[SIGCIS-Members] ENIAC and the Cold War

Thu Aug 27 20:01:12 PDT 2015

I'm afraid I haven't dug into the Metropolis collections at the LANL
archives yet, though I hope to start soon.  I do know of CBI's oral history
interview with Nick Metropolis:
http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/107493, plus Metropolis authored
and co-authored a number of papers on early computing and Los Alamos.  Some
can be found in the public *Los Alamos Science* journal (
la-science.lanl.gov/), such as this one on the beginnings of the Monte
Carlo method:
http://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lareport/LA-UR-88-9067.
Then there's an excerpt he wrote for *A History of Scientific Computing*,
called "The Los Alamos Experience": http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=88099,
and there's an *Annals* article he co-authored, called "Early Computing at
Los Alamos":
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4640758&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F85%2F4640752%2F04640758.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4640758
.

--Nic Lewis

On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 5:05 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org> wrote:

> Fortuitously, I am about to mark up the final changes on the page proofs
> of *ENIAC In Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer* by Haigh,
> Priestley & Rope and ftp them back to MIT Press. The book should be out
> very early next year and it has a great deal to say in answer to your
> question. We have some explicit discussion of ENIAC as an artifact that
> bridges the transition from WWII to the Cold War, and explore in detail its
> use for atomic bomb and artillery calculations.
>
>
>
> Artillery trajectory calculations: these were, as you might expect given
> that the machine was being funded explicitly to perform them, absolutely
> vital to the design of ENIAC. Contrary to previous claims that ENIAC
> programming was an afterthought tackled only in late-1945 they were treated
> in detail very early in the design process, playing a vital role in shaping
> the machine’s ultimate configuration. This includes sketches of a suitable
> configuration in the initial proposal and detailed diagrams of how the
> problem would be tackled produced in late-1943. This has been a sensitive
> topic because discussion of early machines is very partisan. ENIAC-bashers
> have liked to claim it was a “special purpose” and very limited machine. In
> response, ENIAC boosters have downplayed the importance of the trajectory
> application to shaping the machine’s design. The truth is that ENIAC was
> extremely flexible, but the archival records clearly show that key new
> developments such as the conditional branch sprang from consideration and
> generalization of the very specific requirements encountered when planning
> the trajectory calculations. (Rather than, as some writers imply, from the
> computer builders of the 1940s having read Turing’s paper and then rushed
> down to the machine shop to try and build a universal machine). We also
> give a nice clear explanation of what the computations actually were, and
> how they fit into the larger process of creating firing tables (which began
> with the gathering and analysis of data from actual test firings). One of
> the many things that Walter Isaacson gets wrong about ENIAC is his claim
> that it was never actually used to compute trajectories.  In fact ENIAC was
> already doing real work on this problem by August 1946, still at the Moore
> School, and once running smoothly at Aberdeen Proving Ground from 1949 to
> 1955 spent about 20% of its time calculating trajectories.
>
>
>
> ENIAC’s very first application, from December 1945 into the spring of
> 1946, was to check the validity of Teller’s basic approach to a hydrogen
> bomb, the Super. This work does remain classified, but fortunately is
> covered in some depth from the Los Alamos perspective in an excellent
> dissertation written with access to classified sources: Fitzpatrick,
> Anne. *Igniting  the Light Elements: The Los Alamos Thermonuclear Weapon
> Project, 1942-1952 (LA-13577-T)*. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos National
> Laboratory, 1999. In the book we draw on this heavily to make up for the
> inaccessibility of Los Alamos sources.
>
>
>
> Many other problems run on ENIAC were also concerned with atomic weapons,
> include the first computerized Monte Carlo computations, which receive two
> chapters in the book. Monte Carlo programs were run between 1948 and 1950,
> and included fission weapon simulations for Los Alamos, fission power
> simulations for Argonne, and a second wave of fusion calculations for
> Teller. An earlier version of the section discussing the initial 1948
> fission Monte Carlos in an already published article, “Los Alamos Bets on
> ENIAC” which is available online at
> http://eniacinaction.com/the-articles/3-los-alamos-bets-on-eniac-nuclear-monte-carlo-simulations-1947-8/.
> From the same page you can access some supporting materials, including a
> report written by Klara von Neumann, the full flow diagram, and an
> annotated version of the original code. This is of particular historical
> interest because it is not only the first computerized Monte Carlo program
> but also the first modern code to be run on any computer. (By that, we mean
> a program expressed as a series of instructions run from addressable memory
> with jumps, subroutines, and the other features of EDVAC-style programs).
> There may well be material related to these in the Metropolis papers, which
> were not accessible to us, but even without that they appear to be the best
> documented programs run on any computer in the 1940s as surviving materials
> include a succession of flow diagrams that serve as a window into the
> design process.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Members [mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org] *On Behalf Of *Daniel
> Ferrell
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 27, 2015 12:41 PM
> *To:* members at sigcis.org
> *Subject:* [SIGCIS-Members] ENIAC and the Cold War
>
>
>
> SIGCIS members:
>
>    I have an inquiry into ENIAC. I understand that one of its purposes was
> to track and calculate artillery trajectories. I am looking for resources
> that emphasize the development of ENIAC against the backdrop of the Cold
> War era, including the role ENIAC had in analyzing the hydrogen bomb. Are
> there any suggestions?
>
> *-Daniel Ferrell*
>
>
>
> *Home Acceptance Corporation *(NMLS #1151715)*. *
> 65 S. Outer Rd.
> P.O. Box 72
> Benton, MO 63736
>
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