From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: luvisi at gmail.com (Andru Luvisi) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2019 12:08:16 -0700 Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Mauchly! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: We can split hairs about which early computing devices first implemented which automatic computing ideas, but I hope I can make 2 statements without much controversy. The ENIAC was the first device to be automatic, electronic, general-purpose, and digital. That combination contained synergies that were more than just the sum of the features. In particular, the ENIAC advanced the state-of-the-art in computing speed by 3 orders of magnitude, from 5 or 6 additions per second to 5000 additions per second. I gave a talk in 2012 about early computer history, and a substantial portion was dedicated to the ENIAC. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS_yVXcK_aM Here's the handout: http://web.sonoma.edu/users/l/luvisi/somehist/somehist.pdf Andru On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 7:30 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > We gained computer pioneer John Mauchly on this day in 1907; he was best > known > as the co-inventor of ENIAC, one of the world's first computers. > > -- Dave > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: