Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Herman H. Goldstine is currently Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society.

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The Computer from Pascal to von Neumaun

Princeton University Press

Contents

Preface (1993)..................................................................................................ixPreface.........................................................................................................xiPART ONE: The Historical Background up to World War II..........................................................11. Beginnings...................................................................................................32. Charles Babbage and His Analytical Engine....................................................................103. The Astronomical Ephemeris...................................................................................274. The Universities: Maxwell and Boole..........................................................................315. Integrators and Planimeters..................................................................................396. Michelson, Fourier Coefficients, and the Gibbs Phenomenon....................................................527. Boolean Algebra: x2 = xx = x......................................................................608. Billings, Hollerith, and the Census..........................................................................659. Ballistics and the Rise of the Great Mathematicians..........................................................7210. Bush's Differential Analyzer and Other Analog Devices.......................................................8411. Adaptation to Scientific Needs..............................................................................10612. Renascence and Triumph of Digital Means of Computation......................................................115PART TWO: Wartime Developments: ENIAC and EDVAC.................................................................1211. Electronic. Efforts prior to the ENIAC.......................................................................1232. The Ballistic Research Laboratory............................................................................1273. Differences between Analog and Digital Machines..............................................................1404. Beginnings of the ENIAC......................................................................................1485. The ENIAC: as a Mathematical Instrument......................................................................1576. John von Neumann and. the Computer...........................................................................1677. Beyond the ENIAC.............................................................................................1848. The Structure of the EDVAC...................................................................................2049. The Spread of Ideas..........................................................................................21110. First Calculations on the ENIAC.............................................................................225PART THREE: Post-World War II: The von Neumann Machine and The Institute for Advanced Study.....................2371. Post–EDVAC Days........................................................................................2392. The Institute for Advanced Study Computer....................................................................2523. Automata Theory and Logic Machines...........................................................................2714. Numerical Mathematics........................................................................................2865. Numerical Meteorology........................................................................................3006. Engineering Activities and Achievements......................................................................3067. The Computer and UNESCO......................................................................................3218. The Early Industrial Scene...................................................................................3259. Programming Languages........................................................................................33310. Conclusions.................................................................................................342APPENDIX: World-Wide Developments...............................................................................349Index...........................................................................................................363

Chapter One

There is of course never an initial point for any history prior to which nothing of relevance happened and subsequent to which it did. It seems to be the nature of man's intellectual activity that in most fields one can. always find by sufficiently diligent search a more or less unending regression back in time of. early efforts to study a problem or at least: to give it some very tentative dimensions. So it is with our field.

Since this is the case, I have chosen somewhat arbitrarily to make only passing references to the history of computers prior to 1600 and to say only the briefest word about the period before 1800. In fact, the only remarks I wish to make about this period are largely anticipatory ones to my main theme which concerns the early electronic digital calculators. The only excuse for this arbitrariness is that to say more on these earlier periods would add very little to our total knowledge of the electronic computer. I shall digress on a few occasions because of the colorfulness of one or another of the intellectual figures involved or because it seems desirable to establish in our minds some feeling for the intellectual, cultural, or social background of a givers period.

Perhaps, however, this choice is not completely arbitrary. If we accept the quite reasonable point of view of scholars such as Needham, we see that in a real sense the date of 1600 may be viewed as a watershed in scientific history. Prior to Galileo (1564–1642) there were of course intellectual giants, but his great contribution was to mathematicize the physical sciences. Ma"y great scientists before him had investigated nature and made measurements, but the world needed Galileo to give these data "the magic touch of mathematical formulation."

It is worth recalling that prior to this time the state of mathematics in. Europe was not substantially more advanced than that in the Arab world, based as it was on European and Chinese ideas and concepts. Then suddenly, as a result of a bringing together of mathematics and physics, something happened in Europe that started science on the path that led from Galileo to Newton. This melding of practical and empirical knowledge with mathematics was the magic touchstone. In about 1580 Francois Vieta (1540–1603) in an earth-shaking discovery introduced the use of letters for unknowns or general parameters into mathematics. The subjects we now call algebra and arithmetic were called by him logistica speciosa and logistica numerosa, respectively. He was followed, from our point of view, by John Napier, Laird of Merchiston (1550–1617), who in 1614 invented logarithms and who also was perhaps the first man to understand, in his Rabdologia in 1617, the use of the decimal point in arithmetical operations; and by Edmund Gunter (1581–1626), who in 1620 invented a forerunner of the slide rule, which was actually invented...