Early Pioneers

Conceptual Foundations

In 1931 electrical engineer Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) designed a mechanical calculator that solved complex differential equations. Although its gears and other moving and stationary parts made the machine difficult to use, Bush's invention was considered significant in mathematical circles because mathematicians and scientists could use it to solve equations long thought to be virtually unsolvable. Bush's greater contribution to modern computer science came in 1945 with the publication of an article that described a conceptual device for linking and accessing information that he called a memex. His device was never built, but the ideas underlying his concept were later influential on the developers of what is now known as hypertext.

In the 1930s, British mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing (1912–1954) developed the concept of a mechanical machine by which mathematical statements could be either proved or disproved. Although the Turing Machine was a concept, rather than a device, Turing's principles were part of the foundation upon which early mechanical computational devices were designed. In addition, his work toward speeding up the process of breaking German military codes during World War II was influential in the development of the Colossus (1943), a code-breaking computer that is the first known programmable logic calculator to use electronic valve technology. While the Colossus was significant in the Allied war effort, its influence on the development of computer science was negligible because it was not designed for general purposes and because its existence was considered classified military information until many years after the war had ended.

During the 1940s, the mathematical and theoretical work that would later be incorporated into modern computer technology was overshadowed by focused efforts to create machines designed for specific military purposes. Just as there was a wartime need to increase the code-breaking capabilities of the Allied military forces, there was an urgent need for the accurate creation of artillery firing charts. This was a repetitive task performed by large numbers of people using mechanical computing devices not specifically designed for the purpose. The need to compile these essential military tools more quickly led to government-funded efforts to invent machine solutions to the problem. Scientists in the United States and Great Britain, who had already been studying various means of creating electromechanical computing devices, then turned their energies specifically toward devising one-of-a-kind machines to meet this need.

From Concepts to Machines

The computing devices developed between 1941 and 1951 represent the first generation of modern computer technology, and their inventors are considered the true early pioneers of computer science. The physical implementation of a variety of concepts by men such as Howard H. Aiken, John V. Atanasoff, John Presper Eckert, John W. Mauchly, and German engineer Konrad Zuse set the stage for the business computers built during the 1950s and 1960s.

Howard H. Aiken.

Working in partnership with IBM, Harvard engineer Howard H. Aiken (1900–1973) produced an electronic calculator for military use in 1944. The machine, which required 804 kilometers (500 miles) of internal wiring, was 15.2 meters (50 feet) tall and 2.44 meters (8 feet) high. It was used by the U.S. Navy to calculate and create ballistics firing charts. The electro-mechanical computer, known as the Harvard Mark I, was controlled by a punched tape paper roll. Its mechanical parts responded to electromagnetic signals. The five-ton machine was slow and time-consuming to program. Its components were vulnerable to damage from the heat generated by the unit. Despite its drawbacks, however, the Harvard Mark I represented a significant point of development in computing technology.

Aiken was a graduate student at Harvard in 1937 when he first conceptualized a machine that would combine and implement the ideas of Charles Babbage (1791–1871) and Herman Hollerith (1860–1929). The development of the machine that would be known as the Mark I began in 1939. This electronic relay computer was followed in 1947 by an electronic computer known as the Mark II. Aiken also opened the Harvard Computational Laboratory in 1947, creating the world's first computer science academic program. He later founded a company, Aiken Industries, and continued to influence the development of computer electronics through research and writing.

John V. Atanasoff.

A mathematician at heart and an electrical engineer and theoretic physicist by education, John V. Atanasoff (1903–1995) began his career teaching mathematics and physics at Iowa State College in 1930. Fascinated by the prospect of finding ways to perform mathematical computations more quickly and accurately, Atanasoff studied the existing machines available for computation, and believed that they could be improved. Categorizing devices such as the Monroe calculator and the IBM tabulator as analog machines, Atanasoff envisioned an electronic, digital device based on base-2 numbers (the binary system).

During the 1930s, Atanasoff worked with graduate student Clifford E. Berry (1918–1963) to design and build an electronic digital computer that would be introduced in 1939 as the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). This is widely considered to be the world's first all-electronic digital computing device. Atanasoff filed patent applications for his invention, but the process was slow. Before he could be granted patent protection for his work, and thus historic credit as the creator of the first machine of its kind, patents would be released for the ENIAC as the first electronic digital computer. Atanasoff, who was one of the first computer scientists to understand the potential of digital computing, went on to receive patents for 32 other inventions. Eventually, credit for his best known innovation would revert to him, as well.

J. Presper Eckert, Jr.

In November, 1945, another pivotal computing device was put into use, although its presence was not announced publicly until February 1946. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was designed to perform mathematical calculations for military purposes. It began to take shape in 1943 at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, in response to the U.S. Army's need for new ways to produce trajectory tables used for precision targeting of large artillery. As the chief engineer on the ENIAC project, J. Presper Eckert, Jr. (1919–1995) shared credit for the computer's success with the ENIAC's architect, John W. Mauchly (1907–1980). Although it was finished too late to contribute to the war effort, the ENIAC was used to design hydrogen bombs, predict weather, and provide calculations related to military-sponsored studies of wind tunnels, thermal ignition, and other phenomena.

The ENIAC was 500 times faster than the Harvard Mark I computer. It cost a few hundred thousand dollars to develop, it weighed 33 metric tons (60,000 pounds), and its dimensions were gargantuan (3.0 meters (10 feet) tall, 0.9 meters (3 feet) deep, 30.5 meters (100 feet) long). Even as the ENIAC was being built, Eckert began working on the problem of creating a stored-program computer, in part because the ENIAC, which had to be rewired for each computational task, proved to be limited by the lack of stored-program capabilities. The result of this next project would be known as the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), which was completed in 1951, without the continued involvement of Eckert, who resigned from the Moore School in 1946. Eckert took out patent applications for more than 80 more electronic devices between 1948 and 1966. His pioneering work on the ENIAC and later computer developments earned him many awards, including the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1969.

John W. Mauchly.

The ENIAC computer, from which the modern electronic computer is said to have evolved, was conceived by John W. Mauchly (1907–1980), a physicist at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania. Mauchly and chief engineer John Presper Eckert gained notice for their creation of the first general-purpose computer that could perform 5,000 operations per second, a previously unimaginable speed.

During the early part of his career, Mauchly taught at Ursinis College near Philadelphia. After attending an electronics seminar at the Moore School, he ended up joining its staff. The U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory was familiar with earlier research Mauchly had performed involving the use of motors and vacuum tubes to design and build calculating equipment. In 1943 Mauchly was selected by the military to design a unit capable of writing programs to calculate the trajectories of artillery under multiple conditions. The result was the ENIAC computer, which was completed too late to be of use during World War II.

Although Mauchly and Eckert began collaborating on the EDVAC even as the ENIAC was still being built, they were both forced to resign from the Moore School before the EDVAC was operative due to their desire to be recognized in patent records as inventors of the ENIAC, which breached University of Pennsylvania protocol for patents. Mauchly continued to work with Eckert until 1959, during which time they established the first commercial computer company and built the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer). Despite disputes over patent rights and the origin of certain computer design ideas, Mauchly can rightly be considered a major innovator in the development of practical computing machines designed for flexible use.

British Computer Pioneers

During the years preceding and during World War II, American and British mathematicians and engineers joined forces to support their countries' military efforts, seeking ways to automate such tasks as the compilation of artillery firing tables and the deciphering of enemy coded communications. Much of this work led to the post-war development of electronic computing devices. Manchester University in Manchester, England, was the site of one of these developments, which was known as the Manchester Mark I.

Manchester Mark I.

Following World War II, mathematician Maxwell Newman (1897–1984) joined Manchester University as professor of pure, rather than applied, mathematics. In 1946 he acquired funding and other resources to build a stored-program computer at the university specifically to investigate its use in the study of pure mathematics. His plan was similar to one being developed at Cambridge University by Maurice V. Wilkes.

At the same time, Freddie C. Williams (1911–1977), a professor in the electrical engineering department at Manchester University, was investigating the use of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) for program storage. As the work of the Williams team progressed, Newman's team at Manchester encountered difficulties. Ultimately, Newman decided to suspend work on his computer, pending the results of Williams' efforts. By October of 1949, the Williams group had successfully demonstrated an operational version of the Manchester Mark I, a computing machine with true stored program functionality.

EDSAC.

At Cambridge University, meanwhile, Maurice V. Wilkes (1913–) was working on a project known as EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator). In 1946 he studied electronic computer design at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, the home of ENIAC. Wilkes' research over the next few years resulted in the first operations stored-program computer; the EDSAC was introduced in May of 1949, barely five months before the Manchester Mark I was completed.

Konrad Zuse.

Although American and British mathematicians, physicists, and engineers are credited with many of the innovations in early computer design and manufacturing, German engineer Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) is also considered one of the early pioneers of modern computer science. By 1941 Zuse had designed and built what became known as the Z3, the world's first electromechanical digital computer controlled by programming. Unlike the British and American efforts that were heavily funded by Allied money, Zuse's work was largely independent of government control or interest.

Between 1936 and 1938, Zuse used recycled parts and donations from friends and family members to assemble his first computer, which he called the Z1. This was the world's first binary computer. It is significant that Zuse's innovations took place outside the mainstream of computer development then going on in other parts of the world. Drafted for military service in 1939, Zuse tried in vain to persuade the Nazi/German Army military establishment of the value of his inventions. When he was reassigned from active duty to work as a structural aircraft engineer, Zuse resumed his computer-building activities, incorporating telephone relays in the construction of the Z2 and electromagnetic relays in the Z3.

Zuse's model Z4 was the only one of his original inventions to survive the bombing of Germany during World War II. By the end of the war, Zuse and his family were refugees in southern Germany. Between 1945 and 1950, Zuse continued his research when it was possible, and in 1947 he jointly founded the Zuse Engineering Company to design and build computers for scientific and business applications. Over the next several decades, Zuse and his company began interacting with computer-development interests worldwide, and his early innovations received the recognition they deserved. He received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to the field of modern computer technology.

Early Computer Programmers

In 1945 the U.S. Army hired eighty mathematicians whose high security, top-secret work no one had performed before. All of them were women. Their job was to program the ENIAC to calculate artillery firing trajectories, in order to increase the accuracy of military war efforts.

As the first wave of computer programmers, these women laid the foundation for all later computer programming. They had to become familiar with the mechanics of the ENIAC and then figure out how to give the computer directions to carry out specific actions. The women, many of whom had recently graduated from college as mathematics majors, were recruited because there was a scarcity of male mathematicians available.

In October of 1998, four of these pioneers—Jean Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jennings Bartik, Frances Snyder Holberton, and Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer—were honored by Women in Technology International for their contributions to the computer industry. At the ceremony, Antonelli pointed out that the capabilities of the ENIAC were considered more remarkable during its decade of operation than were the achievements of the women who programmed the machine to perform as it did. Holberton, who compared their wartime work to that of construction engineers, would later be among the programmers who helped develop the programming languages known as COBOL and FORTRAN.

Computer Pioneers, 1930–1950

As the 1940s drew to a close, the early pioneers of modern computing continued to pursue new avenues of research in the growing field of computer science. Other engineers made new contributions. In 1947 came the invention of the transistor, which replaced vacuum tube technology in the design of computers and revolutionized the computer and electronic communications industries. The inventors of the transistor, John Bardeen (1908–1991), William Shockley (1910–1989), and Walter Brattain (1902–1987), would jointly share the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics. Their 1947 innovation rounded out two decades of pioneering work that took computing from mechanical calculating machines to the brink of the digital age.

SEE ALSO COMPUTER SCIENTISTS; DIGITAL COMPUTING; EARLY COMPUTERS.

Pamela Willwerth Aue

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