[SIGCIS-Members] Message from Atsushi Akera re Stored Program

Thomas Haigh thaigh at computer.org
Thu Apr 5 12:47:30 PDT 2012


[Looks like the list is having a bad week - there's some kind of issue with
our Go Daddy domain registration that sometimes interacts with certain ISPs
to bounce mail with a message from "mailstore1.secureserver.net" that the
address is rejected. If anyone has expertise in this area and can help us
solve the problem that would be appreciated. In that case the messages never
make it to our listserv manager. Anyway, Atsushi asked me to forward this -
see below for my reply].

 

 

From: Atsushi Akera [mailto:akeraa at rpi.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 5:47 AM
To: 'David Alan Grier'; 'Thomas Haigh'
Cc: members at sigcis.org
Subject: RE: [SIGCIS-Members] "Stored program" -- anyone know origins of the
PHRASE

 

Hi David, Hi Tom,

 

Just in this context, the term "program" is used extensively in the context
of ENIAC. It's been a while since I've gone through the records, and I
didn't go back to check it. But as I recall, Mauchly was among those who
brought the terminology of 'program' based on his amateur radio experience.
I assume this was referring in general terms to a sequence of activities,
similar to a conference program or a program for an organized luncheon.

 

You would know this part better, but I think the other conventional term
from the period would have been "plan of calculation," based on the work of
human computers. The reference to "instruction tables" (in  considering
Paul's post) strikes me as something that could come out of the fact that
there was contemplation of using the ENIAC function tables to store
instructions. (This would require tracking the dates & influence, however.
It's just a guess for now) Meanwhile the term "storage" would have of course
gone back to Babbage (mill and store), but gained significant currency once
everyone developed an interest in mercury delay lines as a possible storage
device.

 

What's perhaps interesting in all this is that technological and material
artifacts, as manifestations of both human and machine computation
practices, were heavily influencing the terminology people used to
understand the early process of computation. New language of course has to
be assembled in order to sort through and understand new technological
phenomena (electronic computing), and we see during this period various
efforts to combine past terminology into a workable description of the new
technology-followed by some process whereby consensus emerges around those
terms. I think it's useful to think of "stored program" in that context-and
when that particular articulation became important for the practitioners. As
I recall, stored programs weren't all that important in the early years. Von
Neumann's single bit used to designate instruction from data was more from
the point of view of efficient storage of the two types of information, not
from any notions about stored programs related to computabilitiy. Even when
the term came into existence, it may not have had this kind of reference
either. perhaps worth keeping in mind.

 

Best wishes!

 

- Atsushi

 

 

From: Thomas Haigh [mailto:thomas.haigh at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Thomas Haigh
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 6:39 PM
To: 'Atsushi Akera'
Subject: RE: [SIGCIS-Members] "Stored program" -- anyone know origins of the
PHRASE

 

Thanks Atsushi,

 

I think von Neumann might have felt the need to flag data vs. code as he
planned delay line storage at this point and was concerned with interleaving
them for efficient access. Possibly he recognized the danger of accidentally
overwriting code, and saw this as a kind of memory protection feature as
later implemented on multitasking systems to protect programs from each
other. Although the general organization of the 1945 EDVAC instruction set
does not betray a concern with the convenience of programming.

 

The point about Babbage and the "store" is something I'd been wondering
about myself, and it's interesting to see that you have the same idea. 

 

As I look more at the 1945-48 documents, it does seem that the idea of
storing programs and data in the same memory was quickly recognized as one
of the key advantages of EDVAC-type machines but mostly on the grounds of
efficiency, simplicity and flexibility rather than the potential for self
modification. E.g. Eckert in the Moore School lectures volume says the big
advantage is that storage can be allocated as needed for a particular
application. After all, ENIAC has already shown that you could do things
like conditional branching and indexing through an array without needing to
modify stored program code.

 

I agree with the bigger point about the importance of categories and
terminology. It's interesting that with all the endless discussion of
"stored program" nobody ever seems to have tried to find out where the term
comes from.


Tom

 

 

From: Atsushi Akera [mailto:akeraa at rpi.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 12:35 PM
To: 'Thomas Haigh'
Subject: RE: [SIGCIS-Members] "Stored program" -- anyone know origins of the
PHRASE

 

Agreed. By the way, I tried to send the message to the group, but it
bounced. Not sure why. Please feel free to forward if you can.

 

Also keep in mind that with circulating storage, there's no way to slow down
what's coming out of the memory. So the instruction/data bit can be used as
an efficient way to implement (in engineering) where information goes in a
machine.

 

- Atsushi

 

 

 

(p.s. if you encounter problems with RPI's spam filter, please send the
message to my alternate email account:  <mailto:atsushi_akera at hotmail.com>
atsushi_akera at hotmail.com, preferably with a quick note to this account
indicating that you sent a message there since otherwise I don't check that
account regularly. - Thanks!)

 

_________________________________________________________

Atsushi Akera

Associate Professor, Department of Science and Technology Studies

Director, First Year Studies Program--Sage 5206

Rensselaer Polytechnic institute

110 8th Street

Troy, NY 12180  USA

ph: 518.279.9708/fx:518.276-2659/e:akeraa at rpi.edu /w:
http://www.rpi.edu/~akeraa

 

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