[SIGCIS-Members] EDSAC, Firsts, and our new article "Engineering the 'Miracle of the ENIAC:' Implementing the Modern Code Paradigm."

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

Hmm, the discovery of those diagrams is good news for EDSAC rebuilders but I
was surprised to see that the press release twice calls EDSAC “the first
practical general purpose computer.” One occurrence is in the boilerplate
passage on EDSAC at the bottom of the release, which suggests that this is
TNMOC’s official position. That seems to violate the de facto truce
concluded between early computer history enthusiasts in the early 1980s when
they settled on the appropriate series of adjectives to go between “first”
and “computer.” As Mike Williams once wrote, “there is more than enough
glory in the creation of the modern computer to satisfy all of the early
pioneers, most of whom are no longer in a position to care anyway.” (That's
the introduction to the "The First Computers: History and Architecture"
collection from 2000). ENIAC got the metaphorical trophy for “first general
purpose electronic digital computer” in its original 1945 configuration
whereas EDSAC went home with the award for “first practical stored program
computer.” 

This reminds me that the second in my series of articles with Crispin Rope
and Mark Priestley about ENIAC and its early-1948 conversion to what has
sometimes been called read-only stored program operation was recently
published in Annals. We try to switch focus from “firsts” to questions of
practical capabilities, in support of our detailed analysis of ENIAC’s 1948
Monte Carlo program in the third and final paper, although we do conclude
that an entirely practical version of the programming method described in
the seminal 1945 First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC was implemented on
ENIAC in March-April 1948, some months before the Manchester “Baby” ran what
has usually been considered the first modern program. 

Williams also noted that, “If you add enough adjectives to a description you
can always claim your own favorite. For example ENIAC is often claimed to be
the ‘first electronic, general purpose, large scale, digital computer’ and
you certainly have to add all those adjectives before you have a correct
statement.” In our own work we argue that the history is somewhat more
complicated than can be captured by those "first [adjective] [adjective]
[adjective] computer" phrases, but that doesn't mean that "general purpose"
and "stored program" can be conflated. People who care about "firsts" also
need to take care with those adjectives.

The paper is Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley & Crispin Rope, “Engineering ‘The
Miracle of the ENIAC’: Implementing the Modern Code Paradigm“ IEEE Annals of
the History of Computing 36:2 (April-June 2014):41-59 and you can read it at
http://eniacinaction.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EngineeringTheMiracleoft
heENIAC-scanned.pdf or, if you have access, from the IEEE CS Digital Library
at http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/an/2014/02/man2014020041-abs.html. Our
www.EniacInAction.com website already includes a selection of technical
documents and primary sources related to ENIAC's conversion and to the Monte
Carlo programs it ran in 1948 (though it is not yet complete or attractively
presented).

Best wishes,

Tom

From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of B. Randell
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2014 4:43 AM
To: members
Cc: B. Randell
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: News - Lost EDSAC diagrams reveal secrets of
one of the earliest computers

Hi:

Begin forwarded message:


From: Stephen Fleming <stephen.fleming at palam.co.uk>
Subject: News - Lost EDSAC diagrams reveal secrets of one of the earliest
computers
Date: 25 June 2014 09:16:22 BST
To: <brian.randell at ncl.ac.uk>
Reply-To: <k>

NEWS RELEASE
 
Lost EDSAC diagrams reveal secrets of one of the earliest computers
 
25 June 2014
 
Some of the earliest diagrams of a computer have been rediscovered more than
sixty years after they were drawn and are giving the EDSAC team at The
National Museum of Computing fresh insights into their ongoing
reconstruction of the world's first general purpose computer.
 
You can read the full release
here: http://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/lost-edsac-diagrams-reveal-sec
rets-one-earliest-computers

Cheers

Brian Randell

School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1
7RU
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell