Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2001 The ingenuity of common workmen: and the invention of the computer Byron Paul Mobley Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the Computer Sciences Commons, Economic History Commons, and the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons Recommended Citation Mobley, Byron Paul, "The ingenuity of common workmen: and the invention of the computer " (2001). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 660. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/660 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 The ingenuity of common workmen: And the invention of the computer by Byron Paul Mobley A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillments of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Major: History of Technology and Science Major Professor: Alan I Marcus Iowa State University Ames. Iowa 2001 Copyright © Byron Paul Mobley. 2001. All rights reserved. UMI Number: 3034206 Copyright 2001 by Mobley, Byron Paul All rights reserved. UMI UMI Microform 3034206 Copyright 2002 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, Uniteid States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ii Graduate College Iowa Stale University This is to certify that the Doctoral dissertation of Byron Paul Mobley has met the dissertation requirements of Iowa State University Signature was redacted for privacy. Committee Member Signature was redacted for privacy. ommittee Membe Signature was redacted for privacy. Signature was redacted for privacy. Committee Member Signature was redacted for privacy. jor Professor Signature was redacted for privacy. e Major Program Signature was redacted for privacy. iii To Donald Ray Mobley. a common workman whose intelligence, industriousness, and integrity have won the admiration of all who have known him iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. SMALLER IS BETTER BUT COMPROMISE IS NECESSARY I CHAPTER 2. J. V. ATANASOFF: COMPUTER PIONEER 42 CHAPTER 3. COMPUTING BEFORE WORLD WAR n 78 CHAPTER 4. IN THE BEGINNING. THE ABC 123 CHAPTER 5. MORE ON THE ABC 170 CHAPTER 6. ADAM SMITH AND THE POPULAR VITALITY 226 BIBLIOGRAPHY 277 1 CHAPTER 1. SMALLER IS BETTER BUT COMPROMISE IS NECESSARY Prevailing wisdom has it that electronic digital computers exist because governments sponsored their development. Computers have indeed received public backing, but the private sector played a larger role than acknowledged, and moreover, there is considerable evidence that it did not need help to invent computers or take them to market. A history of computers suggests that Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher, had it right. He believed that minimal and aloof government best served society, and with that, the inherent genius and diligence of citizens are themselves enough to ensure invention and the general prosperity. The first modern computer has been widely reputed to be the ENIAC,1 a machine of such awesome size and complexity that only government, it is believed, could have mustered the initiative and money to create it. The ENIAC weighed thirty tons, occupied a large room, and contained approximately 18,000 vacuum tubes.2 It cost $750,000, or so, a huge sum at the time.3 The U.S. Army gave the University of Pennsylvania funding to build the ENIAC for calculating artillery tables during World War II, although the computer was not completed until afterwards. John W Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, a physics instructor and an electrical engineering graduate student, respectively, and closely identified with the project, won acclaim as the inventors of the computer. The federal government continued to support computer projects generously. The financial largess came mostly through defense agencies and resulted in a bewildering number of one-of-a-kind computers, many with playful names, some from acronyms, like ILLLAC, ORDVAC, ORACLE, 1 ENIAC is an acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. 2 Arthur W. Burks. "Electronic Computing Circuits of the ENIAC," Proceedings of the l.R.E. 35. no. 8 (August 1947). 756-757. Strictly speaking, the ENIAC contained about 18,000 vacuum tube envelopes, or containers, many with two triodes. Most tubes were in accumulators, the main computational components of the ENIAC. Many of those tubes were of the twin-triode type. 3 The cost estimate is from Nancy Stem, who has written the most frequently cited account of the ENIAC. See. Stem, From ENIAC to UNIVAC: An Appraisal of the Eckert-Mauchly Computers (Bedford, Massachusetts: Digital Press, 1981), 50-51. The figure is from a table entitled, "ENIAC." Saul Rosen, another historian, agreed in a more recent account of the ENIAC. Specifically see, "The Origins of Modem Computing," Computing Reviews 31, no. 9 (September 1990), 450. Other estimates on the cost of the ENIAC have gone to $1 million but most are less. Historian Paul Ceruzzi put it at $500.000. See, The Reckoners: The Prehistory of the Digital Computer, From Relays to the Stored Program Concept (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983). 123. See, "Table 5.1. The ENIAC." Herman H. Goldstine. Army liaison to the ENIAC project, cited an exact cost of S486.804.22. See, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann (Princeton. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1972). 154. footnote 10. John W. Mauchly also estimated the cost at $500.000. See. "Mauchly on the Trials of Building ENIAC," IEEE Spectrum 12. no. 4 (1975), 76. It is likely that no one knew its true cost. 2 MANIAC, JOHNNIAC, and others.4 The ENIAC helped inspire this frenetic activity in publicly financed computer building but served only incidentally as a model for any other machine. Nothing like the ENIAC was built again. It was too limited in capabilities, too complex, too difficult to use, and too expensive to be worth replicating. The designs of two other early computers constructed largely under the auspices of the federal government defined the direction computers took. Neither had much in common with the ENIAC. although they had major similarities with one another. The team building the ENIAC initiated the first of the two truly influential machines that followed. Recognizing serious deficiencies in the yet unfinished ENIAC, Eckert. Mauchly. and others began computer design anew with the EDVAC.5 Mathematician John von Neumann joined as a consultant in late summer 1944 and the next spring wrote First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. It dealt not with nuts-and-bolts issues as much as it formulated a fundamental theoretical framework for electronic digital computers that continues as their basis to this day. Notable is that von Neumann chose the logic and language of the "logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity" of biophysicists Walter Pitts and W. S. McCulloch to explain and systematize computer components and circuits. Rather than vacuum tubes and specialized electronics, von Neumann used human organ and neuron analogies to discuss alternative designs and make recommendations. Among the most urgent was that the EDVAC, "should be as simple as possible, that is, contain as few elements as possible."6 The EDVAC was not completed by the University of Pennsylvania until 1952 and cost an estimated S467.000. with funding again provided by the Army, but it reflected the principles advocated by von Neumann. With a spare design including approximately 3.600 vacuum tubes, the EDVAC handily met goals of being simpler, smaller, and easier to use than the ENIAC.7 The EDVAC was also more versatile and powerful. In particular, the EDVAC had stored- program capabilities while the ENIAC did not. Programming the ENIAC entailed resetting a myriad of switches and relocating numerous jumper cables. The physical setup alone could take a couple of days. The EDVAC was programmed in much the same manner as computers today. Instructions and data were fed into the EDVAC. converted to binary code, and stored and manipulated as the instructions commanded. That capability made the EDVAC a computer in the complete sense. A i The computers specifically mentioned here derived from one particularly influential machine, the IAS computer. As another of those, and a name topper, the University of Sidney completed the SILLIAC in 1956.