1. Workshop 3 First Computers
How to make reliable systems from unreliable parts?
What are algorithms?

2. Overview Jacquard Loom Charles Babbage’s analytical engine
Ada Lovelace’s programming the analytical engine
German Enigma Machine
Alan Turing at Bletchly Park – Cracking the code, built “the bombe”
Colossus – 1943 at Bletchly Park
Princeton AIS – Von Neumann & ENIAC
Mark 1 computer at Harvard
Philadelphia (Eckert & Mauchly) ENIAC => UNIVAC

3. Jacquard Loom
1725 Basile Bouchon used a series of punched cards threaded together to give a sequence of weaving patterns.
1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard’s loom.
The basic idea was the holes indicated where the needle should press through.
Pictures: From loom to computers
Fiber artist Lia Cook talks about her Jacquard loom (2 minutes) cache

4. Charles Babbage’s analytical engine
Babbage was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (Newton & Hawkings)
He cofounded the analytical society
In 1822 he started work on the difference engine, designed to compute mathematical tables
He later designed the analytical engine, a mechanical computer programmed by punch cards
Charles Babbage Analytical Engine (8 minutes) cache
The greatest machine that never was - John Graham- Cumming (12 minutes) cache

5. Ada Lovelace
Daughter of Lord Byron. From -----Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto 3
Her mother Annabella urged her to study mathematics to prevent Ada repeating her father’s madness
Ada met Babbage in 1833
Her notes on the analytical engine may be considered the first computer programs
She envisioned computers with applications beyond calculating mathematical functions
The child of love, -- though born in bitterness
And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire
These were the elements
Portrait of Ada by British painter Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1836)
Information Pioneers: Ada Lovelace
(5 minutes) cache
Science in Seconds - Ada Lovelace (2 minutes) cache

6. From mechanical to electronic computing
George Stibitz – Built the Complex Number Calculator at Bell Labs in 1939
Invention of the First Electrical Digital Computer Stibitz video (8 minutes)
Used mechanical relays
Not programmable

7. German Enigma Machine
invented by Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I
Used by German military, particularly U-Boats
1932 deciphered by 3 Polish cryptologists
Germans later enhanced it
Cracking the Enigma Code (10 minutes) cache
Bletchley Park – British cryptographers including Alan Turing managed to crack the code in part by building cryptonalytical Bombe machines

8. Alan Turing at Bletchly Park
Enigma encoding was changed daily
The Bletchly Park team had only 24 hours to try different code settings
Turing saw that certain patterns in the code could be used to prune the possible settings
Turing built “the bombe” (electro-mechanical computer) to automate trying settings 1940
Operating the Bombe: Jean Valentine's story (5 minutes) cache

9. Colossus 1943
Colossus (all electronic programmable computer)– built 1943 at Bletchly Park by a team headed by Max Newman with Turing’s help
Purpose – Decrypt messages coded by the German Lorenz machine
Tommy Flowers EE led the design
After the war Churchill ordered Colossus machines and their blueprints destroyed
Due to its secrecy, Colossus did not have a major influence on the evolution of computing
A replica of Colossus Mark 2 was built in 2007
Colossus did not use stored programs; it was programmed using plugs, wires and switches.
Colossus: Creating a Giant
(9 minutes) cache

10. Princeton IAS – Von Neumann & ENIAC
Von Neumann was a Hungarian mathematician, physicist and inventor
1930 Von Neumann came to Princeton as a guest lecturer
1933 he was appointed to the Institute of Advanced Studies joining Einstein and Oswald Veblen, and later on Kurt Gödel
Von Neumann was prominent in foundations of mathematics, physics, quantum mechanics, game theory, set theory, etc.
In WW2 Von Neumann joined the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb – Along with J. Robert Oppenheimer and Stanislaw Ulam
John Von Neumann Documentary (1 hour tribute) cache (24 mins)
John Von Neumann Interview (2 minutes) cache

11. Von Neumann architecture
First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC by John von Neumann, Contract No. W-670-ORD-4926, Between the United States Army Ordinance Department and the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Electrical Engineering University of Pennsylvania June 30, 1945
EDVAC text
Stored program - Memory held program instructions as well as data
Turing’s earlier universal machine stored the program (state transitions) on the tape
… it is now possible to take up the five specific parts into which the device was seen to be subdivided, and to discuss them one by one. Such a discussion must bring out the features required for each one of these parts in itself, as well as in their relations to each other.

12. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer)
1943 United States Army, Ordnance Corps contracted Moore School at Univ. of Penn. to build a computer
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert led the design
1946 ENIAC finally delivered
Used to predict behavior of the hydrogen bomb (Von Neumann)
Left to Right: Unknown, J. Presper Eckert, Dr. John Mauchly, Jean Jennings Bartik, Lt. Herman Goldstine, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum
1946 ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computing (1 minute) cache

13. MANIAC – Mathematical And Numerical Integrator And Computer
Princeton 1950
Eckert and Mauchly left the Moore School to form a commercial company. It later morphed into UNIVAC.
Von Neumann recruited some of the ENIAC team into a Princeton project.
MANIAC was built at Los Alamos in 1952
(There seems to be a lot of confusion between ENIAC and
Von Neumann and Oppenheimer
WEIZAC: Israel's first computer
(6 minutes) 3-3

14. Mark I 1944 Howard Aiken Grace Hopper
Harvard physicist needed to solve systems of differential equations
Discovered parts of a Babbage engine in a Harvard attic
Designed Mark I computer inspired by Babbage
1939 Harvard contracted IBM to build it
1944 Mark I delivered
Mark II video: Early Innovators: Howard Aiken (4 minutes)
Grace Hopper
Ph.D. in math from Yale
Interested in precise use of language
Documented history and use of Mark 1
In wartime Mark I became a navy project. Howard Aiken is pictured in the center next to Grace Hopper.