Book ID: CBB552843294

ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer (2016)

unapi

Rope, Crispin (Author)
Priestly, Mark (Author)
Haigh, Thomas (Author)


MIT Press


Publication Date: 2016
Edition Details: Book Series: History of Computing
Language: English

Conceived in 1943, completed in 1945, and decommissioned in 1955, ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first general-purpose programmable electronic computer. But ENIAC was more than just a milestone on the road to the modern computer. During its decade of operational life, ENIAC calculated sines and cosines and tested for statistical outliers, plotted the trajectories of bombs and shells, and ran the first numerical weather simulations. ENIAC in Action tells the whole story for the first time, from ENIAC’s design, construction, testing, and use to its afterlife as part of computing folklore. It highlights the complex relationship of ENIAC and its designers to the revolutionary approaches to computer architecture and coding first documented by John von Neumann in 1945. Within this broad sweep, the authors emphasize the crucial but previously neglected years of 1947 to 1948, when ENIAC was reconfigured to run what the authors claim was the first modern computer program to be executed: a simulation of atomic fission for Los Alamos researchers. The authors view ENIAC from diverse perspectives—as a machine of war, as the “first computer,” as a material artifact constantly remade by its users, and as a subject of (contradictory) historical narratives. They integrate the history of the machine and its applications, describing the mathematicians, scientists, and engineers who proposed and designed ENIAC as well as the men—and particularly the women who—built, programmed, and operated it.

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Reviewed By

Review D. A. Grier; D. Hemmendinger (2018) Review of "ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (pp. 80-84). unapi

Essay Review David Theodore (2018) Past Calculations: New Histories of Computing Technology. Scientia Canadensis: Journal of the History of Canadian Science, Technology, and Medicine (pp. 98-103). unapi

Review De Mol, Liesbeth (April 2017) Review of "ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer". Technology and Culture (pp. 602-604). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB552843294/

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Authors & Contributors
Haigh, Thomas
Kirsch, Corinna J.
Little, Joyce Currie
Wiltshire, Alex
Beeton, Barbara
J. Mailland
Concepts
Computers and computing
Computer science
ENIAC (Computer)
Software
Brain
Personal computers and computing
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
Places
United States
France
Silicon Valley (California)
West Germany
Zurich (Switzerland)
Japan
Institutions
Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, N.J.)
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