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
IIRC Kathy Kleiman makes reference to this in her recent film The Computers, about the lady programmers. My memory's a little vague but I thought she said the info was still classified. I suggest checking with her at kathy@eniacprogrammers.org j On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Daniel Ferrell <returnofjayhawk@hotmail.com
wrote:
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
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
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A deceased friend of mine Marge Devaney who is interviewed by IEEE here http://ethw.org/Oral-History:Marjorie_%22Marge%22_Devaney use to tell me stories about going to Pennsylvania with a wire design from LASL which eventually became LANL. We have a computer history student/project at LANL, Nicolas Lewis from the Babbage Institute that is uncovering a lot of this history in the archive boxes from Nick Metropolis we have in our archive. There are weapons folks at LANL that have recollections of what you are speaking of. It is possible that Nicolas might be willing to point you at some more information; I will forward this on to him. Gary Grider High Performance Computing Division Leader LANL From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Joly MacFie Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 12:36 PM To: Daniel Ferrell Cc: members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] ENIAC and the Cold War IIRC Kathy Kleiman makes reference to this in her recent film The Computers, about the lady programmers. My memory's a little vague but I thought she said the info was still classified. I suggest checking with her at kathy@eniacprogrammers.org<mailto:kathy@eniacprogrammers.org> j On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Daniel Ferrell <returnofjayhawk@hotmail.com<mailto:returnofjayhawk@hotmail.com>> wrote: 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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org<http://sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
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-mon te-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@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Ferrell Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 12:41 PM To: members@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
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-88-90.... 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@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-mon.... 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@lists.sigcis.org] *On Behalf Of *Daniel Ferrell *Sent:* Thursday, August 27, 2015 12:41 PM *To:* members@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
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Tom’s book will be definitive, and I am really looking forward to seeing it! For larger relationships between computing and the Cold War, including a short (and probably inaccurate) discussion of ENIAC, you could look at my old book The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America <http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/cw.html> (1996). Best, Paul
On Aug 28, 2015, at 1:05 , Thomas Haigh <thaigh@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-mon... <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@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Ferrell Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 12:41 PM To: members@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
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participants (6)
-
Daniel Ferrell -
Grider, Gary Alan -
Joly MacFie -
Nicholas Lewis -
Paul N. Edwards -
Thomas Haigh