MARCH 1996

The intersection of the history of computing and the calendar month of March reveals a number of interesting events. Born on the 19th of this month was Howard Aiken who must be credited with the first large-scale operating, relay calculator in the United States that became operational in 1944. The the Harvard Mark I (AKA IBM Automatic Sequence Control Calculator [ASCC]) (IEEE Center image #16) conceived by Howard Aiken in the late 1930's and implemented by Messrs. Hamilton, Lake, Durfee of IBM. The machine, sponsored by the US Navy, was intended to computer the elements of mathematical and navigation tables -- the same purpose as intended by Charles Babbage for the Difference Engine. Aiken dedicated his early reports to Babbage, having been made aware of the piece of the Difference Engine at Harvard in 1937. The ASCC was not a stored program machine but instead was driven by a paper tape containing the instructions. Aiken was among those who were declared to be Computer PIoneers by the IEEE Computer Society in 1980.

On 30 March 1951, the first Remington-Rand UNIVAC was turned over to Census Bureau, to assist in the tabulation of the census results. Five years in construction by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the machine had survived through near bankruptcy of the original company but was vastly over budget for a fixed price contract. A year later when the machine was used on television to predict the outcome of the 1952 Presidential election, the name UNIVAC became synonymous with the concept of the computer.

Allen Newell was born on 19 March 1927 in San Francisco CA; with Herbert Simon and John Shaw, in 1957 Newell first articulated a rule-based model of human and computer problems solving. The fields of artificial intelligence and cognitive science grew in part from his idea that computers could process symbols as well as numbers, and if programmed properly would be capable of solving problems in the same way humans do. In the 1960's (in particular) Newell and Herb Simon created computer models of human problem solving. This work was one of the major forces behind the "cognitive revolution" in psychology.

The IEEE Computer Society has recognized a number of pioneers who had made their mark on the field as employees of IBM:

  • Ralph L. Palmer (1989) was the developer of the IBM 604 Electronic Calculator, one of the machines that preceded IBM's entry into the computer business but which gave the company some of the necessary experience in electronics.
  • Cuthbert C. Hurd (1986) was a key leader within IBM in the introduction of computers to the corporation, and, later, was a remarkable computer entrepreneur.
  • Jerrier A. Haddad (1984) was the manager of the development project which resulted in the IBM 701 (Defense Calculator).
  • Nathaniel Rochester (1984) was the chief architect of IBM's first scientific computer (701) and of the prototype of its first commercial computer (702), as well as being the developer of symbolic assembly language programming.
  • Werner Buchholz (1990) was a member of the IBM 701 design team and prolific documenter of those early designs, including the later Stretch computer.
  • Stephen W. Dunwell (1992) was primarily responsible for the development of the first supercomputer - STRETCH (AKA IBM 7030) following an earlier career in cryptography.
  • James H. Pomerene (1986) was the design engineer for the IAS computer with John von Neumann, and the IBM HARVEST system, a supercomputer system delivered to the National Security Agency.
  • Gerritt A. Blaauw (1994) started work with Howard Aiken on the Harvard Mark III system, and later contributed to the IBM Stretch and System/360.
  • Erich Bloch (1993) headed the IBM development of the Solid Logic Technology program, which provided IBM with the microelectronics technology for its System/360 computer. The Computer Society awarded him a Pioneer Award for his work on High Speed Computing.
  • Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. (1980) is the discoverer of the bottomless software tar pit and debunker of the concept of the Mythical Man Month in his book of the same title. He received the Pioneer Award for his part as developer of OS/360.
  • Bob 0. Evans (1991) was an influential manager within IBM committed to compatibility, a concept which led to the IBM System/360 family of machines.
  • Reynold B. Johnson (1987), as a high school teacher in the 1930s, devised a method for scoring multiple-choice tests by sensing conductive pencil marks on answer sheets and later, as an employee of IBM, initiated work leading to the first disk storage device -- RAMAC.
  • John Cocke (1989) is an IBM computer scientist who specializes in compiler optimizations techniques and was given the Pioneer Award for Instruction Pipelining and RISC Concepts.

    Last updated 95/11/07