In the beginning
Page 52
Abstract
The history of computers has been the history of two components; memories and software. These two depend heavily on each other, and all else depends on them.
The early computers had none of either, it almost seems in retrospect. The Harvard Mark I had 132 words of 23 decimal digits, usable only for data. ENIAC had ten registers of ten decimals, each capable of doing arithmetic.
It was von Neuman who pointed out that putting the program into the memory of ENIAC (instead of reading it from cards) would increase the throughput. Thereafter computers were designed to have data and instructions share the memory.
The need for larger storage was apparent to all, but especially to programmers. EDVAC, the successor to ENIAC, had recirculating sounds in mercury filled pipes to get a thousand words of storage. The Manchester machine had a TV tube to store a thousand bits.
Then the reliable magnetic core displaced these expedients, and stayed a whole generation. It was only in recent times when larger memories became available that the programmer had a chance. And of course it is his sophisticated software which makes the modern computer system responsive and effective.
Comments
Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
June 1973
936 pages
ISBN:9781450379168
DOI:10.1145/1499586
Copyright © 1973 ACM.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
Sponsors
- AFIPS: American Federation of Information Processing Societies
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 04 June 1973
Check for updates
Qualifiers
- Research-article
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 0Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)0
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 20 Jan 2025