Progress report (2) on the EDVAC. 2 vols. No. 16 of 20 copies

Beschreibung:

[EDVAC.] Sharpless, Thomas Kite (1913-67). Progress report (2) on the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Computer. Mechanically reproduced typescript, printed on rectos only. No. 16 of 20 copies printed. 2 vols. [4], v, [135]; [4], vi-ix, [129]ff., variously numbered. 111 blueprint plates. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Moore School of Engineering, 30 June 1946. 279 x 214 mm. Original printed stiff wrappers, new cloth spines, worn, some staining from clear tape; boxed. Left margins of text leaves punched for binder, light toning, but very good. "Restricted" stamps on both front wrappers and some internal leaves. Classification markings crossed out on cover of vol. 2. Note toped to upper cover of both volumes reading "This report is not to be removed from the premises of the computing laboratory. Ownership stamps of Martin Weik (1922-2007), an engineer with the Aberdeen Proving Ground s Ballistics Research Lab, who worked on both the ENIAC and EDVAC. From the library of Winifred S. Jonas (1924-2021), also of the BRL, an early programmer and operator of the ENIAC and EDVAC computers. Boxed. Extraordinarily Rare First and Only Printing, one of only 20 copies issued, of the second progress report on the EDVAC, the first general-purpose electronic stored-program computer to be designed. The EDVAC s revolutionary stored-program concept, initially described by John von Neumann in his privately distributed First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC (1945), became the paradigm for many of the first-generation computers, even though the machine itself was not completed until 1949 and did not become fully operational until late 1951. The idea of a stored-program computer originated around 1943-44 at the University of Pennsylvania s Moore School of Engineering, within the group of engineers charged with designing and constructing the ENIAC for the U.S. Army. The ENIAC, as is well known, was the world s first general-purpose electronic computer, but it was not designed to store its instructions and to process the instructions and data in an electronic memory as electronic memory technology did not exist at the time; setting up programs on the machine required physically plugging in patch cords from buses to panels for the solution of each problem. By early 1944 some leading members of the ENIAC s design team, including Pres Eckert, John Mauchly and Herman Goldstine, were actively pursuing the stored-program concept, and in September 1944 John von Neumann, the celebrated mathematical genius, joined what would become the EDVAC project. In October 1944 the U.S. Army granted the ENIAC team an additional $105,600 to explore the design of a stored-program computer. Among the technical stumbling blocks preventing development of a stored-program computer at that time was the problem of building a working electronic memory. In June 1945 von Neumann wrote the First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, setting forth in organized fashion the results of the EDVAC team s design meetings; it was this document that "first described, in any detail, the concept of the stored-program computer" (Williams, p. 23). The First Draft was intended to be an internal working document, and as such it never received a "Restricted" or "Confidential" classification; however, its unclassified status led to the First Draft being distributed to a wider audience than anticipated, and since von Neumann was listed as the report s sole author its readers naturally credited him with the stored-program concept. This led to friction between von Neumann and the other leading team members, several of whom including Eckert and Mauchly left the Moore School in early 1946, severely hampering further progress on the EDVAC. Prior to their departure Eckert and Mauchly attempted to set the record straight in their own report, titled "Automatic High Speed Computing: A Progress Report on the EDVAC" (30 September 1945), but this was a classified document issued in only 50 copies, and as such. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 50642

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