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How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

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Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#31

Post by mhh__ »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #4

In addition to ENIAC being built after the German Z1 (1938) and Z3 (1941), as others here have stated, it was also built after the UK's Colossus[0] (1943). If we're talking "first real computer", though, and depending on your definition of "real", the Manchester Baby[1] (1948) was the first stored-program computer. The Colossus and ENIAC machines all needed to be re-wired to change what computations they could make a…

Colossus was (while extremely important and criminally underutilized after the war) not turing complete by itself.

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#32

Post by jlg23 »

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #20
marcan_42 wrote: post #7

This is quite sad. It seems the person who was tasked with doing something with the panels they had quickly gave up on doing anything with them other than making them into a visual prop. It's not ENIAC any more, it's a bunch of DMX blinkenlights mounted on an ENIAC frame. If you're going to do that, what's the point of using the original hardware? That's just destroying it further. Making the whole machine work like…

Is there even a source for replacement vacuum tubes? I thought they burned out on a consistent basis.

apparently there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube#Vacuum_tubes_in_th...

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#33

Post by sebastos »

kleiba wrote: post #8
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #2

The ENIAC was not the world's first computer. Konrad Zuse's Z1 was first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer) Even if you want it to be electrical, not mechanical, then Zuse's Z3 was first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)

Wikipedia says that the Z3 was "electromechanical", though, while the ENIAC is described as "electronic". You can always play the "who was first" game if you just add enough distinguishing categories.

Without electronic speeds, it's kind of like inventing a printing press that's slower than writing by hand.

The invention isn't much of an invention until the whole thing is electronic. Reading off a tape doesn't cut it. That's why, you'll notice, the entire computer industry bloomed out of the work done on the ENIAC. In other words, if your client had invented facebook, they would have invented facebook.

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#34

Post by alephnil »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #4

In addition to ENIAC being built after the German Z1 (1938) and Z3 (1941), as others here have stated, it was also built after the UK's Colossus[0] (1943). If we're talking "first real computer", though, and depending on your definition of "real", the Manchester Baby[1] (1948) was the first stored-program computer. The Colossus and ENIAC machines all needed to be re-wired to change what computations they could make a…

The ENIAC was originally not Turing complete, and as you say, had to be rewired for each new problem. In 1948 it was rewired to a stored program computer, which made it Turing complete in the sense that it was essentially programmed to emulate a von Neuman machine. This made it considerably slower, but was much more practical, as it was now possible to change programs frequently. Previously it took weeks to do so. This configuration was used until it was retired.

Betty Jean Jennings Bartik, one of the original ENIAC programmers was leading this work, which was one of the main reasons she got the computer pioneer award for in 2008. Better late than never I guess.

https://www.computer.org/profiles/betty-jean-bartik

The Manchester Baby was the first computer that was built to be Turing complete from the start.

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#35

Post by kens »

A few thoughts: The historian view is that ENIAC is the "first electronic, general purpose, large scale, digital computer" (with all those adjectives required). The paradoxical thing is that ENIAC is clearly the first in an important way, but it's really hard to nail down how. You really can't overstate the importance of ENIAC: it's the machine that triggered the construction of numerous other computers and started the computer revolution, while earlier systems had very little impact.

Another paradox is that although ENIAC directly caused the modern computer, ENIAC was completely different architecturally from modern computers and missing most of the things you'd think of as necessary. It wasn't stored-program or really Turing-complete (although I think those properties are overrated). It didn't have RAM or even use binary or have instructions or programs in the normal sense. Even its inventors recognized that ENIAC's implementation was the wrong approach. But despite all this, modern computers are offspring of ENIAC.

My view is that ENIAC's important "first" is that it was the first to show the world that computers were both practical and revolutionary, so much faster that it could solve entirely new classes of problems.

As far as the Zuse Z3, the historian view is that the proof that it was Turing-complete "was an impressive party trick, but diverged entirely from the way the machine was designed, how it was actually used, or indeed from anything that would have made sense in the 1940s."

If you're interested in ENIAC, the book to read is "ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer".

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#36

Post by retrac »

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #20
marcan_42 wrote: post #7

This is quite sad. It seems the person who was tasked with doing something with the panels they had quickly gave up on doing anything with them other than making them into a visual prop. It's not ENIAC any more, it's a bunch of DMX blinkenlights mounted on an ENIAC frame. If you're going to do that, what's the point of using the original hardware? That's just destroying it further. Making the whole machine work like…

Is there even a source for replacement vacuum tubes? I thought they burned out on a consistent basis.

Most vacuum tube computers used extremely common pentode and dual triode tube types as their primary logic elements; ENIAC made extensive use of the 6SN7 for example, which is still manufactured today for guitar amplifiers. One caveat is they were a subtype specifically burned in and selected for computer reliability, which is not done anymore obviously.

For the types where that's not an option, surprisingly (at least to me), most tubes commonly used historically still have ample new old stock tucked away in warehouses across the US and Europe. There was no major problem finding all the tubes required to recreate EDSAC in the UK: https://www.tnmoc.org/notes-from-the-museum/2013/1/9/product... for example.

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#37

Post by retrac »

ncmncm wrote: post #25
twic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI, the Z3 has no conditional branches. Without those, it's not much like a computer as we understand it. Rather, i think the Z3 is an "automatic calculator" - it can carry out a fixed sequence of operations, but it can't do arbitrary computation. In that respect, it is like the Atanasoff–Berry computer and the Harvard Mark I. The prehistory of computing has a bunch of really interesting machines like this (and Col…

3 is not necessary. OSes and linkers are not necessary. We did without for many years. The program should be in some kind of more-or-less addressable memory, to support conditional branching. That's all.

It's not necessary in a strict theoretical sense to be Turing complete, yes. But in practice? Most of the magic of modern computing is in programs which can themselves manipulate, translate, and even write new programs. Nearly all we've built up depends on that. You can only get so far in practice by flipping switches to encode binary numbers.

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#38

Post by Animats »

mhh__ wrote: post #31
M2Ys4U wrote: post #4

In addition to ENIAC being built after the German Z1 (1938) and Z3 (1941), as others here have stated, it was also built after the UK's Colossus[0] (1943). If we're talking "first real computer", though, and depending on your definition of "real", the Manchester Baby[1] (1948) was the first stored-program computer. The Colossus and ENIAC machines all needed to be re-wired to change what computations they could make a…

Colossus was (while extremely important and criminally underutilized after the war) not turing complete by itself.

Right. Colossus wasn't a general purpose computer at all. It was a key-tester, like a Bitcoin miner.

The big problem in the early days was memory. ENIAC had nothing writable that could hold a stored program. IBM had electronic arithmetic in R&D before WWII, and that came out as a product after the war, the IBM 603 (1946) and 604 (1948). Those were plugboard programmed machines with electronic arithmetic. Workarounds for memory cost, basically. Everybody involved recognized that with enough memory, they could get rid of the plugboards, but the hardware wasn't ready.

Many memory devices were tried. Delay lines. (Slow, not random access) Williams tube electrostatic storage. (Big and expensive.) High speed drums. (Slow, not random access.) Finally core memory was developed, the first thing that went fast and had random access.

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#39

Post by kleiba »

twic wrote: post #12
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #2

The ENIAC was not the world's first computer. Konrad Zuse's Z1 was first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer) Even if you want it to be electrical, not mechanical, then Zuse's Z3 was first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)

AIUI, the Z3 has no conditional branches. Without those, it's not much like a computer as we understand it. Rather, i think the Z3 is an "automatic calculator" - it can carry out a fixed sequence of operations, but it can't do arbitrary computation. In that respect, it is like the Atanasoff–Berry computer and the Harvard Mark I. The prehistory of computing has a bunch of really interesting machines like this (and Col…

it can carry out a fixed sequence of operations, but it can't do arbitrary computation

This is incorrect. The Z3 is Turing-complete, as has been shown by Raúl Rojas in 1998 [1]. It requires some hacking though.

[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/707574

Re: How the World's First Computer Was Rescued from the Scrap Heap (2014)

#40

Post by kens »

Animats wrote: post #38
mhh__ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colossus was (while extremely important and criminally underutilized after the war) not turing complete by itself.

Right. Colossus wasn't a general purpose computer at all. It was a key-tester, like a Bitcoin miner. The big problem in the early days was memory. ENIAC had nothing writable that could hold a stored program. IBM had electronic arithmetic in R&D before WWII, and that came out as a product after the war, the IBM 603 (1946) and 604 (1948). Those were plugboard programmed machines with electronic arithmetic. Workarounds…

Yes, the difficulty of implementing memory back then often isn't appreciated. Core memory was a really important technology for making the modern computer possible. (Everyone I've talked to who used Williams tubes mentions how unreliable they were.) As for ENIAC, it was upgraded to core memory (built by Burroughs) in 1953.
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