Computing Pioneer Dies

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Dave Wade

    > ENIAC had been configured in stored program mode earlier in the year
    > and had run a program stored in the function switches, e.g. ROM
    > ...
    > Despite the fact that when running stored programs ENIAC's parallel
    > processing features were not available, it was exclusively in this mode
    > from 1948 onwards.

This may have been mentioned here already, but if not, there's a good new
book out which covers this phase of ENIAC's existence in considerable detail:

  Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley, and Crispin Rope, "ENIAC In Action: Making and
	Remaking the Modern Computer", MIT Press, Cambridge, 2016

It's a very interesting and well-done book; I highly recommend it.


    > From: Brent Hilpert

    > The best that can be said for your position is that you (and the
    > ENIAC/Mauchlyite crowd) have a particular opinion and definition
    > regarding 'stored-program computer'.

I'm harly a member of the "ENIAC/Mauchlyite crowd" (in fact, I used to not
have a good impression of them at all), but I thought Haigh et al made a
pretty good case.

	Noel