21 Aug
2008
21 Aug
'08
11:17 p.m.
"Brian L. Stuart" wrote:
(No doubt. I haven't seen a lot of the ENIAC electronic design but it certainly
was unusual with the stacked tubes and multiple B+ levels.
At one time I was hoping to get my hands on a full ENIAC description, even if
short of the complete schematics, to write a graphical simulation, and then
define a language and write a compiler that would output a program wiring list
to configure the simulator.)
Straying completely away from technical issues,
and I'm somewhat loath to
mention this, but the animosity engendered by the early-70s court battle
continues decades later. The somewhat nasty inter-personal battle
found it's way into the Amazon book reviews as recently as 2004.
Another bizarre twist in the ENIAC patent saga on the legal/social side.
Indeed it does. Back when I was at Purdue, I knew Saul Rosen who
went WAY back. He referred to the push to prioritize Atanasoff
as the cult of Atanasoff. But it's so clear that this weird saga
really is about the legal/social and not the technical. Both
groups innovated in different ways and both are important to
study to get a good picture of history and of the evolution
in design. Everyone had to address the fundamental question
of memory. Eckert and Mauchley knew that it was an eventual
issue; Eckert wrote a paper (in 1944 IIRC) where he described
a magnetic disk (and even suggested a stored program on it).
But in the ENIAC, they largely punted on the question of memory.
But Atanasoff's rotating capacitor drum really does stand
out as an innovation in memory design. Even if it wouldn't
scale well, the rotating, regenerative memory structure is
very similar in concept to the recirculating, regenerative
delay line memories, like that used in the UNIVAC I.
around with, but the implemention of tube logic
can be problematic or
unreliable, at least in the way the ABC tried to implement both NAND and NOR
gates with resistive input circuitry.
This is the sort of thing that led Eckert to remark that the processing
part of the ABC would never have been particularly reliable. His
design for the ENIAC was radically different. It bore much similarity
to his earlier experience in tube-based counters. And his design
techniques were the only reason a machine with 18,000 tubes could
be expected to operate for any time at all. Ultimately, we can see seeds of future technology in
both machines,
but neither machine bore much resemblance to what came after either
in terms of architecture or the design of basic functional elements.
(I wish I could compose prose as quickly as you came back with that
considered response.)
My sentiments are similar overall, and I'll guess that most people of a
technical background who have followed or examined the saga are so inclined.
The nature of the patent/legal system, declaring one-and-only-one 'first'
without consideration of portion, and the money imperative, perhaps engenders
the sort of animosity that resulted.
For example, Atanasoff is justly feted for implementing the principles of binary
arithmetic/logic in electronics in the ABC, as opposed to using the counter
techniques for arithmetic that ENIAC and others used, but is that more
significant than Shannon's 1930s paper that formally described relay system
design in terms of binary logic? I don't know if that paper influenced Atanasoff,
but in terms of principles the one could be said to follow from the other.
All these things are contributions and steps.
--
Shannon should be more recognised in the public sphere I believe, his
contributions are well known and considered inside the field of information
technology of course (although you can find millions of people in the
field who don't have a clue), but he should have the public stature of Einstein
regarding influence and consequence to modern technology and society.
Another one of my pipe dreams is to produce an understandable-by-the-lay-person
documentary/educational feature about Shannon's concepts and their wide-ranging
impact across the fields of science and society.