depth article by Peter Eckstein, cialis who is writing a book on the early years of a number of innovators, prostate including John Mauchly. It first appeared in 1996 and includes an extensive bibliography. (c) IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996. Presented by permission of Peter Eckstein.
Amending the ENIAC Story, see John W. Mauchly, drugstore Datamation, troche Vol. 25, No. 11, 1979.

(JWM’s working title: STORED PROGRAMS IN THE ENIAC, BINAC AND EDVAC)

A Letter to the Editor of DATAMATION, from John W. Mauchly
[address] , Ambler PA, 19002

In the May 1979 DATAMATION, you published some highlights from Nancy Stern’s doctoral dissertation, in part relating to the “stored program”.  I would like to add further material which may interest some of your readers.
The EDVAC was the outcome of lengthy planning in which Eckert and I deliberately tried to overcome many problems of storage and control which were evident in the hasty “state-of-the-art” ENIAC System.  Much of this planning took place in the early months of 1944, when most of the ENIAC design had been frozen.  (See, e.g. “Disclosure of a Magnetic Drum Calculator”, Jan. 1944, U. Penna. Archives).
The principle which guided these “POST-ENIAC” efforts was that of trying, in the next computer, to use the same device for all situations requiring the same function (such as storage).  What had been out of the question with ring-counter storage suddenly appeared within reach because of the economies estimated as possible with the acoustic delay line storage.  It was not until October, 1944, that an Army Ordnance contract authorized work on EDVAC (without any specification as to just what an EDVAC might be).  We were still building ENIAC, and had to be sure that it was properly completed.  That took over a year more.
But all through 1944, and in 1945 as well, we were leading a “double life”.  For much of two shifts, 8 AM to Midnight, both ENIAC construction and testing needed supervision.  Then as hourly workers went home and project engineers “thinned out”, Eckert and I were left time to consider that “next machine”.  Naturally, “architecture” or “logical organization” was the first thing to attend to.  Eckert and I spent a great deal of thought on that, combining a serial delay line storage with the idea of a single storage for data and program.  From January, 1944, (the Magnetic Calculator Disclosure), followed by the delay line ideas of a month or so later, on through the Summer, Eckert and I were very busy in these dual roles — switching from ENIAC jobs to thinking of what that new machine might be like.
During part of this time, Goldstine was hospitalized and did not have direct knowledge of the plans which were being generated so late at night.  But Harry Huskey, who came to the ENIAC project about April, 1944 (his estimate) confirmed that soon after he arrived he became aware that the “next computer plans” involved having programs and data in the very same “store”.  This was long before Goldstine met von Neumann in August, 1944.
September 7, 1944 was the first day when von Neumann had security clearance to see the ENIAC and talk with Eckert and me about the classified digital computer projects on which we worked.  When von Neumann arrived, Eckert and I were asked to tell “Johnny” what our plans were, and we did. We started with our simple basic ideas: There would be only ONE storage device (with addressable locations) for the ENTIRE EDVAC, and this would hold both data and instructions.  All needed arithmetic operations would be performed in just ONE arithmetic unit (unlike the ENIAC).  All control functions would be centralized (in contrast to the ENIAC).  Of course there would be devices to handle input and output, and these would be subject to the control module just as the other modules were.
Johnny learned instantly, of course, as was his nature.  But he chose to refer to the modules we had described as “organs” and to substitute hypothetical “neurons” for hypothetical vacuum tubes or other devices which could perform logical functions.  It was clear that Johnny was rephrasing our logic, but it was still the SAME logic.  Also, he was introducing different but equivalent symbols; nevertheless the devices still did the same things.  Johnny did NOT alter the fundamental concepts which we had already formulated for the EDVAC.
Everyone could see how fascinated Johnny was with a subject which had somehow escaped his amazingly wide interests until Goldstine told him of the Moore School project.  Like a child with a new toy, he could not put it aside.  When his consulting duties required him to visit the Manhattan Project, he took off for New Mexico, hut his mind was on our EDVAC architecture.
He must have spent considerable time at los Alamos writing up a report on our design for an EDVAC.  This MSS he sent to Goldstine, with a letter stating that he had done this as an accommodation for the Moore School group who had met with him.  But Goldstine mimeographed it with a title page naming only one author — von Neumann.  There was nothing to suggest that ANY of the major ideas had come from the Moore School Project!
Without our knowledge, Goldstine then distributed the “design for the EDVAC” outside the project and even to persons in other countries.
Small wonder, then, that computer history gave von Neumann the credit.  Eckert and I, who left the Univ. of Penna. In 1946, no longer had access to the documents which might have helped to show “who did what, when.”  But after many years, litigation has unearthed some of those documents, and historians can read what was once classified.  But, even after declassification, those reports are not accessible to most people, since they were reproduced in such small quantities.  Nevertheless, we hope that more historians will refer to them.
Of those who did check our ENIAC and EDVAC reports, Metropolis and Worlton published “A Trilogy of Errors in the History of Computing” (USA – Japan Computer Conf. 1972 AFIPS).  Metropolis of los Alamos was in an excellent position to notice such errors, for he knew von Neumann and Eckert and me and the history recounted above.  But on “historians” who merely copy from popular sources, that paper had no influence.
Before moving on to the BINAC, it is important to note that the ENIAC really did have a stored program, but not in the sense in which that word is currently used.  The ENIAC was much more than an analog of a mechanical desk computer.  Control of the calculations was more important than “just doing arithmetic fast”.  And that control had to be fast enough so that it did not lose all the time gained by doing the arithmetic fast.  That meant that any element of the program which changed fast had to be “in fast storage”.  Each of the 20 “accumulators” had a ring counter for “repeat operations”, but more important were the electronic counters and stepping switches in the Master Programmer.  These made possible immediate change from one program sequence to another, enabling the use of nested subroutines and other program variations.
Altogether, about 25% of the ENAIC “fast electronic storage” was devoted to such internal storage of those parts of the program which varied rapidly.  That is one of the important features which made the ENIAC a far more powerful instrument than an “electronic speed-up of a mechanical computing device”.

Now for a few words about the BINAC, which was not only the first stored program computer built by Eckert-Mauchly, but the fastest with delay line storage.  Its clock rate was 4 megacycles, or 8 times that of the first machine at Cambridge, England — the EDSAC.  The BINAC was really two identical machines, checking each other each clock cycle, and these “Siamese twins” were completed and amply demonstrated for an entire week to many scores of guests in Philadelphia.  These demonstrations were reported in the Journal of the Franklin Institute for October, 1949, but not much carried by the popular press.  They were very carefully noted by observers from the National Bureau of Standards, and the Bureau of the Census, because these agencies were expecting Eckert-Mauchly to build and deliver UNIVACs to the government.  Apparently these highly interested groups were satisfied that Eckert-Mauchly would indeed be able to produce UNIVACs.
Then what happened?  It would be more than a year before any computer of similar capacity and speed would be available in North America.  ENIAC, for three years the ONLY electronic computer in the whole world, now had a real rival with 512 “words” of storage any of which could be used for data or program.  Northrop, the BINAC contractor, did not see or realize the potential of what it had.  While ENIAC was kept busy on many scientific problems until 1955, this pioneer BINAC of 1949 was cast aside.
Northrop Aircraft required immediate delivery in Philadelphia.  Northrop then “took charge”.  The various modules of the BINAC were roughly crated, shipped to California, and apparently ignored.
But, for the sake of “stored program” history, the following should be recorded: The first of the two computers which became the BINAC was under test early in 1949, and ran non-stop without error in April, 1949, for 44 hours.  The test was then interrupted so that the engineers could get on with other work.  The Cambridge EDSAC, we are told, made its debut in May, 1949.
Having covered some of the main points, I shall conclude with a few minor comments.
One common misconception which Eckert and I have repeatedly tried to correct is that ENIAC technology was based on previous radar work.  There is not a shred of truth in that.  It was, to a large extent, based on the “scaling” circuits of nuclear and cosmic ray laboratories.  The acoustic delay line storage device, used in EDVAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC came from Eckert’s previous projects for radar.
There is a confusion of p.233 of Dr. Stern’s article between fixed function tables used in the multiplier unit to produce “partial products”, and the three large “portable function tables” which could be manually set up for arbitrary function values for 104 arguments.
Also, I should answer Fred Gruenberger’s remarks about my August 1942 memo.  It was never intended to explain or propose a CONTROL method for electronic computation, but merely to “sell” the reason for developing electronic devices to overcome the limitations of mechanical devices, including relays.  Fortunately it did that.  But IT DID NOT DESCRIBE even a calculator, still less a computer.
Any one who wants to read what we proposed for the ENIAC should consult the April 1943 proposal which Eckert and I and Dr. Brainerd put together and presented to the Ballistic Research Laboratory at a meeting which approved the “starting project”.  In that document was a “program chart” which I drew up to show how the iterations for a trajectory might be calculated.  Such may be the first program ever attempted for an electronic digital device.  Perhaps Brian Randall will reprint that proposal in a revision of his book on “Origin of Digital Computers”.
A History of the Univac Magnetic Tape Plating Facility
Located in the Basement of the Building at 3747 Ridge Avenue, sickness
Philadelphia, cialis sale Pennsylvania

Douglas C. Wendell, doctor Jr.                                                                      July 2005     rev 9/27/06

The work in the basement of Ridge Avenue was the culmination of the first project I was assigned to. Ted (Theodore H.) Bonn was doing research aimed at developing a process for making magnetic recording tape by coating a non-magnetic metal supporting tape with a thin magnetic metal coating–the idea being that a thin coating would be capable of recording a higher data density than possible on the thicker iron oxide coating then used on recording tape.  Another important consideration was that a metal-based tape would be mechanically stable, unlike the paper based recording tape then in use.

I was hired in November of 1947 at The Electronic Control Company located at 1215 Walnut Street in the several floors above a Lane Bryant store.  I was interviewed by John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, Isaac Auerbach, Frazer Welsh, Ted Bonn, and John Sims.  They decided to take a chance on me, liking my combination of a degree in chemistry from Haverford College along with my electronics training and service as an electronic technician in the navy during WWII.  I was assigned as a chemist to assist Ted Bonn who is an electrical engineer.  My job was to provide additional chemical expertise for the magnetic alloy deposition project that Ted was working on.  I had theoretical knowledge of electrochemistry, but no direct experience in electroplating.  I studied the literature Ted provided: an elementary textbook on electroplating by Blum and Hogaboom and a practical book, The Metal Finishing Handbook published by Metal Finishing magazine. Bernie Victor was our capable lab technician.  Our chemistry laboratory unceremoniously resided in the second floor lavatory.

Ted Bonn had found two interesting processes in the patent literature for depositing nickel-cobalt alloys that might be useful as magnetic recording surfaces.  When I was hired, he was investigating one non-electrolytic process (commonly known as an electrolysis process) which used a chemical reducing agent to deposit a layer of nickel-cobalt onto strips of copper tape. This process required a near-boiling aqueous solution with a short useful working life, and also required that the plated sample be heat treated in hydrogen in order to improve the magnetic properties. The resulting test tapes had magnetic properties which varied along the length of the tape. The other plating method being considered was a more conventional nickel-cobalt electro-plating process with a special modification that superimposed an alternating current onto the normal direct current. In this process, the superimposed alternating current is larger than the direct current, a process sometimes used in decorative plating to produce a brighter surface.  Although somewhat encouraging, neither process provided the desired magnetic properties.
We tested the magnetic properties of our samples by plotting the magnetization loop on a B-H hysteresis loop tracer which Ted had built.  The result was displayed on an oscilloscope.  The most promising results came from the electrolysis process with the hydrogen heat treatment, but converting this uncertain process to continuous tape production didn’t seem feasible. We only ran a few experiments with the electrolysis process after I started work. Ted decided we would concentrate on the electroplating process with superimposed A.C.  After some weeks of indifferent success, Ted proposed combining the two processes–trying a combination of superimposed A.C.  electroplating with the chemical reducing agent from the electrolysis process. We made a little progress so it seemed worthwhile to continue with the combined process.  I decided to add an additional component to stabilize the plating bath, a buffer chemical making it more like some commercial plating baths described in the text books.  Ted had initially used the composition given in the patent.  The tests were tedious, because for each bath composition tested, we had to vary five major parameters: temperature, pH, current density, the ratio of direct current to alternating current, and the amount of the reducing chemical.  In each experiment, we plated five test tapes, varying the A.C. to D.C. ratio for each tape with the other variables constant. I decided to include a control test with each experiment, plating a sixth tape with just direct current–no superimposed A.C.  Ted had already tried straight D.C. with the plating bath described in the patent, but the result was uninteresting.  We ran the next set of tests with the reducing chemical and the buffer salt and included a control test with no A.C.   The first five samples, run with different current densities of both A.C. and D.C. showed no significant improvement, but when we saw the test loop for the control tape, just D.C., we got the kind of thrill that happens when your underdog sports team unexpectedly wins its game.  We repeated some of the earlier experiments, this time using just direct current and we obtained a repeatable range of magnetic properties that would provide the recording engineers with a selection of values to work with.

We had run over 500 tests before we found the properties we were looking for. We used the last few tests to optimize the plating process.  Our development work was now finished and we were ready to try the plating process on a large scale. Our patent attorney, George Eltgroth filed the patent application while we were still at Walnut Street and it was issued in three or four years (about average). The Bonn-Wendell patent became widely investigated and was used by various companies in the computer industry in the production of tape, disks, and drums for many years.

Here’s an interesting note: at a meeting of the Electrochemical Society 15 or so years later, I was startled to find that we were famous–at least in my little specialized field. I received the accolades since I was working as an electrochemist, but we were both recognized as pioneers by workers in other companies in the magnetic data recording field. This was years after I had switched into other work.  Later, at Burroughs, I received patents in various areas: metal etching, a digital logic device, a magnetic memory element formed from a thin strip of permalloy, and an electrostatic memory storage element.

With the chemical work done, the next task, or rather project (consisting of many tasks) was to design and build a tape plating machine with its supporting apparatus. Then in early 1948 the Electronic Control Company became the Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation and we moved to the building at Broad and Spring Garden Streets.  There was no longer a need for electro-plating experiments, but there were months of design and parts fabrication to be done for the plating machine. The design was a team effort and in the end, fifteen or twenty persons were involved, but these are the people I especially remember: Ted Bonn of course, and myself, also electrical engineer Frazer Welsh, Frank Tees and his draftsman Bill Boss, mechanical engineer Bob Roedder and his machinists as well as Pres Eckert and John Mauchly who provided valuable design advice and monitored progress.  The purchasing department under Enea Bossi and his purchasing agents, notably Eddie Whiteman and Bob Newton, did a great job obtaining unusual items–for example parts made of special corrosion resistant alloys.  Ted Bonn went back to doing electronic design work and I assumed the task of coordinating the design, and construction of the machine and its auxiliary apparatus, and later on managing supplies and training operators.  The initial design effort had begun while we were still in the Walnut Street building and continued on Ridge Avenue.

As we worked on the preliminary design of the tape plating machine, the space requirement for the plating operation became apparent as well as the need for water and the disposal of waste water.  Installing such an operation in the Spring Garden Street building (or any conventional office building) would have been a major project, even assuming we were able to get permission from the owner.  We did set up a very small plating laboratory in order to do some chromium plating and other types of plating for wear resistance on magnetic recording heads and corrosion resistance on some small parts.

I wasn’t very busy during the early design stage while we were at Broad and Spring Garden and I received an interesting assignment: go to the Franklin Institute Library and read and report on some articles on the work Dr. Shockley was doing at Bell Labs.  So I reported about the work on transistors.  I remember reporting that it looked promising but there was a long way to go before transistors would be available for computers.

The Yellow Cab Company acquired the Broad and Spring Garden Streets building and became our new landlord soon after we had moved from Walnut Street in 1948.  Not very long after that, some time in 1948 or 1949, Eckert-Mauchly had outgrown the space in the Yellow Cab Building which made installing the plating machine in the Spring Garden building moot.  We obtained a release from Yellow Cab allowing us to vacate under reasonable terms, and we moved to a vacant knitting mill on Ridge Avenue between Allegheny and Lehigh Avenues.

I learned from Pres that had Yellow Cab not agreed to the release, we would have obtained a “contract” to test automobile horns 24 hours a day or something similar. Another observation about the Yellow Cab operation: the taxicab dispatch transmitter signals were picked up by the BINAC circuits which then had to be shielded.

An important early decision was that the magnetic properties of the plated tape must be continuously monitored during the plating process.  This meant that at the end of the plating line just before spooling, the finished tape had to pass thru a B-H hysteresis loop tracer.  The design of the in-line B-H loop tracer was discussed at length by Pres Eckert, Frazer Welsh, Ted Bonn, and me.  Ted Bonn’s loop tracer used two alternating current magnetizing coils with two sensing coils, into one of which our tape samples were inserted–the other sensing coil being used to neutralize the air induction in the first coil.  The magnetizing coils got very hot, so the B-H loop test had to be done rapidly and the magnetizing current switched off before the coils burned up.  The loop tracer on the plating machine was expected to run continuously, so overheating could be a serious problem.  From elementary text book theory, the magnetizing field strength in a coil of fixed dimension depends on ampere-turns–the product of current times the number of turns of wire.  Therefore it didn’t matter whether we used many turns with a small current or a few turns with a large current to get the required field strength.  We decided to go with magnetizing coils of about 50 turns of copper tubing, using a high current, and cool the conductor by running water through it.

Pres and I shared an amusing incident relating to the design of the production continuous loop tracer.  He became concerned that the Philadelphia water supply pressure might not be enough to cool the coils adequately. I found a pressure gauge and Pres and I went down to the basement to check.  I attached a heavy hose to the gauge and held the hose against the water faucet and turned the handle.  We just had time to observe the pressure when the hose got loose and squirted us.  It got a laugh from both of us.  (The pressure was around 50 PSI, much higher than needed.)

The availability of a large basement at Ridge Avenue solved the problem of where to put the tape plating facility. The large electroplating room became my domain until around the beginning of 1952 when George Sutton became foreman over the production team.  My technician during much of that time after the plating machine was built was Robert Laurens, a Belgian who had been a merchant ship sailor during WWII, and who was a good mechanic and chemical technician. Eventually, with tape production running smoothly, I was released to the engineering department for development of plated memory disks.  I worked for Reed Stovall on that project until I resigned in the spring of 1952 to work for a chemical company for a year before joining Burroughs in 1953.

I forget how many months elapsed before we had the tape plating machine running, but it was a very interesting period.  We created a concrete-lined trench in the concrete floor to drain waste water from the plating process rinse tanks.  A student summer helper (a neighbor of Frazer Welsh’s, last name: Ryan) and I learned to operate a jackhammer for opening up the trench. (The Good Lord preserved our hearing, I know not how, and I still sing in choirs and choruses. The first chorus we sang in had just been started by our technical writer, Joe Chapline, organist and choirmaster at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia.)

My young helper and I continued to get the area ready to hold the plating machine and when we got the main structural elements from the shop we assembled the framework of the machine.  Some of the smaller parts had already been made at the Spring Garden Street plant, and as more finished parts became available, we completed the assembly.  I suppose there were more than a thousand parts.  I ordered the chemicals and other expendable supplies.  It was sometime late in 1948 before we were able to run the machine to test its ability to handle tape.  My high school friend and helper had started college before he had a chance to see the finished machine.

Electroplating requires direct current electrical power.  While still at Spring Garden Street, I had calculated the required current and voltage and with advice from Pres Eckert I designed a power supply using heavy transformers bought from a war surplus store nearby on Callowhill Street.  We had learned the Ridge Avenue plant was supplied with two phase power (I suppose, half a century later, they may have converted to the now ubiquitous three phase power).  I explained to the store owner how we were going to use the transformers in a two phase bridge rectifier circuit which he claimed wouldn’t work.  I guess I told him not to worry, I knew what I was doing, and of course it worked fine.

We knew that the chemical composition of the plating bath would change with use and would have to be monitored. We obtained an instrument for measuring the solution pH and I set up a chem. lab in which we could periodically analyze the plating solution.  The plating solution which Ted and I had developed at Walnut Street, used nickel and cobalt chlorides buffered with ammonium chloride and with the ingredient sodium hypophosphite–the special ingredient controlling the magnetic properties of the deposited alloy.  The critical nickel-cobalt ratio of the plating bath changed with time and had to be periodically corrected.  Chemical control of the plating process was comparatively easy and the laboratory became available for other chemical problems arising in the plant.

The phosphor-bronze base tape was one mil (one thousandths of an inch) thick and half an inch wide. It had the strength, flexibility, and smoothness required for the tape handling units–then under development by Bob Mock and Ned Schreiner under Frazer Welsh.  The thickness of the plated surface was a bit less than one tenth of the base tape thickness (0.08 mil).  We never measured it directly, but calculated it from the difference in weight between a sample of tape before and after plating.

Much earlier, when first working with the electroplating bath combined with the reducing chemical, Ted and I had wondered if the addition of the reducer would cause additional metal deposition beyond what would be expected from Faraday’s Laws of Electrolysis.  We included in some of our measurements of plating thickness, measurements of current and time, calculating the weight of metal to be expected.  The answer is that the addition of the reducing agent did not cause significant additional deposition as measured by the ordinary laboratory equipment in our lab.

The plating machine had to move great lengths of phosphor-bronze tape through seven different baths.  The tape was conducted through each cleaning and rinsing bath on a frame holding two stainless steel rollers.  The photo shows the arrangement of the frames and the diagrams show how the tape moves over the top roller then down and under the bottom roller and up again to the top roller.  The bottom roller was angled enough to offset the tape by a little more than its half inch width so the return of the loop came up alongside the previous loop.  In the actual machine, there were fifteen loops.  I was reminded by Ted Bonn after he read the first draft of this paper that the idea for setting the top and bottom rollers at an angle came from Frazer Welsh.

The frame and the bottom roller that dipped into the plating bath were made of a non-conducting material to prevent alloy being deposited on them.  The second plating machine had two frames in the plating bath allowing twice the plating speed.  All the upper rollers were kept above the liquids in the tanks.  The upper rollers above the plating bath were of a special metal alloy to prevent corrosion by the plating bath and still conduct the current required for the electroplating process.

The photograph of the tape-plating machine shows it not in use, with the working parts out of the tanks which can be seen in back of the tape handling mechanisms.  The machine was raised and lowered by a small electric motor helped by the heavy cast iron counterbalance weights that can be seen in the photo.  When not in use, or when being serviced, the raised machine is rolled on tracks away from the tanks.   Eventually, the plating machines were moved to the Pep Boys Building on Hunting Park Avenue where the photograph shown was taken.

After I became a Burroughs employee, I visited the plating room at the Pep Boys building during an open house at the Sperry Rand plants in Philadelphia when the I.E.E.E. (an engineering society) held a meeting in Philadelphia.  My friend, George Sutton, the foreman of the plating shop was describing the operation of the plating machines to guests when his voice failed and I relieved him for about half an hour while he rested his voice.

The picture of the plating machine came from a Sperry-Rand brochure from the 1970s–an employment promotion for hiring engineers mailed to me around 1970.  I did return to Sperry in 1979, but as a programmer and worked there two years before returning to Burroughs not long before the merger with Sperry Univac.  I did get to meet Herman Lukoff and Pres Eckert in my second term at Univac and I was there when, sadly, both John Mauchly and Herman died, and attended both services.

What a learning experience those years were for me!  I learned a ton of stuff about all kinds of electroplating there, which was a great help when I went to Burroughs.  I learned a lot about corrosion resistant materials as well as mechanical and electrical design.  I had to learn how to manage and train a crew of operators.  And, in celebration of a most memorable occasion in July of 1949, six people from the Ridge Avenue plant (plus six wives or husbands) traveled to Morristown, New Jersey to attend my wedding to Nancy Carpenter.

For 25 years I did design, engineering, and laboratory research work in chemistry and physics. I finally switched into programming in 1972, starting at hardware level (microprogramming).  Later I programmed in machine languages, and finally in the high level languages Pascal and Algol. During my two years at Univac from 1979 to 1981 I did only microprogramming.  I retired in 1991 from both Burroughs and Univac simultaneously (Univac and Burroughs had merged in 1982 to become Unisys).  My final assignments at Unisys were to write instruction manuals for several machine level computer programs.

When I returned to Univac in 1979 after working 26 years at Burroughs, I renewed my friendship with Tony Occhiolini who then kindly provided me with the three staff pictures of the early days (1948) from the company archives. The pictures were taken at the Eckert-Mauchly plant at Broad and Spring Garden Streets shortly before the move to 3747 Ridge Avenue.  I also want to thank Ted Bonn for helping me get started.  I thank the many friends I worked with for welcoming me back when I returned to Univac in 1979.
SIMPLIFIED DIAGRAMS OF TAPE HANDLING MECHANISM

The tape was moved at a speed of around six inches per second (twelve for the second machine) by a motor that turned the top roller (or rollers) over the electroplating bath.  The take up spool was turned by a motor with enough torque to just keep the spool turning.  Also several roller stations before the plating bath were powered by motors controlled by sensors in order to prevent damage from excessive tension on the tape.

A variable power supply capable of supplying up to six volts was designed using two war surplus transformers; each connected to one phase of our two phase power lines.  High current rectifiers were connected in bridge circuits which had the advantage or reducing the 120 cycle ripple.  We were concerned that the ripple might cause a problem in plating, but that was not the case.  The net ripple was less than 20%.

A similar transformer operated the water cooled magnetizing coils for the B-H hysteresis loop tracer.  The oscilloscope for monitoring the B-H loop can be seen next to the Tape Plating Machine.

TAPE PLATING MACHINE
The tape plating machine electroplated a nickel-cobalt alloy about .08 mil (.00008 inch) thick on a base  tape of half inch wide phosphor bronze, one 1 mil (.001 inch ) thick.  It plated at a rate of approximately one foot per second on the machine shown. The finished tape was re-spooled onto conventional computer tape reels for computer data storage.  This machine was the larger of the two built, having twice the tape speed of the first machine.  Both machines were moved from Ridge Avenue to the Sperry Rand facility leased from the Pep Boys Company on Allegheny Avenue.
The myth of von Neumann’s ENIAC involvement is perpetuated in Harpers Magazine, cialis Jan 2006, “Owning the weather” by Ando Arike
Eckert Mauchly 3747 Ridge Ave, search Little Linden, Trappe near Ursinus?

Excuse me (Bill Mauchly) for being thrilled see Peter Eckstein totally demolish Jane Smiley’s The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, ed Digital Pioneer in the Columbia Journalism Review.  See the review and comments here.

The review of the book by Lauren Kirchner first appeared online Nov 24, 2010.  The entire trail of comments is very entertaining in itself.   Gini Calcerano dove in to criticize the book.  Then in a surprise visit by Jane Smiley herself, the author tries to throw the fight in a different direction by accusing a Gini Calcerano of hiding the fact that she was actually a Mauchly, and even better, a “Mauchlyite.”  Yea, the Mauchlyites were awakened and hit back with renewed force.  As Rick Moranis says in Ghostbusters: “Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!”

Today Peter Eckstein, author and historian, added a highly detailed criticism of Smiley’s factual errors and extreme bias.  Here is his post in its entirety:

______________________________

I am not related to anyone in this controversy, and I never met Mauchly.  I did interview Eckert (and others) extensively and published a long article on his early life in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. My only strong bias is a belief that history should be depicted as accurately as possible.  I have read all parts of the Smiley book concerning American computer developments and found them to be superficially researched, riddled with factual errors, and totally biased—nothing short of a publishing scandal.

Smiley’s thesis is entirely borrowed from previous writers on one side of the issue.  It is that Atanasoff, a brilliant scientist at Iowa State (where Smiley taught for more than a decade), invented “the computer,” later called the ABC.  Then his ideas were stolen by Mauchly (“a space case”) who shared them with Eckert at Penn. Eckert merely “followed through,” making sure that Mauchly’s designs “were properly executed” during World War II in developing the ENIAC computer for the Army. By contrast, many serious computer historians argue that Eckert, who worked closely with Mauchly and others, should be seen as the master engineer of the computer age.

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Amending the ENIAC Story, viagra John W. Mauchly, Datamation, Vol. 25, No. 11, 1979.

(JWM’s working title: STORED PROGRAMS IN THE ENIAC, BINAC AND EDVAC)

A Letter to the Editor of DATAMATION, from John W. Mauchly
[address] , Ambler PA, 19002

In the May 1979 DATAMATION, you published some highlights from Nancy Stern’s doctoral dissertation, in part relating to the “stored program”.  I would like to add further material which may interest some of your readers.
The EDVAC was the outcome of lengthy planning in which Eckert and I deliberately tried to overcome many problems of storage and control which were evident in the hasty “state-of-the-art” ENIAC System.  Much of this planning took place in the early months of 1944, when most of the ENIAC design had been frozen.  (See, e.g. “Disclosure of a Magnetic Drum Calculator”, Jan. 1944, U. Penna. Archives).
The principle which guided these “POST-ENIAC” efforts was that of trying, in the next computer, to use the same device for all situations requiring the same function (such as storage).  What had been out of the question with ring-counter storage suddenly appeared within reach because of the economies estimated as possible with the acoustic delay line storage.  It was not until October, 1944, that an Army Ordnance contract authorized work on EDVAC (without any specification as to just what an EDVAC might be).  We were still building ENIAC, and had to be sure that it was properly completed.  That took over a year more.
But all through 1944, and in 1945 as well, we were leading a “double life”.  For much of two shifts, 8 AM to Midnight, both ENIAC construction and testing needed supervision.  Then as hourly workers went home and project engineers “thinned out”, Eckert and I were left time to consider that “next machine”.  Naturally, “architecture” or “logical organization” was the first thing to attend to.  Eckert and I spent a great deal of thought on that, combining a serial delay line storage with the idea of a single storage for data and program.  From January, 1944, (the Magnetic Calculator Disclosure), followed by the delay line ideas of a month or so later, on through the Summer, Eckert and I were very busy in these dual roles — switching from ENIAC jobs to thinking of what that new machine might be like.
During part of this time, Goldstine was hospitalized and did not have direct knowledge of the plans which were being generated so late at night.  But Harry Huskey, who came to the ENIAC project about April, 1944 (his estimate) confirmed that soon after he arrived he became aware that the “next computer plans” involved having programs and data in the very same “store”.  This was long before Goldstine met von Neumann in August, 1944.
September 7, 1944 was the first day when von Neumann had security clearance to see the ENIAC and talk with Eckert and me about the classified digital computer projects on which we worked.  When von Neumann arrived, Eckert and I were asked to tell “Johnny” what our plans were, and we did. We started with our simple basic ideas: There would be only ONE storage device (with addressable locations) for the ENTIRE EDVAC, and this would hold both data and instructions.  All needed arithmetic operations would be performed in just ONE arithmetic unit (unlike the ENIAC).  All control functions would be centralized (in contrast to the ENIAC).  Of course there would be devices to handle input and output, and these would be subject to the control module just as the other modules were.
Johnny learned instantly, of course, as was his nature.  But he chose to refer to the modules we had described as “organs” and to substitute hypothetical “neurons” for hypothetical vacuum tubes or other devices which could perform logical functions.  It was clear that Johnny was rephrasing our logic, but it was still the SAME logic.  Also, he was introducing different but equivalent symbols; nevertheless the devices still did the same things.  Johnny did NOT alter the fundamental concepts which we had already formulated for the EDVAC.
Everyone could see how fascinated Johnny was with a subject which had somehow escaped his amazingly wide interests until Goldstine told him of the Moore School project.  Like a child with a new toy, he could not put it aside.  When his consulting duties required him to visit the Manhattan Project, he took off for New Mexico, hut his mind was on our EDVAC architecture.
He must have spent considerable time at los Alamos writing up a report on our design for an EDVAC.  This MSS he sent to Goldstine, with a letter stating that he had done this as an accommodation for the Moore School group who had met with him.  But Goldstine mimeographed it with a title page naming only one author — von Neumann.  There was nothing to suggest that ANY of the major ideas had come from the Moore School Project!
Without our knowledge, Goldstine then distributed the “design for the EDVAC” outside the project and even to persons in other countries.
Small wonder, then, that computer history gave von Neumann the credit.  Eckert and I, who left the Univ. of Penna. In 1946, no longer had access to the documents which might have helped to show “who did what, when.”  But after many years, litigation has unearthed some of those documents, and historians can read what was once classified.  But, even after declassification, those reports are not accessible to most people, since they were reproduced in such small quantities.  Nevertheless, we hope that more historians will refer to them.
Of those who did check our ENIAC and EDVAC reports, Metropolis and Worlton published “A Trilogy of Errors in the History of Computing” (USA – Japan Computer Conf. 1972 AFIPS).  Metropolis of los Alamos was in an excellent position to notice such errors, for he knew von Neumann and Eckert and me and the history recounted above.  But on “historians” who merely copy from popular sources, that paper had no influence.
Before moving on to the BINAC, it is important to note that the ENIAC really did have a stored program, but not in the sense in which that word is currently used.  The ENIAC was much more than an analog of a mechanical desk computer.  Control of the calculations was more important than “just doing arithmetic fast”.  And that control had to be fast enough so that it did not lose all the time gained by doing the arithmetic fast.  That meant that any element of the program which changed fast had to be “in fast storage”.  Each of the 20 “accumulators” had a ring counter for “repeat operations”, but more important were the electronic counters and stepping switches in the Master Programmer.  These made possible immediate change from one program sequence to another, enabling the use of nested subroutines and other program variations.
Altogether, about 25% of the ENAIC “fast electronic storage” was devoted to such internal storage of those parts of the program which varied rapidly.  That is one of the important features which made the ENIAC a far more powerful instrument than an “electronic speed-up of a mechanical computing device”.

Now for a few words about the BINAC, which was not only the first stored program computer built by Eckert-Mauchly, but the fastest with delay line storage.  Its clock rate was 4 megacycles, or 8 times that of the first machine at Cambridge, England — the EDSAC.  The BINAC was really two identical machines, checking each other each clock cycle, and these “Siamese twins” were completed and amply demonstrated for an entire week to many scores of guests in Philadelphia.  These demonstrations were reported in the Journal of the Franklin Institute for October, 1949, but not much carried by the popular press.  They were very carefully noted by observers from the National Bureau of Standards, and the Bureau of the Census, because these agencies were expecting Eckert-Mauchly to build and deliver UNIVACs to the government.  Apparently these highly interested groups were satisfied that Eckert-Mauchly would indeed be able to produce UNIVACs.
Then what happened?  It would be more than a year before any computer of similar capacity and speed would be available in North America.  ENIAC, for three years the ONLY electronic computer in the whole world, now had a real rival with 512 “words” of storage any of which could be used for data or program.  Northrop, the BINAC contractor, did not see or realize the potential of what it had.  While ENIAC was kept busy on many scientific problems until 1955, this pioneer BINAC of 1949 was cast aside.
Northrop Aircraft required immediate delivery in Philadelphia.  Northrop then “took charge”.  The various modules of the BINAC were roughly crated, shipped to California, and apparently ignored.
But, for the sake of “stored program” history, the following should be recorded: The first of the two computers which became the BINAC was under test early in 1949, and ran non-stop without error in April, 1949, for 44 hours.  The test was then interrupted so that the engineers could get on with other work.  The Cambridge EDSAC, we are told, made its debut in May, 1949.
Having covered some of the main points, I shall conclude with a few minor comments.
One common misconception which Eckert and I have repeatedly tried to correct is that ENIAC technology was based on previous radar work.  There is not a shred of truth in that.  It was, to a large extent, based on the “scaling” circuits of nuclear and cosmic ray laboratories.  The acoustic delay line storage device, used in EDVAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC came from Eckert’s previous projects for radar.
There is a confusion of p.233 of Dr. Stern’s article between fixed function tables used in the multiplier unit to produce “partial products”, and the three large “portable function tables” which could be manually set up for arbitrary function values for 104 arguments.
Also, I should answer Fred Gruenberger’s remarks about my August 1942 memo.  It was never intended to explain or propose a CONTROL method for electronic computation, but merely to “sell” the reason for developing electronic devices to overcome the limitations of mechanical devices, including relays.  Fortunately it did that.  But IT DID NOT DESCRIBE even a calculator, still less a computer.
Any one who wants to read what we proposed for the ENIAC should consult the April 1943 proposal which Eckert and I and Dr. Brainerd put together and presented to the Ballistic Research Laboratory at a meeting which approved the “starting project”.  In that document was a “program chart” which I drew up to show how the iterations for a trajectory might be calculated.  Such may be the first program ever attempted for an electronic digital device.  Perhaps Brian Randall will reprint that proposal in a revision of his book on “Origin of Digital Computers”.

Calculating a Consensus

Published: December 17, buy 2010 The New York Times

Related:    Sunday Book Review: ‘The Man Who Invented the Computer’ by Jane Smiley (November 28, sick 2010)

To the Editor:

Kathryn Schulz’s review of “The Man Who Invented the Computer,” by Jane Smiley, fails to address a basic issue: Is the book true, or at least consistent with the consensus about the development of the computer (“Binary Breakthrough,” Nov. 28)? Contrary to Smiley’s claims, most historians believe that if anyone deserves credit for the invention of the general-purpose electronic computer, it should go to J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who developed the Eniac. Of course, there are many difficult issues over what it means to “invent” any complex technology. But a review of a work of historical biography should at least inform readers that the book challenges a general scholarly consensus, and evaluate whether the book is adequately based on research and facts.

TIM BARTIK
Kalamazoo, Mich.

In 1979, healing just a few months before he died, John Mauchly had a letter published in DATAMATION.  Examples of his writing are rare, but here he clearly wanted to have his say.  In this short piece he describes how he and Pres Eckert, in the wee hours of 1944, worked out the stored-program architecture of EDVAC, the successor to ENIAC.  Later they told John von Neumann, who published it as his own work, and who never repented for it.

Mauchly also brings up the little-known fact that 25% of the ENIAC’s electronic storage was dedicated to programming.  Perhaps it deserves some consideration as a stored-program computer?  The letter also describes some features of BINAC, an under-appreciated innovation.  This was at the time that Burks and Goldstine were trying to drain as much credit away from Eckert and Mauchly and towards Atanasoff and von Neumann as they possible could.  It turned out to be Mauchly’s last published words.

Stored Programs by John W. Mauchly

This desktop ENIAC simulator lets you learn about the ENIAC the way any respectable hacker does – by monkeying with it.

Our favorite 30 ton computer is turning 65 and not looking great for its age.  But although the original is currently chopped into pieces and scattered across the world like Voldemort’s horcruxes, clinic there is a working ENIAC.  It is a java applet that you can download and play with here.

The desktop version of ENIAC is by Till Zoppke, view who says he was inspired by the ENIAC-on-a-chip that was built at Penn.    It is pretty impressive; you can move patchcords, set switches, and watch it go through it’s paces on a couple of sample programs.  Try to break it, it’s only fair.  There are some tutorials posted there too, for when you get stuck.

An article about the simulation, written by Raúl Rojas and Till Zoppke, is available there, called “The Virtual Life of ENIAC.” It is all hosted by our friends over at at Konrad Zuse Internet Archive.

Feb 15 will be ENIAC Day in Philadelphia.  City Council will decree.   There will be computers dancing in the streets.  iPhones will be gathered around the older desktops as they tell stories of the good old days.

ENIAC, search the biggest bucket of vacuum tubes ever shipped, the machine that changed the world, is celebrating its 65th birthday.

Q&A: A lost interview with ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert

ampoule 10801, check 108568,00.html" target="_blank">Alexander Randall 5th shares his lost interview with ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert. February 14, 2006

There are two epochs in computer history: Before ENIAC and After ENIAC. The first practical, all-electronic computer was unveiled on Feb. 14, 1946, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electronics. While there are controversies about who invented what, there is universal agreement that the ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator) was the watershed project that showed electronic computing was possible. It was a masterpiece of electrical engineering, with unprecedented reliability and speed. The two men most responsible for its success were J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly.

I recorded two days of interviews with “Pres” Eckert in 1989. He was 70 years old. My father was Pres’ best friend from childhood and I’d spent my childhood playing with his children. I visited him regularly as an adult. On that day, we spoke in his living room in Gladwyne, Pa. — most of the time sitting on the floor. We stopped talking about computers only to fiddle with his Nova Chord electronic organ, which predated ENIAC, and we fiddled with stereo speakers. On a second occasion I recorded a conversation at his daughter’s home in western Massachusetts. Eckert died in 1995. I’ve had the interview tapes for many years, but decided to transcribe them for ENIAC’s 60th anniversary.

How did calculating machines work before ENIAC?

Well, a person with a paper and pencil can add two 10-digit numbers in about 10 seconds. With a hand calculator the time is down to 4 seconds. The Harvard Mark 4 was the last of the electromechanical computers — it could add two 10-digit numbers in 0.3 seconds, about 30 times faster than paper and pencil.

When I was a graduate student, the Moore School of Electronics had two analyzers that were essentially copies of Vannevar Bush’s machine from MIT.

What could that machine do?

It could solve linear differential equations, but only linear equations. It had a long framework divided into sections with a couple dozen shafts buried through it. You could put different gears on the shafts using screwdrivers and hammers and it had “integrators,” that gave [the] product of two shafts coming in on a third shaft coming out. By picking the right gear ratio you should get the right constants in the equation. We used published tables to pick the gear ratios to get whatever number you wanted. The limit on accuracy of this machine was the slippage of the mechanical wheels on the integrator.

That made me say, “Let’s built electronic integrators and stick them into this machine instead of those wheel things.” We added several dozen motors and amplifiers and circuits using over 400 vacuum tubes, which, as electronic things go, is not trivial. The radio has only five or six tubes, and television sets have up to 30. The Nova Chord organ was built prior to this and it has about 170 tubes. The Bush Analyzer was still essentially a mechanical device.

ENIAC, which debuted 60 years ago, had 18,000 vacuum tubes.

That led me to examine if I could find some way to multiply pulse numbers together so I didn’t need gears — then I could do the whole thing electrically. There’s a theorem in calculus where you can use two integrators to do a multiplication. I talked with John Mauchley about it. Just who put in which part is hard to tell, but the idea of doing the integrations by counters was mine.

The ENIAC was the first electronic digital computer and could add those two 10-digit numbers in .00002 seconds — that’s 50,000 times faster than a human, 20,000 times faster than a calculator and 1,500 times faster than the Mark 1. For specialized scientific calculations it was even faster.

So it’s a myth that ENIAC could only add, subtract, multiply and divide.

No, that’s a calculator. ENIAC could do three-dimensional, second-order differential equations. We were calculating trajectory tables for the war effort. In those days. The trajectory tables were calculated by hundreds of people operating desk calculators — people who were called computers. So the machine that does that work was called a computer.

So what did they give you? Did they say, “Here’s a room, here are some tools, here are some guys — go make it?”

Uh-huh. Pretty much.

What did ENIAC’s room look like?

We built ENIAC in a room that was 30 feet by 50 feet, at the Moore School in West Philadelphia on the first floor.

There’s a story that ENIAC dimmed the lights in Philadelphia when it was in use.

That story is total fiction, dreamed up by some journalist. We took power off of the grid. We had voltage regulators to provide 150 kilowatts of regulated supply.

Did the military guys working on ENIAC salute the machine?

Another ENIAC myth.

You said the largest tube gadget in 1943 was the Nova Chord electronic organ. What did ENIAC use?

ENIAC had 18,000 vacuum tubes. The tubes were off the shelf; we got whatever the distributor could supply in lots of a thousand. We used 10 tube types, but could have done it with four tube types; we just couldn’t get enough of them. We decided that our tube filaments would last a lot longer if we kept them below their proper voltage. Not too high or too low. A lot of the circuits were off the shelf, but I invented a lot of the circuits as well. Registers were a new idea. So were integrator circuits.

The function of the machine was split into eight basic circuit components: the accumulator, initiator, master programmer, multiplier, divider/square-root, gate, buffer, and the function tables. The accumulator was the basic arithmetic unit of the ENIAC. It consisted of 20 registers, each 10 digits wide, which performed addition, subtraction and temporary storage. The accumulator can be compared to the registers in today’s central processing units.

Are there any of your circuits still in use in today’s personal computers?

No, but that’s true of any first invention. Edison’s original light bulb bears no resemblance to a modern bulb. They do the same thing but with totally different components. Same with the computer. What did survive were the concepts, not the hardware. The idea of a subroutine was original with ENIAC. Mauchly had this idea based on his knowledge of the inner workings of desk calculators and introduced me to his idea for a subroutine in the machine. On Mark-1, if they wanted to do a calculation over and over they had to feed the same tape in over and over. We invented ways to run the same subroutine without any mechanical input. The idea of using internal memory was also original with ENIAC.

There’s a story that some guy was running around with a box of tubes and had to change one every few minutes.

Another myth. We had a tube fail about every two days and we could locate the problem within 15 minutes. We invented a scheme to build the computer on removable chassis — plug-in components — so when tubes failed we could swap them out in seconds. We carried out a very radical idea in a very conservative fashion.

How many people were working on ENIAC?

Total count was about 50 people, 12 of us engineers or technical people. Mauchley was teaching part-time, others had part-time jobs. I was on it full-time as chief engineer.

How old were you?

We signed the contract on my 24th birthday: May 9, 1943.

Was ENIAC programmable?

Yes and no. We programmed the machine by plugging wires in from place to place. That’s not hard-wired; it’s not software; it’s not memory. It’s pluggable programming. And we had switches to set the functions.

What was the first thing you did with ENIAC?

It was designed to calculate trajectory tables, but it came too late to really help with the war effort. The first real use was Edward Teller using ENIAC to do calculations for the hydrogen bomb.

What’s the zaniest thing you did while developing ENIAC?

The mouse cage was pretty funny. We knew mice would eat the insulation off the wires, so we got samples of all the wires that were available and put them in a cage with a bunch of mice to see which insulation they did not like. We only used wire that passed the mouse test.

What prepared you for building an electronic computer?

Remember, in that era, Philadelphia was “Vacuum Tube Valley.” Radios and televisions were predominantly made in Philadelphia. I worked on primitive television at Farnsworth back as a teenager, and at Penn I had been working on various radar problems trying to measure the time for a pulse to go out and come back. I figured that out with counters. All this is a good lead-in for building an electronic computer.

Was it you or was it the times?

Well, I may have been uniquely prepared. I was very good in math and I was fascinated with all electronics. I was designing electronic gadgets as a kid and I not only did academic math, I studied business math. Maybe I had the right fusion of interests. But every inventor stands on the pedestals built by other people. If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have. All that any inventor does is accelerate the process. The main thing was we made a machine that didn’t fail the first time. If it had failed, we might have discouraged this line of work for a long time. People usually build prototypes, see their errors and try again. We couldn’t do that. We had to make it work the first time out.

You have dozens of patents for your inventions. What motivates you?

I am happiest when I am working on the edge of something — where there are not many people who have done it. When nobody has done it, it is pretty tough. That gets me excited.

When you were working on ENIAC, did you have any inkling these things would be laptop-size and everyone would own one?

Mauchley thought the world would need maybe six computers. No one had any idea the transistor and chip technologies would come along so quickly. It is shocking to have your life work reduced to a tenth of a square inch of silicon.

A lot of people have claimed they invented the first computer. What about John Atanasoff?

In the course of a patent fight, the other side brought up Atanasoff and tried to show that he built an electronic computer ahead of us. It’s true he had a lab bench tabletop kind of thing and John [Mauchly] went out to look at it and wrote a memo, but we never used any of it. His thing didn’t really work. He didn’t have a whole system. That’s a big thing with an invention: You have to have a whole system that works.

John and I not only built ENIAC. It worked. And it worked for a decade doing what it was designed to do. We went on to build BINAC and UNIVAC and hundreds of other computers. And the company we started is still in operation after many name changes as Unisys, and I am still working for that company. Atanasoff may have won a point in court, but he went back to teaching and we went on to build the first real electronic programmable computers, the first commercial computers. We made a lot of computers, and we still are.

And John Von Neumann?

He came and looked at our stuff and went back to Princeton and wrote a long document about the principles. He gets a lot of credit but the inventions were ours. Someday I’ll write a book on who really invented the computer. It wasn’t Atanasoff or Von Neumann. We did it.

Randall, former head of the Boston Computer Exchange and the East West Education Development Foundation, currently teaches communication at the University of the Virgin Islands.

Until now, I thought Von Neuman was the father of this great ENIAC..,
We aim to dispel some popular myths with a simple refutation and encourage the reader to conduct  research to their own satisfaction.  Everyone involved is named John, look so it can be confusing. (J. Presper Eckert, buy you guessed it... John)

Before ENIAC

John Atanasoff - Iowa
Myth: John Atanasoff is the {forgotten} father of the first electronic computer.
Refuted: First he would have to build a working electronic computer. Electronic would imply electronic speeds which it has not (60 Hz compared to ENIAC's 100, cialis 000 Hz).
Accepted: He is the father of his own creation, the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC) which could be considered partially electronic. This was an electro-mechanical hybrid, not automatic, single purpose, never put to work, back from the scrap heap to be used as a Patent breaker in a Lawsuit 25 years later. A valiant but unsuccessful attempt at electronic computing. Very popular for 'Forgotten Underdog' theme in sensationalist computer dramas.

After ENIAC

John von Neumann - Mathematician
Myth: John von Neumann is the father of digital computing/ the stored program/ von Neumann architecture /von Neumann Machine etc...
Refuted: The ENIAC was designed, built and running before von Neumann knew of its existence. Fascinated with it, he then wrote a summation with only his name attached called First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. Read this account by John W. Mauchly.

Myth: ENIAC was based on Atanasoffs computer.
Refuted: one was electronic and worked

Myth: Patent Trial proved derivation/ inventorship.
Refuted: it was ruled, not proven, big difference.

Myth: Mauchly saw Atanasoff's computer and therefore must have  acquired the secret idea of how to built a computer.
Refuted: To this day no one knows what this idea is.
Accepted: Mauchly saw Atanasoff's computer. Mauchly even offered him advice on how to speed it up. Atanasoff didn't think Mauchly's idea would work*. Mauchly and Atanasoff were friends and when the ENIAC was unveiled Atanasoff was invited to see it. He didn't mention any similarity to his own device.
[*an interesting gem from Burks book p 152;
According to Mrs Lura Atanasoff,
Atanasoff, referring to Mauchly, says...   " 'I don't think his [machine] will work.' "]

other:
Nominees for the Cult of Atanasoff hall of fame:

Clark R Mollenhoff   (Iowa)--  Atanasoff: Forgotten Father of the Computer (1988), ISBN 0-8138-0032-3

The editor's forward starts,"This is a fast-moving account of a triumph of justice over fraud..." The book is indeed a well written, fast moving story that tells about how Atanasoff designed and built an electronic computer, how the villainous Mauchly stole his computer ideas and claimed they were his own, and how the gallant Honeywell attorneys brought Mauchly to justice.

[and later]

Mollenhoff is a professional writer, not a computer scientist or a historian.

--------------- Saul Rosen criticizing  Mollenhoff's book.

Jane Smiley (Iowa)  same book ... see comments below

Allan R Mackintosh (Iowa)  Publicist

Arthur and Alice Burks  (Iowa)  The first electronic computer: the Atanasoff story
excerpt from p.226         trial notes (pp 2,652-32)

Ferrill: Did you ever design a digital electronic computer?
Atanasoff:   I think I did, yes.
Ferrill:   When did you do that, Dr. Atanasoff?
Atanasoff:  I think this machine is a digital electronic computer, the machine herein discussed.
Ferrill: Dr. Atanasoff---
Atanasoff: If it is not, why, I did not design a digital electronic computer, but I am certain this is a digital electronic computer.

(  hmmmm he doesn't sound so sure....)

Comments on the Smiley book:

There are major problems with taking this book as history. As you point out, most of her sources are already published. Note that though she writes at length about Mauchly and his supposed subterfuge, ill intentions, etc., she utlizes but one source that was written about him; all the rest of her "information" comes from sources that were written in support of Atanasoff, and those sources, or Smiley herself, do a lot of "filling in the gaps" with speculation. E.g., she questions how Mauchly gained access to Atanasoff's lab at NOL in the 1940s. Noting that Mauchly's father was an "emininent scientist in D.C." she insinuates that the elder Mauchly somehow arranged for his son to get clearance. Without much research, she could have discovered that 1) Mauchly was hired by von Neumann to be a consultant on the project, and 2) Mauchly's father died in 1928, leaving one to wonder how he could have arranged security clearance for his son during a War that started 13 years after his death. In Smiley's book, Mauchly is indeed a villain, because she made him one, relying on her Iowa State sources and her own imagination. If she had consulted a variety of sources, we might consider this a history. Instead, it is "historical fiction" kind of like the things we've seen lately about Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth ... only not as well researched.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Wed 24 Nov 2010 at 05:50 PM

Smiley has not done her homework. This book is a rehash of several biased accounts, which do not square well with the historical record. The available primary sources would support a much more even-handed treatment. Such a treatment has in fact been written by Rocco Martino, but has so far aroused no interest among publishers.

One serious flaw is that Smiley glosses over Atanasoff's abject failure to build a digital computer when he was actually put in charge of a very well funded Navy project to do just that, in 1945-46. According to eyewitness accounts, he provided no effective leadership, technical or otherwise, and the project was canceled after 18 months for lack of progress. That does not sound to me like the expected behavior of the "real inventor of the computer".

It is too bad that the legend of the honest farm boy inventor duped by evil tricksters from the big city has so much popular appeal. It is hardly appropriate in this case, at least as applied to Eckert and Mauchly as the bad guys -- it would be nearer the mark to say that Atanasoff was a dupe of Honeywell's lawyers.

The real story is even more interesting than Smiley's fictional one, and awaits an investigative journalist who is prepared to do it justice.

Posted by Tom Sharpless on Thu 25 Nov 2010 at 01:19 PM

Gini Calcerano should identify herself--her name in Gini Mauchly Calcerano. Since the publication of The Man Who Invented the Computer, she has been attacking Atanasoff's claims once again, as the Mauchly-ites have attacked those claims since the court case was decided in 1973. They have said over and over for 37 years that they have material that proves Mauchly developed his ideas independently of his visit to Ames and Atanasoff's computer, but they have never produced that material. not even for Scott McCartney, who wrote ENIAC, a book conceived and written to defend Mauchly. And perhaps Tom Sharpless should get to work on his investigative journalism, since he knows the real story.

Posted by Jane Smiley on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 01:28 PM

I have no problem owning my name, but please don't call me a "Mauchly-ite" as if we were a camp dedicated to trying to crush Atanasoff and his claims. In response to your points, I would note:
1 - Scott McCartney's book was not "conceived and written to defend Mauchly." In fact, Mr. McCartney started with an open question, "Who invented the computer" and did voluminous research before even deciding that he wanted to focus on Mauchly and Eckert. His book reflects his well-researched and thought-out conclusion that the ENIAC was the machine that really brought the world into the computer age. It was never intended to be a defense of Mauchly; it was intended to be fair and even-handed. If that ends up making Mauchly a sympathetic character instead of charlatan and thief, it is not because Mr. McCartney was aiming to prove as much.
2 - No one is saying the ABC was not an extraordinary effort for its time. However, I beg you to show me what items of the ABC show up in the ENIAC. While ABC is binary, ENIAC was decimal. ABC used electronic components, but not in a way to make use of their electronic speeds; it was electro-mechanical in its functioning, and was proved to be so through exhaustive testimony from 3rd party expert witnesses in the Honeywell Trial. The ABC was no faster than anything else at the time. The ENIAC, taking advantage of electronic pulses WITHIN the vacuum tubes, was 5,000 times faster than any other machine at the time. The "smoking gun" capacitor drum ... there wasn't any in the ENIAC, so what's all that about?
I am not trying to dismiss Atanasoff. I am trying to understand why Mauchly has to be made into a villain and a cad for your story to work. The people in Iowa have been yelling loudly and repeatedly about this for a long while, and each time around, the voices become more shrill, and Mauchly becomes more evil.
In fact, Mauchly was a gentle person, an inspirational teacher, and constitutionally incapable of deception. This whole thing with Atanasoff saddened and confused him, as Mauchly thought of him as a scientific colleague.
Any legitimate history of an important subject should include more sources from a wider spectrum of thought than you have consulted. Beyond that, it should not include speculation, insinuation or acts of imagination. Why e.g. do you say that Mauchly's presence at the NOL was a "mystery" and the "visits went on for years"? Consulting the records would have answered that for you without all the nefarious speculation that Mauchly was spying on Atanasoff.
I go on too long. Feel free to contact me personally. I would love to understand why you wrote what you did.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:26 PM

As a follow-up to Ms. Smiley’s post, she should identify herself – she received two degrees from the University of Iowa (according to Wikipedia), the same place where Atanasoff (The Man Who Invented the Computer) developed his machine. Had she attended the University of Pennsylvania, as I did, when there were still people around who actually knew the kind of man Mauchly was…would she have cast him as a thief? Doubtful. My major objection to Ms. Smiley’s book (and it seems the objection of several others) is the bias in her references and her cavalier characterization of Eckert and Mauchly as villains. You can do this in novels, but not in a biography. Bravo to Ms. Calcerano for sticking up for her family. I am disappointed in Ms. Smiley’s choice to try to discredit Ms. Calcerano (because she is a Mauchly) rather than address the points she raises.

Additionally, I don’t think Mr. Sharpless, in his post, was claiming he knows some secrets about the invention of the computer (as Ms. Smiley implied in her post), rather I believe he was referring to the wealth of literature in computer history (e.g. the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing) that Ms. Smiley seemed to ignore in her book. I believe his point was that if an investigative journalist, as opposed to a novelist, were to write the story, it would be quite different from Ms. Smiley’s book but equally as interesting.

Posted by D Moberg on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:42 PM

With respect to the Atansoff-Mauchly controversy, an even-handed and thorough treatment may be found in Saul Rosen's 1990 paper, which may be found by Googling "origins of modern computing saul rosen" if the below hyperlink is filtered out.

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/research/technical_reports/1990/TR%2090-1013.pdf

Rosen's simple and elegant refutations are 20 years old, yet Smiley does not address them in her book, but instead copies ham-handedly and affectively from other long-available secondary sources. Smiley's re-rendition is not a useful complement to the history of computing scholar's shelf, and she has done a disservice to lay readers by corrupting the story to a melodrama and reducing real people to thin stereotypes. It is unfitting of them, and no more befitting of her talents as a writer.

Posted by Robert K S on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:49 PM

I grew up on Jolly Road with the Univac building in my front yard. Many of my parent's friends worked there. In the past weeks I've had the chance to share some of Smiley's prose with them. While I wasn't there, they were. The consensus is her knowledge of technology is, at best lacking. As if she was trying to say the inventor of the cathode ray tube stole the idea from the inventor of the Etch-a-Scetch. Sure they both draw lines across a screen but this is a far a one can draw the comparison. ENIAC was not based on a slow capacitor drum, it functioned at electronic speeds and was programable. Her comparison is not only in error, akin to comparing a helicopter to a fixed wing aircraft, she comes off sounding as a shrill, the Ann Coulter of technology.

Posted by richard babillis on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:58 PM

I grew up on Jolly Road with the Univac building in my front yard. Many of my parent's friends worked there. In the past weeks I've had the chance to share some of Smiley's prose with them. While I wasn't there, they were. The consensus is her knowledge of technology is, at best lacking. It is as if she was trying to say the inventor of the cathode ray tube stole the idea from the inventor of the Etch-a-Scetch. Sure they both draw lines across a screen but this is a far a one can draw the comparison. ENIAC was not based on a slow capacitor drum, it functioned at electronic speeds and was programable. Her comparison is not only in error, akin to comparing a helicopter to a fixed wing aircraft, she comes off sounding as a shrill, the Ann Coulter of technology.

Posted by richard babillis on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:59 PM

Dear Ms. Smiley,

I congratulate you on your ability to use the internet to find out who these "attackers " might be. However, it really doesn't matter WHO is pointing out your glaring errors. The main point everyone has been making is that you haven't tried to use primary sources, and instead rely on your imagination which has served you so well in your fiction writing. You have come under attack previously for your inability to get history right , so you would think Random House would try to get you to be more careful. I am sorry that Random House didn't think to provide you with a fact checker, or access to primary sources, such as the transcripts of depositions, or the artifacts of Mauchly's projects at Ursinus.

I am not a scientist, but I can understand the difference between electro- mechanical speeds and electronic speeds. If you are not capable of understanding the technology, or of understanding the difference between history and historical fiction you shouldn't have written the book.

Posted by Eva Mauchly Moos on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 09:38 PM

I'm shocked that Jane Smiley knew how my book "ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer'' was conceived when she has never contacted me or inquired. I'm equally surprised that she tries to discount my reporting and analysis with her own false assumptions.

My book was based on extensive reporting with surviving participants, personal papers of participants, the extensive federal court record, company archives, Army records, previous books, academic articles and oral histories. It began with a simple question when I was covering the computer industry for The Wall Street Journal: Who invented the computer? I believe the book presents a fair and important history. For Jane Smiley to suggest otherwise is simply wrong.

--Scott McCartney
The Wall Street Journal

Posted by Scott McCartney on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 11:26 PM

(To Lauren Kirchner))In the above review, you mention "his (Atanassoff's) legal battles with his peers."
I can't find mention of any such legal battles on wikipedia or in the book you describe. The trial described in the book is one in which Atanassoff was used as a witness by Honeywell. Whether or not he was paid for his testimony, Honeywell compensated him by creating the first working model of the machine.(His had never been completed ) It was not HIS legal battle, nor that of Mauchly or any other witness.. It was a battle between two large corporations in which this man was used as a pawn (and possibly compensated) for the strategy of the big corporation with the most to lose or gain by the outcome.
If, as you say, the book is an important piece of history, you also should be accurate in writing about it.

Posted by Eva M Moos on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 09:05 AM

Smiley's book makes much of the trial between Sperry and Honeywell. She relies heavily on the rulings of Judge Larson as evidence of the invention of computers by John Atanasoff. That reliance is incorrect. Had she studied the trial in detail, she would have realized that the trial is a travesty of injustice.

In 1972, Honeywell launched a countersuit on Sperry Rand in an attempt to avoid paying significant royalties based on the ENIAC patents assigned to Sperry Rand by Eckert and Mauchly. Through a series of strange convolutions, the trial was moved to Minnesota, a state where Honeywell was one of the largest employers. The ten-month trial was heard in Federal Court without a jury by Judge Earl R. Larson, who had no knowledge of computers and who apparently asked no questions during the proceedings. Judge Larson declared John Atanasoff the inventor of the computer, invalidated the Sperry Patents, and dismissed Honeywell’s complaint against Sperry for unfair trade practices.

As plaintiff rather than defendant, and as the largest employer in the State of Minnesota, Honeywell could present itself as the seriously aggrieved party before a judge who would look beyond the law for factors more in the line of his notion of “justice” than in the letter of the law. In that regard, Honeywell opted for a strategy of characterizing itself as the hapless victim of a blatant attempt at monopoly by Sperry Rand. This allegation cited an earlier cross-licensing agreement between Sperry and IBM as a conspiracy to control the fledgling industry. Honeywell further opted for a strategy of inundating the court with a myriad of documents that would both smother Sperry’s documents and inhibit the ability to extract the truth from the avalanche of material. Judge Larson was presented with over 32,000 exhibits, 26,000 from Honeywell. Some of these documents contained several hundred pages. The trial transcript was over 20,000 pages.

One byproduct of Honeywell’s victory was the unfortunate pall cast upon invention that has affected the computer industry to this day.

Larson's final ruling was well crafted. He dismissed the anti-trust charges which satisfied Sperry; and he cancelled the ENIAC patents which satisfied Honeywell. Mauchly and Atanasoff were collateral aspects to both.

None of this is covered in Smiley's book. That is unfortunate. She wrote a fine novel. It is not completely factual history.

These comments are copyright 2010 by Rocco Leonard Martino, and contain excerpts from his book "People, Machines and Politics of the Cyber Age Creation"

Posted by Rocco Martino on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 10:10 AM

As a member-by-marriage of the Mauchly family I am perhaps biased, but two points should be made that have not. First, Dr. Mauchly never really profited from his invention in any significant financial sense. If he were such a villain, wouldn't he have seen to that? Second, I have read Jane Smiley's other books and found them to be contrived and silly. That her "biography" is such should not be a surprise to anyone.

Posted by Bill moos on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 11:44 AM

The story of Atanasoff was first reported in Clark Mollenhoff's biography, Atanasoff, the forgotten father of the computer, twenty two years ago,(Ames, Iowa State University Press, 1988) Since nobody has mentioned this book, I would like it noted.

Clark Mollenhoff was both an investigative reporter and a lawyer. He was one of the few reporters to win the Pulitzer Prize twice.

Posted by David Reno on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 03:40 PM

In fact, Mr. Mollenhoff's biography of Atanasoff is one of the books upon which Ms. Smiley based hers. One wonders why another had to be written. I have heard, though I cannot verify this, that Mr. Mollenhoff wrote this book at the request of the City of Ames, IA, and or Iowa State Univ. Not exactly "investigative."

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 06:52 PM

Indeed, Mollenhoff is an Iowa native, and his book on Atanasoff was published by the Iowa State University Press. May I presume that other publishers thought it was not well enough researched, biased, or bordering on libel?

Posted by Gini Mauchlyite Calcerano on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 06:58 PM

Mollenhoff also publishes with Doubleday. Is this getting incestuous yet?

Posted by Gini Mauchlyite Calcerano on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 07:00 PM

For the record, D. Moberg is right: though my father helped build ENIAC, I don't have any secret information. Indeed I knew very little about l'affaire Atanasoff until I started getting Bill Mauchly's e-mails about Jane Smiley. Had read Alice Burks' book, of course, but was not much convinced by it. Have since learned more, from the many sources available online.

The investigative journalist I had in mind would not be writing about Atanasoff vs Mauchly, but about Honeywell vs Sperry, the Travesty of the Century.

Posted by Tom Sharpless on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 09:49 PM

In case it isn't obvious, I am the John Gustafson who led the reconstruction of the ABC, just to indicate which "camp" I fall in. As long as this discussion sticks to facts, I think it can be constructive.

Jane Smiley obtained her M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. That is not the school where Atanasoff developed the computer (Iowa State College, now Iowa State University). Equating the University of Iowa with Iowa State University (D Moberg's posting) is like equating USC and UCLA, since both have California in their names.

Computer historians are in broad agreement that many people contributed to the invention of the computer. That point is made throughout Smiley's book; the 1930s and 1940s had a flurry of activity by many people in many countries, and she gives credit to all of them, using primary sources.There is no shortage of primary source material, and perhaps the most revealing are the letters and writings of the inventors themselves. Mollenhoff did an excellent job of bringing those to light to show the ABC-ENIAC part of the story. Smiley's book brings in Turing, Zuse, Aiken, Flowers, von Neumann and thus completes the picture. It does not vilify Mauchly, but it certainly makes obvious that anyone claiming that Mauchly and Eckert deserve all the credit for developing electronic computing is seeing only a very small and carefully selected part of the history.

Posted by John Gustafson on Mon 6 Dec 2010 at 02:21 AM

John Gustafson writes that "anyone claiming that Mauchly and Eckert deserve all the credit for developing electronic computing is seeing only a very small and carefully selected part of the history." I agree. But the title of Smiley's book suggests that Atanasoff deserves all the credit -- a claim even more myopic.

Posted by Ken McLean on Mon 6 Dec 2010 at 01:16 PM

Ken McLean's comment confirms one of my suspicions: That many people who are posting have read only the title of Jane Smiley's book, and not its contents. The contents do not give sole credit to Atanasoff as the title implies.

Posted by John Gustafson on Tue 7 Dec 2010 at 01:06 AM

John Gustafson suspects that many critics of the book have read only the title. I for one have read the entire book. I have also read the Burks' book and Alice Burk's later book, Scott McCartney's book, Nancy Stern's history, Saul Rosen's paper and many other more general works on computer history. I believe most of the critical posts have got it right -- the book grossly exaggerates Atanasoff's contributions to computing. The title of a book is usually indicative of its purpose. If Smiley did not intend to annoint Atanasoff as THE inventor of the computer why did't she call her book "The Men Who Invented the Computer" and remove Atanasoff's picture from its cover?

Posted by Ken McLean on Tue 7 Dec 2010 at 04:36 PM

John Gustafson makes many good points. I agree that the 1930s and 1940s were a time that was ripe for electronic invention, and that many people made contributions on the road to modern computing. I admired the way Smiley brought in the stories of so many people doing that early work, whether or not the work was known at the time.

But he says the book "does not vilify Mauchly," I am sorry to say that it DOES. Mauchly is the only one of the computer pioneers about whom it is said he was "unable" to have any original ideas, and must have taken everything from Dr. Atanasoff. The book relies heavily on the transcripts of the Honeywell Trial, as if all the facts were presented in it, when in fact, much was withheld from the testimony because it wouldn't not have helped one side or the other.

Sperry had no interest in showing the variety of sources that influenced Mauchly, from his own need for high-speed computing to process his sun-spot data, to his visits to Swarthmore to see how electronic tubes could be utilized, to other influences at Penn, professional conferences, G. Stibitz, etc..

Honeywell certainly had no interest in airing the fact that Art Burks was extremely unhappy that he was not included in the ENIAC patents, and had told Mauchly in the 1960s that bad things would happen to him and his reputation in the future, if he didn't agree to adding his name.

Neither side was interested in showing that Dr. Atanasoff and Dr. Mauchly enjoyed a collegial friendship for years....that is before Honeywell decided that they could save themselves millions of dollars by making a case out of Atanasoff's early work.

Every review I have read refers to this book as a "gripping read" or even "techno-thriller" citing the "villain in the story" as John Mauchly. Smiley herself (following Mollenhoff) makes a "plot" out of the fact that Mauchly is a deceptive and nefarious character. (See my comments above.) Why is he the ONLY computer pioneer who can't have his own thoughts, but must steal them from others?

Gustafson also says Smiley used primary sources, but the bibliography of the book shows hardly any. Is he counting her interview with Kirwan Cox, not a primary source, but at least someone who has done some poking around into sources beyond those that come out of Iowa? There is plenty of data at Iowa State, but it appears she took it "pre-packaged" from Mollenhoff and Burks. There is also plenty of data and the complete Mauchly papers at the University of Pennsylvania archives. But it does not appear she consulted that at all.

Indeed, she uses basically one or two sources per pioneer. That's fine for individuals about whom she writes a few pages. That is not sufficient in the case of Mauchly, who is cited more times in the book than anyone but Atanasoff himself, and about whom unfounded claims are made about his character, intentions and personality. If half the book is about Mauchly, then half her research should have been as well.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 10:20 AM

Indeed, Mr. Gustafson, re: villifying Mauchly, the very review we are commenting on says: "The young and ambitious physicist John Mauchly serves as the book’s villain." Okay right off the bat, Mauchly was only 4 years younger than Atanasoff, and not really an ambitious type, as anyone who knew him would attest. But Smiley has made him somehow a young guy with no ideas, rather than a Johns Hopkins PhD; made him ambitious for fame and fortune, rather than keenly interested in solving problems that required loads of data to be processed.

The reviewer continues, "After listening to Atanasoff describe his early experiments, and studying a prototype he had constructed in 1941, Mauchly (in Smiley’s account of events) secretly built upon those innovations for his own work." The reviewer knows nothing of John Mauchly's other preparation for building a computer, because Smiley didn't describe it, except to refer to the trial where it was mentioned in dismissive terms and never really explored.

Thus is Mauchly made into a thief and a villain. One review even had him caricatured as a bandit with a sack of loot.

I am not trying to say Mauchly and Eckert operated in a vacuum. But I am saying they were ethical, hard working, and smart. Jane Smiley's saying otherwise in a national forum, where her well-known name will attract readers who don't know any better than to believe her, is a serious problem.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 10:34 AM

I am happy to see Dr. Gustafson the ABC expert, in the conversation. After watching the demonstration of the reconstructed ABC on youtube, I am curious to hear an opinion on this aspect. Comparing the ABC to the ENIAC seems to be like comparing a wringer washer to an automatic one. A person is required to enter each item one by one, then process each thing one by one, then complete the process, item by item. There is no time saving. Using a program and electronic (rather than electromechanical) speeds are BIG ideas that were not in the ABC. Can someone name something in the ENIAC that WAS taken from the ABC? And doesn't 5000 times faster count as a pretty important innovation? No one is discounting that Atanasoff was brilliant, or that he had a great idea. He just isn't the only one.

Posted by Eva Mauchly Moos on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 01:14 PM

We're drifting a bit both from Smiley's book and the review of it, but I'm happy to answer this technical questions. The Youtube example uses such small integers that it's easy to forget that the ABC did everything in 50-bit precision, equivalent to about 15 decimals on a base ten computer. If you've ever tried multiplying two 15-decimal numbers by hand, I think you'd be doing well to finish one such operation in under 20 minutes and lucky to get the right answer. The ABC did a multiply-add on 30 15-decimal numbers in less than a minute, and very reliably. That's hundreds of times faster than a human, or even a human with a desk calculator of that era, and maybe it's modest compared with later computers but it was pretty spectacular at the time. Atanasoff used the 60 Hz clock cycle of AC line current to simplify his design, since after all he was cost-constrained and didn't have 18,000 vacuum tubes like the ENIAC. He used only a few hundred vacuum tubes.

Like other computers, then and now, someone has to enter the data and someone has to receive the result. I'm typing this note into a computer by pushing buttons on a laptop that contains a motor that spins its hard disk... I guess that means my MacBook Pro is an "electromechanical computer." So the ABC is in pretty good company, don't you think? The term "electromechanical" is usually applied to relays, where an electrical signal is converted into mechanical motion as part of the operation. There was no such use of mechanics in the ABC; the logic was 100% electronic, and the motor simply kept the memory spinning just like it does on a hard disk. Aiken's Mark I, Zuse's Z3, and Alt's Bell Labs machine were electromechanical.

The ENIAC used punch cards also, and it required that constants be entered manually by rotating decimal dials. Setting up a computation required manually setting three thousand switches on the function tables! (See J. Kopplin's "Illustrated History of Computers, Part 4" at http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt4.htm for more details of the vast amount of manual work needed to use the ENIAC). That doesn't count roughly seventy hours to "program" the ENIAC by removing and reattaching wires between functional units. Once set up with all that manual effort, it could compute ballistic tables in a few seconds that would have taken single person twenty hours to do with a hand calculator.

I would love to see an equivalent Youtube of the ENIAC used for solving two equations in two unknowns like in the ABC video, showing all the manual steps needed. The manual steps would similarly make the overall speed unimpressive.

To answer your question about what in the ENIAC was taken from the ABC, it was the concept of electronic digital computing. Primary sources make quite clear that Mauchly only was thinking of analog computing until he met Atanasoff. Driving vacuum tubes to saturation to represent logic states that could be composed to represent arithmetic operations to any precision needed... that was Atanasoff's innovation.

To come back to the subject at hand, Smiley's book credits Atanasoff with that concept, and she also credits Mauchly and Eckert for commercializing electronic digital computing. And she credits Flowers and Turing with inventing code-cracking electronics that helped win World War II. Somehow, we have to get this discussion away from arguments about whose computer was better or faster or bigger or less primitive. Smiley's book is about dramatic events, fascinating personalities, and how they interplay and ultimately have led to the computing technology we enjoy today. I hope people read her book, not these posts, and make up their own minds about Smiley's work.

Posted by John Gustafson on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 11:40 PM

Dr. G: You say "Primary sources make quite clear that Mauchly only was thinking of analog computing until he met Atanasoff." Apparently some primary sources are being ignored. Evidence (that either was not entered into the Honeywell Trial testimony or that has been deliberately ignored) shows that Mauchly was already thinking about digital devices in the mid-1930s at Ursinus. People point to his Harmonic Analyzer as if it were the only thing he worked on before meeting Atanasoff. But Mauchly was already investigating digital solutions utilizing electronic counting before the two met. Mauchly's comments on same were the reason Atanasoff went up to him at the AAAS meeting in Phila. (cf Mauchly's visits to Swarthmore in 1938 and Dartmouth in 1940, e.g.)

Lastly, about the "fascinating personalities." Fascinating, but not historical. How she has portrayed Mauchly's personality is so far off-base, I hesitate to take her word on anyone else's character. Even Atanasoff was not the curmudgeon she makes him out to be.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Thu 9 Dec 2010 at 12:33 AM

Dr. Gustafson is correct in pointing out my error attributing Jane Smiley’s “potential for bias” to her time at the University of Iowa. Her “potential for bias” would more correctly be attributed to the 15 years she spent teaching at Iowa State University (according to Wikipedia) where Atanasoff worked and where Dr. Gustafson led the reconstruction of the ABC.

I apologize for this incorrect fact in my prior post, however, I believe the intent of the post is still valid.

Posted by D Moberg on Thu 9 Dec 2010 at 08:37 AM

==============================================

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=who-built-the-first-computer-2009-09-21
-
We asked Campbell-Kelly, a professor of computer science at the University of Warwick in England and the author (along with William Aspray) of Computer: A History of the Information Machine, for his views on the Atanasoff controversy. He replies:
Computer historians are cautious about asserting priorities to inventors. I did not state that Eckert and Mauchly invented the electronic computer, but rather that they invented a particular computer, the ENIAC. I also said that “computing entered the electronic age with the ENIAC” which is true in the sense of a practical computing instrument of fairly broad application.
There were several electronic computing developments during World War II, both preceding and contemporaneous with the ENIAC, of which the Atanasoff machine was one—others included the NCR code-breaking machines, the Zuse Z4 computer in Germany, and the Colossus code breaking computer in the U.K. In a short article I could not acknowledge them all.
Atanasoff’s machine was a little-known computer that was restricted to a narrow class of problem, was not programmable, and was never fully functional. Atanasoff discontinued development in 1942. The Atanasoff computer was virtually unknown until 1971 when it was uncovered in a patent suit brought by Honeywell against Sperry Rand to invalidate the ENIAC patent. During the trial it was revealed that Mauchly had visited Atanasoff and saw his computer in June 1941. What he learned from this visit cannot be known, but the design of the ENIAC bore no resemblance to the Atanasoff computer. Mauchly himself claimed that he took away “no ideas whatsoever.” Although the judge gave priority of invention to Atanasoff, this was a legal judgment that surprised many historians.
In the article, Campbell-Kelly goes on to emphasize that the most important innovation—and one generally overlooked by casual observers—was the development of the stored-program computer concept by John von Neumann and collaborators in 1945. He writes that “this layout, or architecture, makes it possible to change the computer’s program without altering the physical structure of the machine. Moreover, a program could manipulate its own instructions. This feature … would confer a powerful flexibility that forms the very heart of computer science.”
What do you think? Should Eckert and Mauchly continue to receive credit for inventing the first electronic computer? Or Atanasoff? Or have von Neumann’s contributions to computing theory been overlooked in favor of less important but more tangible physical machines?
We aim to dispel some popular myths with a simple refutation and encourage the reader to conduct  research to their own satisfaction.  Everyone involved is named John, treatment so it can be confusing. (J. Presper Eckert, you guessed it... John)

Before ENIAC

John Atanasoff - Iowa
Myth: John Atanasoff is the {forgotten} father of the first electronic computer.
Refuted: First he would have to build a working electronic computer. Electronic would imply electronic speeds which it has not (60 Hz compared to ENIAC's 100,000 Hz).
Accepted: He is the father of his own creation, the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC) which could be considered partially electronic. This was an electro-mechanical hybrid, not automatic, single purpose, never put to work, back from the scrap heap to be used as a Patent breaker in a Lawsuit 25 years later. A valiant but unsuccessful attempt at electronic computing. Very popular for 'Forgotten Underdog' theme in sensationalist computer dramas.

After ENIAC

John von Neumann - Mathematician
Myth: John von Neumann is the father of digital computing/ the stored program/ von Neumann architecture /von Neumann Machine etc...
Refuted: The ENIAC was designed, built and running before von Neumann knew of its existence. Fascinated with it, he then wrote a summation with only his name attached called First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. Read this account by John W. Mauchly.

Myth: ENIAC was based on Atanasoffs computer.
Refuted: one was electronic and worked

Myth: Patent Trial proved derivation/ inventorship.
Refuted: it was ruled, not proven, big difference.

Myth: Mauchly saw Atanasoff's computer and therefore must have  acquired the secret idea of how to built a computer.
Refuted: To this day no one knows what this idea is.
Accepted: Mauchly saw Atanasoff's computer. Mauchly even offered him advice on how to speed it up. Atanasoff didn't think Mauchly's idea would work*. Mauchly and Atanasoff were friends and when the ENIAC was unveiled Atanasoff was invited to see it. He didn't mention any similarity to his own device.
[*an interesting gem from Burks book p 152;
According to Mrs Lura Atanasoff,
Atanasoff, referring to Mauchly, says...   " 'I don't think his [machine] will work.' "]

other:
Nominees for the Cult of Atanasoff hall of fame:

Clark R Mollenhoff   (Iowa)--  Atanasoff: Forgotten Father of the Computer (1988), ISBN 0-8138-0032-3

The editor's forward starts,"This is a fast-moving account of a triumph of justice over fraud..." The book is indeed a well written, fast moving story that tells about how Atanasoff designed and built an electronic computer, how the villainous Mauchly stole his computer ideas and claimed they were his own, and how the gallant Honeywell attorneys brought Mauchly to justice.

[and later]

Mollenhoff is a professional writer, not a computer scientist or a historian.

--------------- Saul Rosen criticizing  Mollenhoff's book.

Jane Smiley (Iowa)  same book ... see comments below

Allan R Mackintosh (Iowa)  Publicist

Arthur and Alice Burks  (Iowa)  The first electronic computer: the Atanasoff story
excerpt from p.226         trial notes (pp 2,652-32)

Ferrill: Did you ever design a digital electronic computer?
Atanasoff:   I think I did, yes.
Ferrill:   When did you do that, Dr. Atanasoff?
Atanasoff:  I think this machine is a digital electronic computer, the machine herein discussed.
Ferrill: Dr. Atanasoff---
Atanasoff: If it is not, why, I did not design a digital electronic computer, but I am certain this is a digital electronic computer.

(  hmmmm he doesn't sound so sure....)

Comments on the Smiley book:

There are major problems with taking this book as history. As you point out, most of her sources are already published. Note that though she writes at length about Mauchly and his supposed subterfuge, ill intentions, etc., she utlizes but one source that was written about him; all the rest of her "information" comes from sources that were written in support of Atanasoff, and those sources, or Smiley herself, do a lot of "filling in the gaps" with speculation. E.g., she questions how Mauchly gained access to Atanasoff's lab at NOL in the 1940s. Noting that Mauchly's father was an "emininent scientist in D.C." she insinuates that the elder Mauchly somehow arranged for his son to get clearance. Without much research, she could have discovered that 1) Mauchly was hired by von Neumann to be a consultant on the project, and 2) Mauchly's father died in 1928, leaving one to wonder how he could have arranged security clearance for his son during a War that started 13 years after his death. In Smiley's book, Mauchly is indeed a villain, because she made him one, relying on her Iowa State sources and her own imagination. If she had consulted a variety of sources, we might consider this a history. Instead, it is "historical fiction" kind of like the things we've seen lately about Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth ... only not as well researched.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Wed 24 Nov 2010 at 05:50 PM

Smiley has not done her homework. This book is a rehash of several biased accounts, which do not square well with the historical record. The available primary sources would support a much more even-handed treatment. Such a treatment has in fact been written by Rocco Martino, but has so far aroused no interest among publishers.

One serious flaw is that Smiley glosses over Atanasoff's abject failure to build a digital computer when he was actually put in charge of a very well funded Navy project to do just that, in 1945-46. According to eyewitness accounts, he provided no effective leadership, technical or otherwise, and the project was canceled after 18 months for lack of progress. That does not sound to me like the expected behavior of the "real inventor of the computer".

It is too bad that the legend of the honest farm boy inventor duped by evil tricksters from the big city has so much popular appeal. It is hardly appropriate in this case, at least as applied to Eckert and Mauchly as the bad guys -- it would be nearer the mark to say that Atanasoff was a dupe of Honeywell's lawyers.

The real story is even more interesting than Smiley's fictional one, and awaits an investigative journalist who is prepared to do it justice.

Posted by Tom Sharpless on Thu 25 Nov 2010 at 01:19 PM

Gini Calcerano should identify herself--her name in Gini Mauchly Calcerano. Since the publication of The Man Who Invented the Computer, she has been attacking Atanasoff's claims once again, as the Mauchly-ites have attacked those claims since the court case was decided in 1973. They have said over and over for 37 years that they have material that proves Mauchly developed his ideas independently of his visit to Ames and Atanasoff's computer, but they have never produced that material. not even for Scott McCartney, who wrote ENIAC, a book conceived and written to defend Mauchly. And perhaps Tom Sharpless should get to work on his investigative journalism, since he knows the real story.

Posted by Jane Smiley on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 01:28 PM

I have no problem owning my name, but please don't call me a "Mauchly-ite" as if we were a camp dedicated to trying to crush Atanasoff and his claims. In response to your points, I would note:
1 - Scott McCartney's book was not "conceived and written to defend Mauchly." In fact, Mr. McCartney started with an open question, "Who invented the computer" and did voluminous research before even deciding that he wanted to focus on Mauchly and Eckert. His book reflects his well-researched and thought-out conclusion that the ENIAC was the machine that really brought the world into the computer age. It was never intended to be a defense of Mauchly; it was intended to be fair and even-handed. If that ends up making Mauchly a sympathetic character instead of charlatan and thief, it is not because Mr. McCartney was aiming to prove as much.
2 - No one is saying the ABC was not an extraordinary effort for its time. However, I beg you to show me what items of the ABC show up in the ENIAC. While ABC is binary, ENIAC was decimal. ABC used electronic components, but not in a way to make use of their electronic speeds; it was electro-mechanical in its functioning, and was proved to be so through exhaustive testimony from 3rd party expert witnesses in the Honeywell Trial. The ABC was no faster than anything else at the time. The ENIAC, taking advantage of electronic pulses WITHIN the vacuum tubes, was 5,000 times faster than any other machine at the time. The "smoking gun" capacitor drum ... there wasn't any in the ENIAC, so what's all that about?
I am not trying to dismiss Atanasoff. I am trying to understand why Mauchly has to be made into a villain and a cad for your story to work. The people in Iowa have been yelling loudly and repeatedly about this for a long while, and each time around, the voices become more shrill, and Mauchly becomes more evil.
In fact, Mauchly was a gentle person, an inspirational teacher, and constitutionally incapable of deception. This whole thing with Atanasoff saddened and confused him, as Mauchly thought of him as a scientific colleague.
Any legitimate history of an important subject should include more sources from a wider spectrum of thought than you have consulted. Beyond that, it should not include speculation, insinuation or acts of imagination. Why e.g. do you say that Mauchly's presence at the NOL was a "mystery" and the "visits went on for years"? Consulting the records would have answered that for you without all the nefarious speculation that Mauchly was spying on Atanasoff.
I go on too long. Feel free to contact me personally. I would love to understand why you wrote what you did.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:26 PM

As a follow-up to Ms. Smiley’s post, she should identify herself – she received two degrees from the University of Iowa (according to Wikipedia), the same place where Atanasoff (The Man Who Invented the Computer) developed his machine. Had she attended the University of Pennsylvania, as I did, when there were still people around who actually knew the kind of man Mauchly was…would she have cast him as a thief? Doubtful. My major objection to Ms. Smiley’s book (and it seems the objection of several others) is the bias in her references and her cavalier characterization of Eckert and Mauchly as villains. You can do this in novels, but not in a biography. Bravo to Ms. Calcerano for sticking up for her family. I am disappointed in Ms. Smiley’s choice to try to discredit Ms. Calcerano (because she is a Mauchly) rather than address the points she raises.

Additionally, I don’t think Mr. Sharpless, in his post, was claiming he knows some secrets about the invention of the computer (as Ms. Smiley implied in her post), rather I believe he was referring to the wealth of literature in computer history (e.g. the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing) that Ms. Smiley seemed to ignore in her book. I believe his point was that if an investigative journalist, as opposed to a novelist, were to write the story, it would be quite different from Ms. Smiley’s book but equally as interesting.

Posted by D Moberg on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:42 PM

With respect to the Atansoff-Mauchly controversy, an even-handed and thorough treatment may be found in Saul Rosen's 1990 paper, which may be found by Googling "origins of modern computing saul rosen" if the below hyperlink is filtered out.

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/research/technical_reports/1990/TR%2090-1013.pdf

Rosen's simple and elegant refutations are 20 years old, yet Smiley does not address them in her book, but instead copies ham-handedly and affectively from other long-available secondary sources. Smiley's re-rendition is not a useful complement to the history of computing scholar's shelf, and she has done a disservice to lay readers by corrupting the story to a melodrama and reducing real people to thin stereotypes. It is unfitting of them, and no more befitting of her talents as a writer.

Posted by Robert K S on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:49 PM

I grew up on Jolly Road with the Univac building in my front yard. Many of my parent's friends worked there. In the past weeks I've had the chance to share some of Smiley's prose with them. While I wasn't there, they were. The consensus is her knowledge of technology is, at best lacking. As if she was trying to say the inventor of the cathode ray tube stole the idea from the inventor of the Etch-a-Scetch. Sure they both draw lines across a screen but this is a far a one can draw the comparison. ENIAC was not based on a slow capacitor drum, it functioned at electronic speeds and was programable. Her comparison is not only in error, akin to comparing a helicopter to a fixed wing aircraft, she comes off sounding as a shrill, the Ann Coulter of technology.

Posted by richard babillis on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:58 PM

I grew up on Jolly Road with the Univac building in my front yard. Many of my parent's friends worked there. In the past weeks I've had the chance to share some of Smiley's prose with them. While I wasn't there, they were. The consensus is her knowledge of technology is, at best lacking. It is as if she was trying to say the inventor of the cathode ray tube stole the idea from the inventor of the Etch-a-Scetch. Sure they both draw lines across a screen but this is a far a one can draw the comparison. ENIAC was not based on a slow capacitor drum, it functioned at electronic speeds and was programable. Her comparison is not only in error, akin to comparing a helicopter to a fixed wing aircraft, she comes off sounding as a shrill, the Ann Coulter of technology.

Posted by richard babillis on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:59 PM

Dear Ms. Smiley,

I congratulate you on your ability to use the internet to find out who these "attackers " might be. However, it really doesn't matter WHO is pointing out your glaring errors. The main point everyone has been making is that you haven't tried to use primary sources, and instead rely on your imagination which has served you so well in your fiction writing. You have come under attack previously for your inability to get history right , so you would think Random House would try to get you to be more careful. I am sorry that Random House didn't think to provide you with a fact checker, or access to primary sources, such as the transcripts of depositions, or the artifacts of Mauchly's projects at Ursinus.

I am not a scientist, but I can understand the difference between electro- mechanical speeds and electronic speeds. If you are not capable of understanding the technology, or of understanding the difference between history and historical fiction you shouldn't have written the book.

Posted by Eva Mauchly Moos on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 09:38 PM

I'm shocked that Jane Smiley knew how my book "ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer'' was conceived when she has never contacted me or inquired. I'm equally surprised that she tries to discount my reporting and analysis with her own false assumptions.

My book was based on extensive reporting with surviving participants, personal papers of participants, the extensive federal court record, company archives, Army records, previous books, academic articles and oral histories. It began with a simple question when I was covering the computer industry for The Wall Street Journal: Who invented the computer? I believe the book presents a fair and important history. For Jane Smiley to suggest otherwise is simply wrong.

--Scott McCartney
The Wall Street Journal

Posted by Scott McCartney on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 11:26 PM

(To Lauren Kirchner))In the above review, you mention "his (Atanassoff's) legal battles with his peers."
I can't find mention of any such legal battles on wikipedia or in the book you describe. The trial described in the book is one in which Atanassoff was used as a witness by Honeywell. Whether or not he was paid for his testimony, Honeywell compensated him by creating the first working model of the machine.(His had never been completed ) It was not HIS legal battle, nor that of Mauchly or any other witness.. It was a battle between two large corporations in which this man was used as a pawn (and possibly compensated) for the strategy of the big corporation with the most to lose or gain by the outcome.
If, as you say, the book is an important piece of history, you also should be accurate in writing about it.

Posted by Eva M Moos on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 09:05 AM

Smiley's book makes much of the trial between Sperry and Honeywell. She relies heavily on the rulings of Judge Larson as evidence of the invention of computers by John Atanasoff. That reliance is incorrect. Had she studied the trial in detail, she would have realized that the trial is a travesty of injustice.

In 1972, Honeywell launched a countersuit on Sperry Rand in an attempt to avoid paying significant royalties based on the ENIAC patents assigned to Sperry Rand by Eckert and Mauchly. Through a series of strange convolutions, the trial was moved to Minnesota, a state where Honeywell was one of the largest employers. The ten-month trial was heard in Federal Court without a jury by Judge Earl R. Larson, who had no knowledge of computers and who apparently asked no questions during the proceedings. Judge Larson declared John Atanasoff the inventor of the computer, invalidated the Sperry Patents, and dismissed Honeywell’s complaint against Sperry for unfair trade practices.

As plaintiff rather than defendant, and as the largest employer in the State of Minnesota, Honeywell could present itself as the seriously aggrieved party before a judge who would look beyond the law for factors more in the line of his notion of “justice” than in the letter of the law. In that regard, Honeywell opted for a strategy of characterizing itself as the hapless victim of a blatant attempt at monopoly by Sperry Rand. This allegation cited an earlier cross-licensing agreement between Sperry and IBM as a conspiracy to control the fledgling industry. Honeywell further opted for a strategy of inundating the court with a myriad of documents that would both smother Sperry’s documents and inhibit the ability to extract the truth from the avalanche of material. Judge Larson was presented with over 32,000 exhibits, 26,000 from Honeywell. Some of these documents contained several hundred pages. The trial transcript was over 20,000 pages.

One byproduct of Honeywell’s victory was the unfortunate pall cast upon invention that has affected the computer industry to this day.

Larson's final ruling was well crafted. He dismissed the anti-trust charges which satisfied Sperry; and he cancelled the ENIAC patents which satisfied Honeywell. Mauchly and Atanasoff were collateral aspects to both.

None of this is covered in Smiley's book. That is unfortunate. She wrote a fine novel. It is not completely factual history.

These comments are copyright 2010 by Rocco Leonard Martino, and contain excerpts from his book "People, Machines and Politics of the Cyber Age Creation"

Posted by Rocco Martino on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 10:10 AM

As a member-by-marriage of the Mauchly family I am perhaps biased, but two points should be made that have not. First, Dr. Mauchly never really profited from his invention in any significant financial sense. If he were such a villain, wouldn't he have seen to that? Second, I have read Jane Smiley's other books and found them to be contrived and silly. That her "biography" is such should not be a surprise to anyone.

Posted by Bill moos on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 11:44 AM

The story of Atanasoff was first reported in Clark Mollenhoff's biography, Atanasoff, the forgotten father of the computer, twenty two years ago,(Ames, Iowa State University Press, 1988) Since nobody has mentioned this book, I would like it noted.

Clark Mollenhoff was both an investigative reporter and a lawyer. He was one of the few reporters to win the Pulitzer Prize twice.

Posted by David Reno on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 03:40 PM

In fact, Mr. Mollenhoff's biography of Atanasoff is one of the books upon which Ms. Smiley based hers. One wonders why another had to be written. I have heard, though I cannot verify this, that Mr. Mollenhoff wrote this book at the request of the City of Ames, IA, and or Iowa State Univ. Not exactly "investigative."

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 06:52 PM

Indeed, Mollenhoff is an Iowa native, and his book on Atanasoff was published by the Iowa State University Press. May I presume that other publishers thought it was not well enough researched, biased, or bordering on libel?

Posted by Gini Mauchlyite Calcerano on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 06:58 PM

Mollenhoff also publishes with Doubleday. Is this getting incestuous yet?

Posted by Gini Mauchlyite Calcerano on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 07:00 PM

For the record, D. Moberg is right: though my father helped build ENIAC, I don't have any secret information. Indeed I knew very little about l'affaire Atanasoff until I started getting Bill Mauchly's e-mails about Jane Smiley. Had read Alice Burks' book, of course, but was not much convinced by it. Have since learned more, from the many sources available online.

The investigative journalist I had in mind would not be writing about Atanasoff vs Mauchly, but about Honeywell vs Sperry, the Travesty of the Century.

Posted by Tom Sharpless on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 09:49 PM

In case it isn't obvious, I am the John Gustafson who led the reconstruction of the ABC, just to indicate which "camp" I fall in. As long as this discussion sticks to facts, I think it can be constructive.

Jane Smiley obtained her M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. That is not the school where Atanasoff developed the computer (Iowa State College, now Iowa State University). Equating the University of Iowa with Iowa State University (D Moberg's posting) is like equating USC and UCLA, since both have California in their names.

Computer historians are in broad agreement that many people contributed to the invention of the computer. That point is made throughout Smiley's book; the 1930s and 1940s had a flurry of activity by many people in many countries, and she gives credit to all of them, using primary sources.There is no shortage of primary source material, and perhaps the most revealing are the letters and writings of the inventors themselves. Mollenhoff did an excellent job of bringing those to light to show the ABC-ENIAC part of the story. Smiley's book brings in Turing, Zuse, Aiken, Flowers, von Neumann and thus completes the picture. It does not vilify Mauchly, but it certainly makes obvious that anyone claiming that Mauchly and Eckert deserve all the credit for developing electronic computing is seeing only a very small and carefully selected part of the history.

Posted by John Gustafson on Mon 6 Dec 2010 at 02:21 AM

John Gustafson writes that "anyone claiming that Mauchly and Eckert deserve all the credit for developing electronic computing is seeing only a very small and carefully selected part of the history." I agree. But the title of Smiley's book suggests that Atanasoff deserves all the credit -- a claim even more myopic.

Posted by Ken McLean on Mon 6 Dec 2010 at 01:16 PM

Ken McLean's comment confirms one of my suspicions: That many people who are posting have read only the title of Jane Smiley's book, and not its contents. The contents do not give sole credit to Atanasoff as the title implies.

Posted by John Gustafson on Tue 7 Dec 2010 at 01:06 AM

John Gustafson suspects that many critics of the book have read only the title. I for one have read the entire book. I have also read the Burks' book and Alice Burk's later book, Scott McCartney's book, Nancy Stern's history, Saul Rosen's paper and many other more general works on computer history. I believe most of the critical posts have got it right -- the book grossly exaggerates Atanasoff's contributions to computing. The title of a book is usually indicative of its purpose. If Smiley did not intend to annoint Atanasoff as THE inventor of the computer why did't she call her book "The Men Who Invented the Computer" and remove Atanasoff's picture from its cover?

Posted by Ken McLean on Tue 7 Dec 2010 at 04:36 PM

John Gustafson makes many good points. I agree that the 1930s and 1940s were a time that was ripe for electronic invention, and that many people made contributions on the road to modern computing. I admired the way Smiley brought in the stories of so many people doing that early work, whether or not the work was known at the time.

But he says the book "does not vilify Mauchly," I am sorry to say that it DOES. Mauchly is the only one of the computer pioneers about whom it is said he was "unable" to have any original ideas, and must have taken everything from Dr. Atanasoff. The book relies heavily on the transcripts of the Honeywell Trial, as if all the facts were presented in it, when in fact, much was withheld from the testimony because it wouldn't not have helped one side or the other.

Sperry had no interest in showing the variety of sources that influenced Mauchly, from his own need for high-speed computing to process his sun-spot data, to his visits to Swarthmore to see how electronic tubes could be utilized, to other influences at Penn, professional conferences, G. Stibitz, etc..

Honeywell certainly had no interest in airing the fact that Art Burks was extremely unhappy that he was not included in the ENIAC patents, and had told Mauchly in the 1960s that bad things would happen to him and his reputation in the future, if he didn't agree to adding his name.

Neither side was interested in showing that Dr. Atanasoff and Dr. Mauchly enjoyed a collegial friendship for years....that is before Honeywell decided that they could save themselves millions of dollars by making a case out of Atanasoff's early work.

Every review I have read refers to this book as a "gripping read" or even "techno-thriller" citing the "villain in the story" as John Mauchly. Smiley herself (following Mollenhoff) makes a "plot" out of the fact that Mauchly is a deceptive and nefarious character. (See my comments above.) Why is he the ONLY computer pioneer who can't have his own thoughts, but must steal them from others?

Gustafson also says Smiley used primary sources, but the bibliography of the book shows hardly any. Is he counting her interview with Kirwan Cox, not a primary source, but at least someone who has done some poking around into sources beyond those that come out of Iowa? There is plenty of data at Iowa State, but it appears she took it "pre-packaged" from Mollenhoff and Burks. There is also plenty of data and the complete Mauchly papers at the University of Pennsylvania archives. But it does not appear she consulted that at all.

Indeed, she uses basically one or two sources per pioneer. That's fine for individuals about whom she writes a few pages. That is not sufficient in the case of Mauchly, who is cited more times in the book than anyone but Atanasoff himself, and about whom unfounded claims are made about his character, intentions and personality. If half the book is about Mauchly, then half her research should have been as well.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 10:20 AM

Indeed, Mr. Gustafson, re: villifying Mauchly, the very review we are commenting on says: "The young and ambitious physicist John Mauchly serves as the book’s villain." Okay right off the bat, Mauchly was only 4 years younger than Atanasoff, and not really an ambitious type, as anyone who knew him would attest. But Smiley has made him somehow a young guy with no ideas, rather than a Johns Hopkins PhD; made him ambitious for fame and fortune, rather than keenly interested in solving problems that required loads of data to be processed.

The reviewer continues, "After listening to Atanasoff describe his early experiments, and studying a prototype he had constructed in 1941, Mauchly (in Smiley’s account of events) secretly built upon those innovations for his own work." The reviewer knows nothing of John Mauchly's other preparation for building a computer, because Smiley didn't describe it, except to refer to the trial where it was mentioned in dismissive terms and never really explored.

Thus is Mauchly made into a thief and a villain. One review even had him caricatured as a bandit with a sack of loot.

I am not trying to say Mauchly and Eckert operated in a vacuum. But I am saying they were ethical, hard working, and smart. Jane Smiley's saying otherwise in a national forum, where her well-known name will attract readers who don't know any better than to believe her, is a serious problem.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 10:34 AM

I am happy to see Dr. Gustafson the ABC expert, in the conversation. After watching the demonstration of the reconstructed ABC on youtube, I am curious to hear an opinion on this aspect. Comparing the ABC to the ENIAC seems to be like comparing a wringer washer to an automatic one. A person is required to enter each item one by one, then process each thing one by one, then complete the process, item by item. There is no time saving. Using a program and electronic (rather than electromechanical) speeds are BIG ideas that were not in the ABC. Can someone name something in the ENIAC that WAS taken from the ABC? And doesn't 5000 times faster count as a pretty important innovation? No one is discounting that Atanasoff was brilliant, or that he had a great idea. He just isn't the only one.

Posted by Eva Mauchly Moos on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 01:14 PM

We're drifting a bit both from Smiley's book and the review of it, but I'm happy to answer this technical questions. The Youtube example uses such small integers that it's easy to forget that the ABC did everything in 50-bit precision, equivalent to about 15 decimals on a base ten computer. If you've ever tried multiplying two 15-decimal numbers by hand, I think you'd be doing well to finish one such operation in under 20 minutes and lucky to get the right answer. The ABC did a multiply-add on 30 15-decimal numbers in less than a minute, and very reliably. That's hundreds of times faster than a human, or even a human with a desk calculator of that era, and maybe it's modest compared with later computers but it was pretty spectacular at the time. Atanasoff used the 60 Hz clock cycle of AC line current to simplify his design, since after all he was cost-constrained and didn't have 18,000 vacuum tubes like the ENIAC. He used only a few hundred vacuum tubes.

Like other computers, then and now, someone has to enter the data and someone has to receive the result. I'm typing this note into a computer by pushing buttons on a laptop that contains a motor that spins its hard disk... I guess that means my MacBook Pro is an "electromechanical computer." So the ABC is in pretty good company, don't you think? The term "electromechanical" is usually applied to relays, where an electrical signal is converted into mechanical motion as part of the operation. There was no such use of mechanics in the ABC; the logic was 100% electronic, and the motor simply kept the memory spinning just like it does on a hard disk. Aiken's Mark I, Zuse's Z3, and Alt's Bell Labs machine were electromechanical.

The ENIAC used punch cards also, and it required that constants be entered manually by rotating decimal dials. Setting up a computation required manually setting three thousand switches on the function tables! (See J. Kopplin's "Illustrated History of Computers, Part 4" at http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt4.htm for more details of the vast amount of manual work needed to use the ENIAC). That doesn't count roughly seventy hours to "program" the ENIAC by removing and reattaching wires between functional units. Once set up with all that manual effort, it could compute ballistic tables in a few seconds that would have taken single person twenty hours to do with a hand calculator.

I would love to see an equivalent Youtube of the ENIAC used for solving two equations in two unknowns like in the ABC video, showing all the manual steps needed. The manual steps would similarly make the overall speed unimpressive.

To answer your question about what in the ENIAC was taken from the ABC, it was the concept of electronic digital computing. Primary sources make quite clear that Mauchly only was thinking of analog computing until he met Atanasoff. Driving vacuum tubes to saturation to represent logic states that could be composed to represent arithmetic operations to any precision needed... that was Atanasoff's innovation.

To come back to the subject at hand, Smiley's book credits Atanasoff with that concept, and she also credits Mauchly and Eckert for commercializing electronic digital computing. And she credits Flowers and Turing with inventing code-cracking electronics that helped win World War II. Somehow, we have to get this discussion away from arguments about whose computer was better or faster or bigger or less primitive. Smiley's book is about dramatic events, fascinating personalities, and how they interplay and ultimately have led to the computing technology we enjoy today. I hope people read her book, not these posts, and make up their own minds about Smiley's work.

Posted by John Gustafson on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 11:40 PM

Dr. G: You say "Primary sources make quite clear that Mauchly only was thinking of analog computing until he met Atanasoff." Apparently some primary sources are being ignored. Evidence (that either was not entered into the Honeywell Trial testimony or that has been deliberately ignored) shows that Mauchly was already thinking about digital devices in the mid-1930s at Ursinus. People point to his Harmonic Analyzer as if it were the only thing he worked on before meeting Atanasoff. But Mauchly was already investigating digital solutions utilizing electronic counting before the two met. Mauchly's comments on same were the reason Atanasoff went up to him at the AAAS meeting in Phila. (cf Mauchly's visits to Swarthmore in 1938 and Dartmouth in 1940, e.g.)

Lastly, about the "fascinating personalities." Fascinating, but not historical. How she has portrayed Mauchly's personality is so far off-base, I hesitate to take her word on anyone else's character. Even Atanasoff was not the curmudgeon she makes him out to be.

Posted by Gini Calcerano on Thu 9 Dec 2010 at 12:33 AM

Dr. Gustafson is correct in pointing out my error attributing Jane Smiley’s “potential for bias” to her time at the University of Iowa. Her “potential for bias” would more correctly be attributed to the 15 years she spent teaching at Iowa State University (according to Wikipedia) where Atanasoff worked and where Dr. Gustafson led the reconstruction of the ABC.

I apologize for this incorrect fact in my prior post, however, I believe the intent of the post is still valid.

Posted by D Moberg on Thu 9 Dec 2010 at 08:37 AM

In 1979, stuff just a few months before he died, John Mauchly had a letter published in DATAMATION.  Examples of his writing are rare, but here he clearly wanted to have his say.  In this short piece he describes how he and Pres Eckert, in the wee hours of 1944, worked out the stored-program architecture of EDVAC, the successor to ENIAC.  Later they told John von Neumann, who published it as his own work, and who never repented for it.

Mauchly also brings up the little-known fact that 25% of the ENIAC's electronic storage was dedicated to programming.  Perhaps it deserves some consideration as a stored-program computer?  The letter also describes some features of BINAC, an under-appreciated innovation.  This was at the time that Burks and Goldstine were trying to drain as much credit away from Eckert and Mauchly and towards Atanasoff and von Neumann as they possible could.  It turned out to be Mauchly's last published words.

Stored Programs by John W. Mauchly

This is footnoted.[]

This is footnoted.[]

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So is this.[]

And this one comes from the same source as the first.[3]

This is footnoted.[]

As are some[] other things.


	
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See also: Endnotes.

This is footnoted.[]

This is footnoted.[]

This is footnoted.[]

So is this.[]

And this one comes from the same source as the first.[8]

This is footnoted.[]

As are some[] other things.


	
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See also: Endnotes.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, sales March 6, sale 2000

By Kay Mauchly Antonelli

They were a most unlikely pair. They met at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania. My future husband, John Mauchly, was 34, had a Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University and had just completed eight years as head of the Physics Department at Ursinus College. J. Presper Eckert, 22, had just graduated from Moore School and had stayed on as an electronics lab instructor while beginning work on his master's degree.

Before they left Moore in 1946, they had designed and built the world's first electronic computer, ENIAC, and laid the basic design for all future electronic computers.

In the summer of 1941, Mauchly took a course called Emergency Science and Management Defense Training at Moore. The laboratory instructor was Pres Eckert. Mauchly, who had a lifelong dream of forecasting the weather, was hoping he could learn enough advanced electronics to help him with the design of a computer that could speed up his statistical analysis of weather phenomena.

He couldn't have found anywhere a more receptive ear than Eckert's. Despite his youth, Eckert was a genius in vacuum tube circuitry. He already had a patent in the television field. The two men spent most of their spare time exploring the possibilities of computing electronically.

When the course was completed in September, Moore School offered Mauchly a teaching position. Mauchly was happy to accept. It meant not only an increase in salary, but also an opportunity to explore with Eckert the possibilities of designing and building some sort of computer.

War was declared on Dec. 8. Within six months, the Ballistics Research Laboratory of Aberdeen Proving Ground had taken over the operation of the differential analyzer (the largest mechanical calculating machine in the world), which was in the basement of Moore. Aberdeen also established a computing laboratory there, for which they hired and trained about 100 women. These women, called "computors," calculated trajectories to be used in Army firing tables. To compute only one trajectory, it took a computor 20 to 40 hours using an electric desk calculator.

Mauchly saw an immediate need for an electronic computer. In August 1942, he wrote a proposal titled "The Use of High Speed Vacuum Tube Devices for Calculating." He envisioned an electronic computer that could computer a trajectory in 20 seconds.

This proposal finally came to the attention of a young Army mathematician, Lt. Herman Goldstine, who asked for a full proposal. Eckert and Mauchly worked night and day for several weeks writing up a proposal that the Army accepted on April 12, 1943. The proposed machine would be called ENIAC, an acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It was understood from the beginning that this would be a general-purpose computer.

Eckert was chief engineer and Mauchly consultant in charge of logic and design. With the help and dedication of about a dozen engineers, numerous wise men and assemblers, ENIAC was built on the first floor of Moore School. It had 18,000 vacuum tubes, was 80 feet long and could operate at 100,000 pulses per second.

ENIAC was demonstrated to the public on Feb. 14, 1946. It was a huge success. The New York Times reported "an amazing machine which applies electronic speeds for the first time to mathematical tasks hitherto too difficult and cumbersome for solution.. . . Leaders who saw the device in action for the first time heralded it as a tool with which to begin to rebuild scientific affairs on new foundations."

While ENIAC was being built, Eckert and Mauchly had many more ideas about how to build a smaller, cheaper, faster, more flexible machine, a stored program which they called Edvac. Forced out over a patent dispute, they left Moore School in March 1946 and formed their own company, Electronic Control Co., to build computers. Many of the engineers who had worked with them on ENIAC joined them.

Astonishingly enough, not a single bank or investment company was willing to lend them money. So with a loan of $25,000 from Eckert's father and the enthusiastic support of engineers willing to work for next to nothing, the new company was launched. The government gave them a contract to build a computer for the Bureau of Census, which they called Univac. Douglas Aircraft contracted for a small computer called Binac. Eckert was chief engineer, and Mauchly was president and salesman.

The government took a chance, and soon they had contracts to build Univacs for the Army, Navy and Air Force. The company, now renamed Eckert and Mauchly Computer Co., soon attracted the attention of an investor, Henry Straus, who was willing to invest time and money.

Just when things seemed promising, the company suffered two massive blows. First, Straus was killed in a plane crash. Then the McCarthy investigations charged the company with employing engineers who had communist leanings. The company lost its clearance for government work; all contracts with the Army, Navy and Air Force were canceled. As president of the company, Mauchly was charged with hiring communists and ordered off the premises. He fought back, demanded a hearing, and after two years was allowed back on the premises. After intensive investigations, the only charge against Mauchly was that he was "eccentric."

Meanwhile, the company, managing with a few civilian contracts and the Census Bureau contract, was sold to Remington-Rand, a manufacturer of punch-card equipment, typewriters and other office equipment. Eckert headed the engineering department, constantly developing new, faster and better methods for handling and storing data. Mauchly worked on machine languages and new programming methods. The two worked together all the time, with the dreamer Mauchly constantly coming up with ideas about what a computer should be able to do, Eckert constantly inventing hardware to make these things happen.

When his 10-year contract with Remington-Rand expired in 1960, Mauchly left to form his own company, Mauchly Associates, a construction management company. Eckert stayed with Remington-Rand as vice president of its Univac Division. Through its mergers with Sperry Corp. and later Burroughs, the company came to be called Unisys.

In 1971, Univac sued Honeywell for patent infringement. In the ensuing countersuit, the judge invalidated the ENIAC patents to Eckert and Mauchly, claiming, among other things, that the ENIAC was in public use more than a year before the patent was applied for. The testing of the machine by the Atomic Energy Commission was considered public use.

Eckert and Mauchly remained fast friends throughout their lives. They complemented each other. Mauchly was always the teacher - highly intelligent, witty and compassionate. Described by many as the "visionary of the computer age," he was interested in developing people as well as ideas. Mauchly died in January 1980 from complications of an inherited blood disease. Speaking at Mauchly's funeral in January 1980, Eckert said, "He inspired me and he inspired many others. He was not tied down by inhibitions or tradition. He was certainly one of the most brilliant people I ever knew."

Eckert stayed with the company he had cofounded and retired as vice president of Unisys. This brilliant, original, no-nonsense engineer and spellbinding speaker died in 1995, just a few months before the 50th anniversary of ENIAC. In his later years, he had become a spokesman for the computer industry. He claimed in his speeches that he and Mauchly were the Wright Brothers of computing. He was honored by the IEEE, Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers, as "Engineer of the Century."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kay Mauchly Antonelli, one of the first women programmers on the ENIAC, was married to John Mauchly for 32 years.  She died in 2006.

© 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
The woman knew how to tell a story.  I just made a page for this piece, patient "Their Machine Launched a World of Change" by Kathleen Mauchly Antonelli.  It was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer ten years ago.  Feel the love.