Mark I (computer)
The Mark I , also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), is an early computer built entirely from electromechanical components in the USA between 1943 and 1944. The calculator was designed by Howard H. Aiken of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and IBM engineers ( Clair Lake , Frank E. Hamilton , Benjamin Durfee , James W. Bryce ) and built by IBM. It has a weight of 5 tons with a front length of 16 meters.
The calculator was used by the US Navy between 1944 and 1959 for ballistic calculations, among other things. John von Neumann ran the first program in 1944 for the Manhattan Project (calculations on the implosion concept of the plutonium bomb).
In 1998 it was proven that the Mark I turing was powerful . This made it the second powerful Turing computer after the Zuse Z3 .
The Mark I is now in the Cabot Science Building at Harvard University . Aiken, Durfee, Hamilton and Lake were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 for their contribution to the Mark I.
Comparison with other early computers
Computer model | country | Installation | Floating point arithmetic |
Binary | Electronically | Programmable | Mighty Turing |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Zuse Z3 | Germany | May 1941 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes, using punched tape | Yes, without any practical use |
Atanasoff-Berry computer | United States | Summer 1941 | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
Colossus | UK | 1943 | No | Yes | Yes | Partly, by rewiring | No |
Mark I. | United States | 1944 | No | No | No | Yes, using punched tape | Yes |
Zuse Z4 | Germany | March 1945 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes, using punched tape | Yes, without any practical use |
around 1950 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes, using punched tape | Yes | ||
ENIAC | United States | 1946 | No | No | Yes | Partly, by rewiring | Yes |
1948 | No | No | Yes | Yes, using the resistor matrix | Yes |
successor
IBM's chairman, Thomas J. Watson, was upset that Aiken was posing as the sole inventor of the Mark I , and only James W. Bryce, mentioned his direct contact at IBM. The Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory then developed the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator under the direction of Wallace John Eckert in 1946/47 . Aiken, on the other hand, constructed another Mark II relay computer in 1947/48 ; In 1949 - also on behalf of the US Navy - the Mark III followed , which was already partially equipped with vacuum tubes and diodes as well as magnetic drum storage , and in 1952 the Mark IV for the US Air Force as a purely electronic device with magnetic core storage .
Web links
literature
- Wilfried de Beauclair : Calculating with machines . Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1968 ( digitized version )