Howard Aiken - the first architect of machines

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

Our world is the world of marketing, beautiful presentations, the consumer market, where one of the main roles is played by a person with money who wants to buy a product. Hence the idols in the computer field: Jobs, Gates and others. But few people know that without the people who stood at the origins of computer engineering, there would be no modern heroes. One of these people was the hero of this article.

Biography of Howard Aiken

Born in 1900, March 8; died March 14, 1973; American physicist, mathematician, engineer, one of the pioneers in the field of computer engineering, lazy. A milestone in his biography and for the field of computer engineering is his contribution as an inspirer and engineer at IBM (International Business Machines) to the creation of the first American computer (or, more precisely, the first electromechanical computer) called "Mark I". His alma mater is the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his PhD in philosophy of physics from Harvard in 1939.

Why is Howard Aiken a lazybones? Because quite a lot of devices, new technologies were created not only in order to make fabulous profits or make people's lives better, but in order to save time, speed up the process, etc. Aiken's idea of creating an electromechanical computing device that would take long and uninteresting mathematical calculations, was no exception.

Aiken was faced with the need to calculate a large number of differential equations that have exclusively numerical solutions. Later, other useful applications were found for this machine (in particular, in the military sphere). However, at the origins was the desire of a talented engineer-physicist to save his time. And it's wonderful and amazing! What can the laziness of a single person lead to! To the beginning of a revolution in an area that for a long time after his life was considered not very promising, but which ultimately led to a change in the lives of everyone.

The development of Howard Aiken's first computer was prompted by the work of Charles Babbage on the creation of a difference engine - a mechanical device for automating the computational process by replacing functions with polynomials in order to simplify the calculation of the finite difference of values.

Getting Started at IBM

After numerous unsuccessful attempts by Aiken to find support in the scientific community and obtain funding, Harvard Business School professor Theodore Brown introduced Aiken to IBM CEO Thomas Watson. Watson, after someof thought and consultation with James Bryce, who has patented over 500 inventions in the area of calculating and punching machines (IBM's main source of income), agreed to partially finance the Aiken project with the US Navy, which was interested in the computing power of Aiken's proposed project for calculating ballistic trajectories.

Creation of "Mark I"

As the mastermind, project supervisor and architect of the machine, along with a group of talented IBM engineers who developed the hardware for the machine, Howard Aiken assembled the first model of the Mark series by 1943, the official name of which was “Computer with automatic sequence control” (Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, ASCC), and unofficially - Harvard Mark I.

By the summer of 1944, after fixing a number of problems and final adjustment of all equipment, the machine was installed at Harvard University and presented to the public. It was a structure 15.5 meters long, 2.4 meters high and 0.6 meters deep, weighing about 35 tons, with 800 kilometers of wires, and looked more like a super calculator than a computer in our modern sense.

Howard Aiken went down in history with his development and was proud of it, however, despite this, he was distinguished by rather conservative views on new materials and developments in the field of new materials and technologies were apparently quite difficult for him. Since he is into some extent defended some already outdated old methods, materials and technologies.

Practical use of Aiken devices

Despite later disagreements with the head of the corporation, Aiken continued his work on improving the machines of the Mark series, using electronic components over time, and in the most recent version ("Mark IV") completely made the machine an electronic device.

One can come across the erroneous opinion that, among other things, Howard Aiken discovered the cancer vaccine. But in fact, the antibody that attaches itself to immune cells and programs them to attack a cancerous tumor was discovered by Howard Weiner of Harvard University. Aiken was the one who practically proved the possibility of creating a computer that can be automatically controlled by a program to solve complex scientific and other problems.