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Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

#21

Post by Rochus »

mrob wrote: post #9
Rochus wrote: post #6

Eniac was indeed impressive and an important milestone. I recommend the 1999 book "ENIAC - The triumphs and tragedies of the world's first computer" by Scott McCartney which is both interesting to read and very informative. Also the review of the book by the late Jean Bartik, one of the "computers" and thus an eyewitnmess, is very interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20221101120020/https://www.amazo... . Though t…

The Z3 was only general purpose by accident, and this was only discovered in 1997 (published 1998). [0] It's only of theoretical interest because the technique required is too inefficient for real-world applications. ENIAC is notable because it was the first intentionally general purpose computer to be built. [0] https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-ki/rojas_home/documents...

> The Z3 was only general purpose by accident ... ENIAC [..] was the first intentionally general purpose computer

That's a pretty academic take. Neither Eckert, nor Mauchly, nor Zuse knew about Alan Turing’s 1936 paper when they designed their machines. The classification of ENIAC (and the Z3) as a "universal Turing machine" is entirely a retroactive reinterpretation by later computer scientists. John von Neumann knew the paper and was aware of its significance, but he only turned up in the ENIAC project when the design was complete. At this time, Eckert and Mauchly were already well aware of ENIAC's biggest flaw (the massive effort to reprogram the machine, and in fact they came up with the stored-program concept which von Neumann later formalized). ENIAC’s funding and primary justification were for the very specific purpose of calculating artillery firing tables for the military. The machine was built for this purpose, which included the feature which retroactively led to the mentioned classification.

Re: Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

#23

Post by klelatti »

sebastos wrote: post #18
klelatti wrote: post #7

ENIAC was very important but this article overstates its significance and ignores other (non US) machines to the point of historical inaccuracy. No mention of Z3 or Manchester Baby for example, the latter based on the von Neumann paper for example, was arguably a more accurate pointer towards how computer architecture would develop.

Wait, where are you thinking the von Neumann paper which came from?

The paper came out of work on ENIAC and was adapted to follow the approach in the paper but Baby was built from outset to use that approach and its design much more closely matches the architecture that has been used by almost all digital computers since. I don’t dispute that ENIAC is important but it’s role is more nuanced than this article implies.

Re: Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

#25

Post by ux266478 »

For the curious programmers who are wondering what it was like to program ENIAC, a simulator is available:

https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/simulator.html

And a programming manual:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=846...

It's really got a nice archaic character.

Re: Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

#26

Post by soyyo »

I find it interesting that, unless I’m mistaken, this was a completely engineering effort.

That is, they were not trying to follow the notion of a universal computing device that had already been defined by Turing and Church at the time. They were just trying to build something like a huge programmable calculator, but they ended up building a universal computation device anyway.

Re: Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

#27

Post by BirAdam »

klelatti wrote: post #7

ENIAC was very important but this article overstates its significance and ignores other (non US) machines to the point of historical inaccuracy. No mention of Z3 or Manchester Baby for example, the latter based on the von Neumann paper for example, was arguably a more accurate pointer towards how computer architecture would develop.

ENIAC was far more important for the general computing industry than other machines of its time. ENIAC led to EMCC (the first computer company) and UNIVAC. It was UNIVAC and IBM struggling against one another that created the entire industry.

Re: Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

#28

Post by yaakov34 »

Rochus wrote: post #6

Eniac was indeed impressive and an important milestone. I recommend the 1999 book "ENIAC - The triumphs and tragedies of the world's first computer" by Scott McCartney which is both interesting to read and very informative. Also the review of the book by the late Jean Bartik, one of the "computers" and thus an eyewitnmess, is very interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20221101120020/https://www.amazo... . Though t…

The Z3 was not a general purpose computer; it was a calculator that performed a predetermined sequence of operations that was written to its tape. It was remarkable for being all-binary in an era when differential gears and cams were very common in computing devices, and had some other advanced features. But the 1990s article that declared it Turing-complete is just silly. It would apply to every four-function calculator that supports rounding, and programming a computer like that is not just "impractical" - both the tape and execution time would grow exponentially in number of branches - but it is not the model that Turing proposed. The whole point of Turing's (theoretical) device is that a short program using the abilities of that device could perform unlimited computations; if you make the program length unlimited instead, that's a much less interesting model of computation.

The problem is that anything that gets into Wikipedia becomes ingrained in the Internet's collective mind, which then can't be changed.

Re: Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

#29

Post by jcranmer »

Rochus wrote: post #6

Eniac was indeed impressive and an important milestone. I recommend the 1999 book "ENIAC - The triumphs and tragedies of the world's first computer" by Scott McCartney which is both interesting to read and very informative. Also the review of the book by the late Jean Bartik, one of the "computers" and thus an eyewitnmess, is very interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20221101120020/https://www.amazo... . Though t…

There are three main problems with trying to offer a simple answer to the question of "what is the first computer?"

The most obvious of the problems is that a computer isn't a singular technology that springs up de novo, but something that develops from antecedents over a long, messy transition problem that requires a judgement call as to when the proto-computer becomes an actual computer. A judgement call which is obviously going to be biased based on the other considerations. Consider, for a more contemporary example, what you would argue as the "first smartphone" or the "first LLM." Personally, I think the ENIAC is still somewhat too proto-computer for my tastes: I'd prefer a "first" that uses binary arithmetic and has stored programs, neither of which is true for the ENIAC.

The second major issue is it's also instructive to look at the candidates' influence on later development. Among the contenders for "first computer," it's unfortunately kinda clear that ENIAC has the most lasting influence. ENIAC's development produced the papers that directly inspires the next generation of machines. Colossus is screwed here because of the secrecy of the code-breaking effort. Meanwhile, Zuse and Z3 suffer from being on the losing end of WW2. ABC has a claim here, but it's not clear whether or not the developers of ENIAC drew influence from ABC or not.

The final major issue isn't so much an issue by itself but rather something that colors the interpretation of the first two issues: national pride. An American is far more likely to weight the influence and ingenuity of the ENIAC and similar machines to label one of them the "first computer." A UK person would instead prefer to crown Colossus or the Manchester Baby. A German would prefer the Z3.

Re: Eniac, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

#30

Post by bpoyner »

Reminds me of stumbling across the Harvard Mark I, which is about 1-2 years older, while wandering through the Harvard Science Center (as one does). By far the oldest computer I've seen in person. Seems they moved it since then to the Science and Engineering Complex.
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