Hey, I like the haircut and I love the ABC computer. The 1500(?) moving capacitors inside the rotating drum for memory was genious, until the contacts oxidize!
Now slap some red & green LEDs on that bad boy and get it in the Hack the Halls contest!
I'm sure there is a lot of debate about this but "computer" in the modern sense implies a machine into which you can enter "programs" and have them run. This machine clearly has data input from punch cards but if you have to rip the drums out and move the pegs to change the program we are not quite at the modern computer idea yet. More like a giant calculator.
On the other hand it does seem to have the first dynamic RAM and I just love the idea of scorching holes in paper as a storage medium:)
I'm sure there is a lot of debate about this but "computer" in the modern sense implies a machine into which you can enter "programs" and have them run. This machine clearly has data input from punch cards but if you have to rip the drums out and move the pegs to change the program we are not quite at the modern computer idea yet. More like a giant calculator.
On the other hand it does seem to have the first dynamic RAM and I just love the idea of scorching holes in paper as a storage medium:)
I don't think the drums had to be redone to change programs. Programs were entered into the drums electronically from the punched cards.
I have followed the ABC computer since the days of the big court case between Honeywell and Univac, my employer. Honeywell didn't want to pay royalties to Univac, then Engineering Research Associates ERA, who claimed to have invented programmable digital computers with the ENIAC.
Honeywell showed that the ABC was prior art, although it was not patented and not publicly disclosed. Mauchly of Univac claimed independent invention of these things and under oath said he had never learned of the things in the ABC.
The trouble was that Atanasoff was a pack rat. He apparently never through anything out, even scraps of paper. Honeywell showed there was extensive correspondence between Atanasoff and Mauchly laying out the workings of the ABC. Basically Mauchly hung himself in court and Honeywell won.
The ABC had:
1. Operated using binary numbers, the first to do so.
2. Was digital, not analog.
3. Computation used the tube equivalent of logic gates.
4. Was programmable,
5. Had dynamic capacitor memory, not relays. Essentially the same as used in our modern computers.
Sure, it was rough around the edges and not fully implemented. But all the stuff was there.
Martin Hodge
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Now slap some red & green LEDs on that bad boy and get it in the Hack the Halls contest!
"First electronic digital computer"
I'm sure there is a lot of debate about this but "computer" in the modern sense implies a machine into which you can enter "programs" and have them run. This machine clearly has data input from punch cards but if you have to rip the drums out and move the pegs to change the program we are not quite at the modern computer idea yet. More like a giant calculator.
On the other hand it does seem to have the first dynamic RAM and I just love the idea of scorching holes in paper as a storage medium:)
I have followed the ABC computer since the days of the big court case between Honeywell and Univac, my employer. Honeywell didn't want to pay royalties to Univac, then Engineering Research Associates ERA, who claimed to have invented programmable digital computers with the ENIAC.
Honeywell showed that the ABC was prior art, although it was not patented and not publicly disclosed. Mauchly of Univac claimed independent invention of these things and under oath said he had never learned of the things in the ABC.
The trouble was that Atanasoff was a pack rat. He apparently never through anything out, even scraps of paper. Honeywell showed there was extensive correspondence between Atanasoff and Mauchly laying out the workings of the ABC. Basically Mauchly hung himself in court and Honeywell won.
The ABC had:
1. Operated using binary numbers, the first to do so.
2. Was digital, not analog.
3. Computation used the tube equivalent of logic gates.
4. Was programmable,
5. Had dynamic capacitor memory, not relays. Essentially the same as used in our modern computers.
Sure, it was rough around the edges and not fully implemented. But all the stuff was there.
Duane J
Also re: Honywell vs ERA and invention of a programmable digital computer. So no one had heard of Babbage then?