MANIAC I
The MANIAC I ( M athematical A nalyzer N umerical I ntegrator A nd C omputer Model I ;. English maniac "Crazy") was an early -purpose computer , which under the direction of Nicholas Metropolis early fifties for the Los Alamos National Laboratory was built . The computer, based on the Von Neumann architecture , was built at the University of California and cost 298,000 US dollars with output devices.
The tube computer MANIAC required a floor space of 1.85 square meters and was almost 2 meters high. The power consumption of the computer was 35 kilowatts. 2400 electron tubes and 500 crystal diodes took over the circuits, the commands were read in either via punched tape or magnetic tape. The storage took place either electrostatically (capacity: 1024 words) or on a magnetic drum (capacity: 10,000 words). An addition took 80 milliseconds to complete, and multiplication and division steps took one second. The output was either via an Anelex printer, a teleprinter , on paper tape or a magnetic strip.
MANIAC I ran successfully for the first time in March 1952, it was then used to calculate nuclear weapons until it was replaced by its successor MANIAC II in 1957 . The mainframe was then handed over to the University of New Mexico , where it continued to be used.
In 1961 MANIAC III was built at the University of Chicago .
MANIAC was the first computer to win a game of chess against a human . In 1956 he won a 6 × 6 game against a young woman who had only started playing chess a week earlier.
Web links
- MANIAC history @ Los Alamos, lanl.gov (accessed October 25, 2010)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b BALLISTIC RESEARCH LABORATORIES REPORT N0. 1115 March 1961 , as of July 3, 2007
- ↑ MANIAC-III , ed-thelen.org, accessed on October 25, 2010