The MIT press the first computers history and architectures

[...]... 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... the technical details, some the uses to which they were put, and others refer to the "down stream" effects these developments had on other machines and people I hope this timeline will provide a handy reference to help you keep the temporal order straight Another guide to the novice might well be some of the technical details of the machines themselves Rather than go into a lengthy description of the. .. 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 1,024 words, the second tube contained the second bit, etc Of course, it was still possible to use the electrostatic storage tubes in a serial machine as was done with the first machine at... 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... Meeting the Challenges of Technological Change and Global Competition." Mahoney has been Editor of the ACM Press' s History Series, a member of the Conference Committee, and a member of the Advisory Committee for SIGGRAPH's "Milestones: The History of Computer Graphics." He served as historian for the second ACM Conference on the History of Programming Languages (Cambridge, 1993) 19 C.A.R Hoare, "The Mathematics... 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... 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. .. 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 individuals who built Digital Equipment Corporation The Microsoft,... 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... the computer from ENIAC to the present The visual presentation of computers has required "special effects" enhancements ranging from the PingPong ball hemispheres used to magnify the blinking lights of the ENIAC, to the gigantic and elaborate movie computers of Colossus: The Forbin Project, and other films While simulation of the operation of actual computers can represent the functionality in more . 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. machines by the technology from which they were constructed, the uses to which they were put, the era in which they were used, their basic operating principle, analog or digital, and whether they were