[SIGCIS-Members] FW from Eckstein re "In 1946, Bartik headed up a team that modified the ENIAC into the first stored-program electronic computer."

[Thomas Haigh]

[Looks like Peter fell victim to a listserv issue, but here is a message he tried to send to everyone.]

 

From: PeterEckstein at comcast.net [mailto:PeterEckstein at comcast.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 10:42 PM
To: thaigh at computer.org
Cc: sigcis
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] "In 1946, Bartik headed up a team that modified the ENIAC into the first stored-program electronic computer."

 

I do not have any information either to substantiate or to contradict Tom's correction on the timing and Jean Bartik's role in building a stored-program capability into the ENIAC.  I am, however, a little put off by his first sentence:  "Post-conversion ENIAC did acquire the new control method introduced in the 1945 'First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'." 

 

The new control method may have been "introduced" to the wider world by the "First Draft," on which von Neumann's name is the only indication of authorship and which, in its written form, he (together with Goldstine) prepared. But the "First Draft" was not how the method was introduced to the ENIAC team; rather, the paper reflected intensive discussions that had gone on within the ENIAC team and in which von Neumann sometimes participated. (Eckert, Mauchly, Carl Chambers, and perhaps Arthur Burks and Reid Warren, as I am remembering it off the top of my head, were other participants.) As early as January, 1944, Eckert had put to paper his notion that for the next computer, which came to be called EDVAC, the greater availability of adequate storage techniques (work to which Eckert had contributed) would allow "automatic programming of the facilities and processes involved." Von Neumann, by contrast, did not begin visiting the ENIAC project until September.  As Nancy Stern put it, "Thus, months before von Neumann know of the Moore School work, the stored-program concept had been conceived, if not developed."   (From ENIAC to UNIVAC,  p. 75.) I strongly suspect, but do not have time now to substantiate, that the group planning the EDVAC was well under way before von Neumann joined it.  The ENIAC team was constrained by Army security regulations from making its work public, but von Neumann did not feel similarly constrained, and I know of no occasion on which he acknowledged the role of the group whose work he was summarizing n his First Draft.  He contributed to the group's work, and his summary of it was considered highly elegant, but neither he nor the First Draft served to "introduce" the new control method to those modifying the ENIAC to be accept stored programs.

  _____  

From: "Thomas Haigh" <thaigh at computer.org>
To: "sigcis" <members at sigcis.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 6:25:46 PM
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] "In 1946,        Bartik headed up a team that modified the ENIAC into the first        stored-program electronic computer."

There is an interesting sentence in the publisher's blub for Bartik's book:
"In 1946, Bartik headed up a team that modified the ENIAC into the first
stored-program electronic computer."

Nothing in any way controversial there...
[Pause]
.... except for

1) Post-conversion ENIAC did acquire the new control method introduced in
the 1945 "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC." Having looked at this
conversion very closely, in association with my work on the topic with Mark
Priestley and Crispin Rope, I'm probably more sympathetic to the general
direction of the claim than most of you. However, that's also convinced me
that "stored program computer" has been given too many different implicit
definitions for that to be a prudent, or even meaningful, claim to make
without at least attaching some kind of adjective to modify "stored
program." (ENIAC essentially held instructions and data in an addressable
manually erasable ROM while storing variables in a separate set of
registers. It had other modern features including conditional branches and
used indirect addressing so that the address acted on by an instruction
could be modified at runtime).
2) The work took place in 1947 and 1948 rather than 1946.
3) Bartik played a role as a subcontractor but was not, by any stretch of
the imagination, leading the effort.

Those of you interested in learning more on this topic will enjoy our series
of three forthcoming articles in Annals and our book in progress "ENIAC in
Action: von Neumann, the Bomb, and the Programming Revolution."

Meanwhile, I am curious to see how well the book itself aligns with the mass
of archival sources on ENIAC. It will, in any event, provide some grist for
one of our book chapters, "Remembering ENIAC."

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of Evan Koblentz
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 4:19 PM
To: sigcis
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Bartik autobiography available / Colossus name?

SIGCIS'ers,

Jean Bartik's autobiography is now available at
http://tsup.truman.edu/item.asp?itemid=480. There is also an e-book version
at Amazon. (I recently learned that Kindle books can be read through a
browser or through an iOS/Android app -- you don't need a Kindle device.)

Also: Does anyone know how the British Colossus computer got its name, other
than the general assumption "because it was big"...? I emailed TNMOC about
this. They wrote back and said they don't know and that nobody ever asked.
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