[SIGCIS-Members] CHOC 16-17 november, programming the ENIAC etc

[Alberts, G.]

Dear SIGCIS members,
our Amsterdam colloquium has special attraction in November
Gerard Alberts
 

CHOC


Colloquium History of Computing


November 16-17, 2009, UvA Science Park 904, Room C0.110/A1.04


Programming, languages, linguistics and computability


Liesbeth de Mol, Gent

Maarten Bullynck, Paris

Janet Martin-Nielsen, Toronto

Karel van Oudheusden, Amsterdam

will appear in the Colloquium on the History of Computing and amongst them connect such diverging historical subjects as Von Neumann, Lehmer, Chomsky and Dijkstra.

Monday, November 16, 13:00-17:00h


Room C0.110

Liesbeth de Mol, Gent
'Programming the ENIAC before its rewiring. The case of the Lehmers' program'

Maarten Bullynck, Paris
'Curry's study of inverse interpolation on the ENIAC. From a concrete problem to the problem of program composition'

Janet Martin-Nielsen, Toronto
'"It was all connected": Computers and linguistics in postwar America'


Tuesday, November 17, 09:00-13:00h


Room A 1.04

09:00 discussion of ongoing research on "the Algol effort" in Software for Europe (Gerard Alberts, Amsterdam; David Nofre, Amsterdam; Helena Durnova, Brno)

11:00 Karel van Oudheusden, Amsterdam
'The Advent of Recursion & Logic in Computer Science'.


ABSTRACTS


Programming the ENIAC before its rewiring. The case of the Lehmers' program. Liesbeth de Mol, Gent (joint work with M. Bullynck) 

In 1943 John W. Mauchly and Prespert J. Eckert were contracted to build the ENIAC, the first U.S. electronic digital and (basically) general-purpose computer. 
A ``Computations Committee'' was assembled in 1945 to prepare for utilizing the machine after its completion. The Committee consisted of the number theorist D.H. Lehmer, the logician H.B. Curry, the astronomer L.B. Cunningham and the statistician F.L. Alt. Each developed their own test program to be run on the ENIAC after it was first presented to the public at Penn University February 15, 1946. The early (declassified) test programs are unique instances of ``programming'' a machine that had not the kind of logical design we know nowadays as the von Neumann architecture. Any kind of programming language was totally absent.For each new problem, the ENIAC had to be programmed directly and locally, setting the switches on each individual unit, laying the cables to interconnect these units and control the timing and sequencing of the units' operations. In this sense, programming the ENIAC in its original configuration thus came down to ``the design and development of a special-purpose computer out of ENIAC component parts.'' (B. Fritz)
The reconstruction of the early test programs demonstrates the difficulties involved with adapting computations made to human measure for a machine. They show the need for an intermediary language between man and machine. The current reconstruction of D.H. Lehmer's ENIAC program not only discloses the various problems involved with early programming but is furthermore a rare example of programming the non-rewired parallel ENIAC.

Curry's study of inverse interpolation on the ENIAC. From a concrete problem to the problem of program composition. Maarten Bullynck, Paris (joint work with L. De Mol)

As a member of the ENIAC's "Computations Committee" the mathematician and logician Haskell B. Curry from Penn State University devised two programs for the ENIAC, one in cooperation with W. Wyatt and one in cooperation with M. Lotzkin (both in the year 1946). The programs tried to tackle problems of higher order and inverse interpolation. The intricacy of the interpolation routine and the difficulties of putting on the ENIAC spurred Curry to consider the more general problem of how to compose a program from subroutines. Using concepts of the combinatorial logic he had developed in the 1930ies, Curry wrote two internal reports and one short paper on the "composition of programs" (1949-1952). In these texts Curry developed one of the first programming languages ever. However, the language was never implemented and the reports went unnoticed. In this talk we will discuss the development of the more logical technique of program composition out of the concrete problem of wiring the ENIAC as an inverse-interpolation-machine.

"It was all connected": Computers and linguistics in postwar America. Janet Martin-Nielsen, Toronto

As the history of postwar and Cold War human sciences is beginning to attract significant work, so too the history of linguistics is beginning to be explored in-depth. What was in the 1980s a field dominated by Whig interpretations of the rise of Noam Chomsky's linguistics program led to the emergence of revisionist histories in the 1990s and, more recently, to several rich history-of-science-based studies of theoretical linguistics in America. While still arguably the least-investigated of the postwar and Cold War human sciences, linguistics is slowly coming into its own within history of science. Importantly, the study of linguistics in this period provides novel and revealing insight into the history of computers. This talk aims to characterize the portrayal of the history of computers within the history of linguistics, to ascertain the character, role, and status of the computer within the linguistics story, and to pave the way for future work in the history of computers as it relates to linguistics. The talk comprises two main parts: the first part provides an overview of the relationship between computers and linguistics in the postwar and early Cold War period, and the second part identifies and investigates three areas in which computers and linguistics enjoyed an intimate interaction: concepts of scientific explanation, tools and projects, and funding.

 

http://www.science.uva.nl/history-of-computing/object.cfm/96654A68-1321-B0BE-6861EAE8D3413CE4/060460A8-1321-B0BE-A4757BB834A7A184

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