[...]... to the problem Figure 5 John von Neumann and the IAS computer The illustration above, of von Neumann standing beside the IAS machine, clearly shows 20 cylindrical devices in the lower portion of the machine – these were one half of the 40 tubes that made up the memory (the other half were on the other side of the machine) Each tube stored 1,024 bits – the first tube stored the first bit of each of the. .. different capacities The kinds of computers we have designed since 1945 and the kinds of programs we have written for them reflect not the nature of the computer but the purposes and aspirations of the groups of people who made those designs and wrote those programs, and the product of their work reflects not the history of the computer but the histories of those groups, even as the computer in many... decried the lack of "a properly mathematical-logical" theory of automata Between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s such a theory took shape through the interaction of a variety of disciplines, as their agendas converged on the new electronic digital computer and gave rise to theoretical computer science as a mathematical discipline Automata and formal languages, computational complexity, and mathematical... from it, brings the questions out more clearly The same is true of theoretical computer science as a mathematical discipline As the computer left the laboratory in the mid-1950s and entered both the defense industry and the business world as a tool for data processing, for real-time command and control systems, and for operations research, practitioners encountered new problems of non-numerical computation... mutually supportive, some orthogonal to one another Theories are about questions, and where the nascent subject of computing could not supply the next question, the agenda of the outside field provided its own Thus the semigroup theory of automata headed on the one hand toward the decomposition of machines into the equivalent of ideals and on the other toward a ring theory of formal power series aimed at classifying... category theory The interaction in the 1970s and 1980s of semantics with universal algebra, in particular Omega-algebras, and then categories parallels that of algebra and automata in the 1960s By 1988, Saunders Maclane's Categories for the Working Mathematician had a counterpart in Andrea Asperti's and Giuseppe Longo's Categories, Types, and Structures: An Introduction to Category Theory for the Working... the nature of such a reconciliation, not least because it goes to the heart of the nature of the museum and of the history of technology A brief review of the history of science museums and the disciplinary construction of the history of technology indicates some of the major difficulties historians, scientists, and museum professionals have had in interpreting artifacts Although artifacts exist, and. .. enhance the historian's use of that information Although some historians portray the business, military, and scientific contexts of computers, most history of computing still focuses on artifacts and their makers As in the case of other artifacts, large sums are still available for their celebration and display, often from the makers themselves Hence, the Computer Museum in Boston is the work of the same... southwest, industrial cities like Lowell in the northeast, and historical Williamsburg in the mid-Atlantic United States provide an experience of the past that is more "authentic" than outdoor museums that assemble buildings from other locales These reconstructions limited by the imagination and knowledge of the curators and exhibit staff, the materials available, and the interpretation by guides Indoor museums... personal – the chart would be too complex because almost all the events shown (with the exception of the work of Zuse) relied heavily on one another in these matters Figure 8 A timeline of major early computer projects The machines in this timeline are the subject of many of the papers in this volume – some discuss the technical details, some the uses to which they were put, and others refer to the "down . Bernard Cohen, 1999 The First Computers History and Architectures, edited by Raúl Rojas and Ulf Hashagen, 2000 The First Computers History and Architectures edited by Raúl Rojas and Ulf Hashagen ©. of the machine – these were one half of the 40 tubes that made up the memory (the other half were on the other side of the machine). Each tube stored 1,024 bits – the first tube stored the first. Cataloging-in-Publication Data The first computers: history and architectures / edited by Raúl Rojas and Ulf Hashagen. p. cm.— (History of computing) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN