[SIGCIS-Members] Semi-rare John Mauchly document

[William McMillan]

Very useful document.

It's quoted in Richard S. Rosenberg's *The Social Impact of Computers*, 3rd
ed., 2004, p. 94, with discussion that basically agrees with Mauchly (though
I had been unaware of it until you sent it, Evan).

http://books.google.com/books?id=VZ0XBfhbDZMC&lpg=PA94&ots=VBw1kSJ8KW&dq=ONE%20storage%20device%20(with%20addressable%20locations)%20for%20the%20ENTIRE%20EDVAC&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Thanks.

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 6:00 PM, <evan at snarc.net> wrote:

> Hi all. I received this document from Bill Mauchly today. I asked him if
> it's okay to share freely; he said yes.
>
> File is attached.
>
> Bill added: "In 1979, just a few months before he died, John Mauchly had a
> letter published in DATAMATION.  Examples of his writing are rare, but here
> he clearly wanted to have his say.  In it he laid out very clearly how he
> and Eckert, in the wee hours of 1944, worked out the stored-program
> architecture of EDVAC, the successor to ENIAC.  Later they told von Neumann,
> and he published it as his own work.  He also talks about BINAC.  This was
> at the time that Burks and Goldstine were trying to drain as much credit
> away from Eckert and Mauchly and towards von Neumann as they could.I've
> attached a copy of the letter; it a good read if you like this sort of
> thing.  This short essay does not seem to be available on the web.  I typed
> it in from a copy I had that was among my mother's things, apparently a
> draft from his TRS-80 word processor, on the prompting of Jean Bartik.
> Enjoy.Bill Mauchly"
>
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