23 Jan
2011
23 Jan
'11
6:37 a.m.
This site promote the hoary old argument that the ABC
wasn't really a computer
How can any machine be a "computer" if it doesn't have any ability to
run a program?
the calculation of complex and repetitive arithmetic
Actually, the ABC required * human intervention * after every calculation.
both were originally designed for particular purposes
That's incorrect. You hit upon a common fallacy regarding ENIAC -- that
it was "designed" for Army ballistics purposes. The truth is, Mauchly
was working on a general-purpose computer, and then the Army Ballistics
Lab * funded * his work. Essentially the Army said, "We'll pay for your
research if we get to use it first when it's done." Unfortunately many
people today think that means that ENIAC was commissioned * by * the
Army or at least specifically designed for them. It's not true!
ENIAC was later programmed for other arithmetic tasks,
and perhaps that would have been possible with the ABC as well
Perhaps. But it wasn't. Perhaps Columbus would have eventually sailed
in the right direction. He didn't.
history suggests that the ABC just wasn't very
well built (it didn't have federal dollars behind it!)
Also not true. Atanasoff spent years and lots of money working in the
Navy Ordnance Lab (at times with Mauchly's assistance) yet he still
failed to make a competitive computer.
the factual history ... seems to suggest that the ABC
was the first of the genre, "electronic digital computer,"
.... Except that its electronic logic was impeded by its
electromechanical everything else; and that without the ability to run a
program, it doesn't meet the definition of "computer".
The fact that Colossus was purpose-built and served to
decipher codes should not take away from the importance of its design.
Well we agree on that. :)
Von Neumann's observations would likely not have
occurred without the context of the ENIAC
You mean his plagiarizing of other people's work and sticking his own
name on it, and then widely distributing that classified document
without permission? Yes, i agree. :)
I wonder how history would have been written if
Atanasoff had been more interested in fame and fortune than in quantum physics, or if he
and Berry had been (or could have hired) better engineers.
Nobody is saying (for reals) that Atanasoff wasn't a brilliant guy.
It's not his fault that Jane Smiley and Mollenhoff before her wrote an
abortion of a "history book" and put Atanasoff's legacy through all of
this. Atanasoff made a fine electromechanical calculator, and he was
one of many people who helped others such as Mauchly meld their own ideas.
The Eckstein citation on this site does not constitute
scholarship, just recursively poor journalism.
Which citation do you mean? Remember, everything on the bottom half of
the site is merely someone's blog posts.
It's a shame this site diminishes an otherwise
worthwhile goal of celebrating the ENIAC by regurgitating an old, emotional and
unsupported argument.
Emotional? Unsupported? Back up those claims. Otherwise you'll sound
like Jane Smiley.
ENIAC was far more important to history, but that does
not mean we must disregard history that demonstrates it was not first of its class.
Not at all. The page "Was it the first computer?" clearly shows how
Babbage had many of the original ideas, Zuse was first to implement
them, and Colossus was first to make them all-electronic.
(First "general purpose" machine? Clearly
later, with EDSAC/EDVAC/UNIVAC, which were deliberately built by principle to be computers
and to subsequently fulfill specific roles at the behest of their programmers.)
All of those others were post-ENIAC, which (as I already explained) was
also "
deliberately built by principle to be computers and to subsequently fulfill specific roles
at the behest of their programmers". Also, some of these (mainly the stored-program
concept) are addressed in the "UNIVAC generation" link.