[Computer composition and system structure] The Birth of electronic computers

 

This article describes the birth process of computers. I try my best to make the content story less boring. In the middle of 1930s, john vincent Atanasoff, a professor of mathematics and physics at Iowa State University in the United States, was often involved in complicated and boring computations, at that time, the fastest mechanical computer operation was too slow and the error was large. As a result, ardenov decided to develop an electronic computer to improve the computing tool. In 1937, he began his design and introduced three key ideas in his design: 1. use binary instead of decimal to represent data 2. 3. use electronic devices to replace mechanical components for computation. the machine must be able to store a number of "Memory ". These ideas gradually become possible in his experiments over the next two years. But to truly achieve this goal requires a research fund, so he applied for a research fund from the university. However, this project is not favored. In the spring of 1939, the University Research Director paid only $650, of which $200 was used to buy materials, and another $450 hired a graduate student named Clifford Berry ). As a result, ardenov and Berry started their R & D work in a basement at the Iowa State University. Fortunately, Berry was a talented engineer who solved a lot of problems for azenov in his subsequent studies. The machine was basically developed in 1941 and named Atanasoff-berry computer (ABC) according to their names ). ABC has 300 electronic tubes, which can be used for addition and subtraction, and 300 numbers are stored with a drum capacitor. The machine weighs 320 kg and is as big as a table. It is much faster than the original mechanical calculator, and ABC can be used to calculate linear algebra equations.

However, ABC has not been completed yet, and some problems need to be solved. For example, if the punching machine fails, ABC will get the wrong answer out of control. So ABC was not put into use, and the location of Iova University was relatively remote. At that time, this invention was not followed by the scientific community. In 1942, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States's identity in World War II was changed from a neutral country to a participating country. Many engineers have joined the research work of war. Azenov went to a Naval Ordnance lab in Washington to study bomb fuses. Soon after, Berry also went to Los Angeles to participate in a defense contracted project. The development of ABC has been interrupted since then, and aldenov and Berry have also lost contact. Therefore, ABC's scientific research achievements have never been known to the world. Even the two ABC sample machines left in the basement when they left were demolished during World War II due to item shortage. This led to ENIAC, which was born in 1946, being mistaken for being the first electronic computer. Later, Iowa State University counterfeited an ABC and placed it on the first floor of the dalham center.

In February December 1940, atana went to philadisk to attend the AAAS annual meeting. He received a speech from professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Mo Zili believes that electronics can provide answers to desperate data processing problems, but he still does not know how to do it. After the meeting, atanov found mozili and told him that he had built such a machine. mozili was very interested. Later, atanov took mozili to his basement to visit the machine and told him his ideas. He handed over his laptop about his computer when he left. Later, mozili carefully studied the solution of azenov and published a report entitled "use of high-speed Electronic Tube devices" on 1942. This report aroused a strong interest in the former graduate student Eckert. So they started to develop electronic computers. At that time, during the Second World War, the military urgently needed a high-speed calculator to solve the complex trajectory calculation problem. In 1943, the u. S. Military immediately allocated funds to support this idea and set up a development team headed by moqili and ekter to start development. The budget was $0.15 million. Later, feng nuiman, a famous mathematician and a member of the atomic bomb Development Team, also joined the development team and increased investment, with a total investment of 0.48 million US dollars. This huge fund was not supported by atanov dream. After several years of hard work, ENIAC was finally developed successfully. In the spring of 1945, the first test run of ENIAC was successful. ENIAC is a huge machine with a length of 30.48 meters and a width of 1 meter. It has 30 operating units and covers an area of 170 m² square meters. It is equivalent to the size of 10 common rooms, weighing 30 tons and consuming 150 KW of power, the cost is USD 0.48 million. It contains 18000 electronic tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1500 relays, more than 6000 switches, and 5000 addition or 400 multiplication operations per second, it is 1000 times that of the relay computer and 0.2 million times that of manual computation. On October 18, February 10, 1946, the US Army's military equipment department and the University of Pennsylvania's Moore college jointly announced the birth of ENIAC to the world. In the same year, mozili and ekter applied for a patent for ENIAC. After the successful development of ENIAC, it was immediately put into military applications and atomic bomb development applications, handling a large number of computing problems arising during the development of atomic bombs, it has contributed a lot to the birth of the world's first atomic bomb. At one time, ENIAC was regarded as the first computer in the world.

In this way, the innovative ideas of using electronic circuits and electronic tubes to make computers are recorded in the workbooks of mozili and ekter. In this case, mozili and ektor undoubtedly made a big mistake. They never told people that their solution evolved from the atanov solution, they even tried to hide this fact. However, Atanasov was not aware that his invention would affect human history and possibly huge economic benefits, and did not apply for patent protection for himself. He applied for Naval Services in 1942, I have no time to take care of this matter. Atanov does not have a hard nut to prove that he was the inventor of the first electronic computer. One day, a company took the initiative to come to the door and asked him to provide evidence to prove that the computer patents of mozili and AI Kert were invalid. Originally, in 1946, ektor and moqili applied for an invention patent for ENIAC. In 1947, ecket and mochley left the University of Pennsylvania and founded EMCC in philphia. They had to sell the company to the Rand Company due to capital turnover difficulties, therefore, the patents of ENIAC were transferred to rand.com. In 1971, randcompany took the company that refused to pay the Patent Fee to court. Mr Cherwell retorted that the patent came from atanov. So the company's team found atanov and wanted him to provide his testimony. Atanov agreed and precisely explained the manufacturing process of ABC. The lawsuit lasted for a long time, and the Court held a total of 135 trials. Until October 19, 1973, the Minnesota District Court of America issued a formal verdict: "mozili and ektor did not invent the first computer, but used the idea in the invention of atanov ." In addition, it was ruled that the patents of mozili and ektor were invalid on the grounds that atanov had told mozili his preliminary idea of computers as early as 1941. The news was published in the newspaper on the second day, that is, July 20. Coincidentally, the news and reports on the incident were overwhelmed by media hype about the political scandal "Water Gate incident. So ABC's R & D work has not been noticed by the world. Therefore, until today, many textbooks have mistakenly used the world's first electronic computer as ENIAC. Summary: 1. atanasoff-berry computer (ABC) is the first electronic computer in the world. It is john vincent Atanasoff of Iowa State University) and his graduate student Clifford Berry was developed between 1937 and 1941. However, ABC is not in use. 2. between 1943 and 1946, mozili and ekter adopted the basic ideas of amantov and Berry and adopted more electronic tubes. Create an ENIAC with higher computing power and truly ready for use. Later generations thought it was the first computer. Other materials: In 1943, the British secretly created a dedicated electronic computer named Colossus, which earned the honor to crack the password during World War II. Therefore, Colossus is more than two years earlier than ENIAC, but it is also later than ABC.