Giant brains; or, Machines that thinkBerkeley, Edmund Callis
Science
Giant brains; or, Machines that think
Berkeley, Edmund Callis
Computers -- Popular works
The _IBM Selective-Sequence Electronic
Calculator_, constructed in the IBM laboratories,
Endicott, N. Y., and installed in 1947 at the office
of International Business Machines, 590 Madison Ave.,
New York, N. Y.
Moore School of Electrical Engineering’s _EDVAC_
(Electronic Digital Variable Automatic Computer)
being constructed partly at Moore School and partly
elsewhere, and to be delivered to the Ballistic
Research Laboratories, Aberdeen, Md.
Harvard’s Sequence-Controlled Electronic Calculator
_Mark III_, being constructed at the Harvard
Computation Laboratory, and to be delivered to the
Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Va.
We shall cover briefly (and perhaps a little technically) some of the
main features of the first two of these machines; for, during 1948,
they began to do problems. The other two had not been finished by
the end of 1948 and so would be difficult to describe correctly, for
mechanical brains _grow_, and design changes go on until they are
finished—and even afterwards.
Some information about these machines can be obtained from the
organizations referred to above and from reports that should appear
from time to time in some of the journals mentioned in Supplement
3. There is also a regular section entitled “Automatic Computing
Machinery” in the quarterly _Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to
Computation_, where it is likely that current information may be found.
Harvard’s Mark II
The Harvard Sequence-Controlled Calculator Mark II began to do problems
under test during July 1947. This machine is at least twelve times as
powerful as Mark I (see Chapter 6) and was constructed entirely by
the Harvard Computation Laboratory. The machine contains about 13,000
relays of a new type that will operate reliably within ¹/₁₀₀ of a
second.
Numbers in the machine are regularly of 10 decimal digits between
1.000,000,000 and 9.999,999,999, inclusive, multiplied by a power of 10
between 1,000,000,000,000,000 and 0.000,000,000,000,001, inclusive.
For storage of numbers, the machine has 100 relay registers totaling
about 1200 decimal digits. Also, it can consult any one of 8 tape feeds
for numbers and any one of 4 tape feeds for instructions. Effectively,
the machine can read one number and one instruction from paper tape in
¹/₃₀ of a second.
The machine performs all arithmetical and most logical operations.
In every second it can carry out 4 multiplications, 8 additions (or
subtractions), and 12 transfers. Division is performed by rapid
approximation using the other operations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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