[SIGCIS-Members] Mechanical Brain metaphor

[Ceruzzi, Paul]

Konrad Zuse independently came up with the same analogy in 1937. In his
diary from June 20 of that year, he wrote: "For about a year now I have
been considering the concept of a mechanical brain." [mechanischen
Gehirns] The diary entry is reproduced in his autobiography, p. 68-69.
The notion came to him after he decided to use the binary system in his
calculating machine, then realizing that the same binary logic devices
that were used to calculate could also be used to make logical
decisions: he called the former a "mathematical brain," and the latter a
"language brain." No mention of giant size, although his eventual
realization of the concept, in the Z4, was physically quite large.

What is interesting here is that this was Zuse's private diary, so he
was using the analogy to gain an understanding of the computer for
himself, not to explain it to others (although he would do that later).

The whole issue of anthropomorphizing the computer has a long and
contentious history. Eckert & Mauchly were especially angry with von
Neumann for taking their ideas, expressed in the language of electrical
engineering, and expressing them in terms used by those studying the
human nervous system & brain.


Paul E. Ceruzzi, MRC 311, National Air and Space Museum, PO Box 37012,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013-7012. phone: 202-633-2414.


p.s.: I agree that this ought to be written up somewhere. Maybe Sandra &
I could put hit in our blog: 
<http://ithistory.org/blog/>

Sandra?

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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 09:16:00 +0000 (GMT)
From: Sandra Mols <sandramols at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Another question - "Giant Brains"
To: Sigcis <members at sigcis.org>
Message-ID: <503307.6006.qm at web25304.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Another potential source for reflections is the popular press from the
late 1940s, through which the news of EDSAC, ENIAC etc percolated
around. 

The Renwick papers held at Cambridge Uni Library (engineer who worked
with Wilkes on the EDSAC mercury delay lines) contain a few papers
published in such press that display the same kind of 'brain' comments,
expanding interestingly on how right/wrong it is to attribute 'brain'
characteristics to a machine, howeve sophisticated and engineeringly
impressive. I never found, though, the use of 'giant brain' as an
expression in these. The emphasis seems more on the programming
possibility, electronics, and marvels of speed the combination allows.
Berkeley might have a first in creating the term. 


Best, 

Sandra 


Renwick Papers - CSAC 84.2.82 ? Box 1-File D3: Series of Press Cuttings
and Photographs from 1940s?1950s 
Daily mail, October 1947 ? A Don Builds A
Memory. 4ft. tubes in his ?brain? ? Anonymous 
Cambridge Daily News, 3rd October 1947? ?Brain? will know the answers to
1,000 questions a minute ?
Anonymous 
Discovery , February 1948 ? Cambridge?s
High-Speed Calculator ? Anonymous, p.40
Daily Telegraph, 17.6.49 ? New ?Brain? Store
Orders. Calculations At 15,000 A Minute ? Anonymous 
The Star, 5.7.49 ? ?Merrick Winn Sees A Room
Full of Astonishing Gadgets ? It?s A MECHANICAL BRAIN? ? Winn, M. 
The Spectator, 15.7.49 ? Nicolson, H. - Marginal
Comment ? p.76

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