This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Mauchly is pronounced MOCKly: there is no "ch" sound. Jfgrcar 04:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
According to articles in Wikipedia on Flip-flop (electronics) and William Eccles, the flip-flop circuit was invented and patented by Eccles and F.W. Jordan in 1919, not by Mauchly. If there is evidence that Mauchly invented it at Ursinus College, it should be provided here. (But Mauchly was at Ursinus from 1933 to 1941)
Mauchly never claimed he invented the flip-flop. He was well aware of the Eccles-Jordan circuit. He always claimed that it was the use of the flip-flop as a high-speed counter to count cosmic rays at Swarthmore that first inspired him to compute electronically. -- Zebbie 20:00, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
In his October 30, 1968 deposition in the Honeywell Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corp. case, Mauchly testified that he arrived at the concept of an electronic, general purpose computer while at Ursinus, and had discussed it with others, but could not recall the names of anyone to whom he had revealed this. He was able to produce no evidence of an interest in digital circuits prior to June of 1941, when he visited Atanasoff and examined the Atanasoff–Berry Computer.
These quotes from the findings of Judge Larson (Oct. 19, 1973) in the ENIAC patent case constitute settled law:
This information can be found in Clark Mollenhoff's biography of Atanasoff. Mollenhoff was both a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and a lawyer.
This is not to argue that Mauchly made no advances on the work of Atanasoff, only that his claims of originality and priority in attempting to patent ENIAC were false. -- Blainster 21:28, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
There is, however, a difference between something settled as far as a court is concerned and something settled as far as history is concerned. (Especially as the question now has no legal meaning, all patents having expired). The answer really depends on "what do you mean by invent?" and "what do you mean by computer?" There is no single inventor, but ENIAC is a much more important machine historically than ABC and was bigger contribution.-- 67.53.1.193 05:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
The calculations of the ABC were done with vacuum tube logic circuits, and thus were order of magnitude faster than electro-mechanical computers such as the much later Harvard Mark I. It did have a rotating drum memory system, which limited it to 30 operations per second. The one second per operation that anonymous 141.158.42.148 refers to, was the printout speed per page, not the calculation speed. -- Blainster 00:14, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it's valid to try to guess how fast one component of the machine would be if it were somehow used in another design. Arthur Burks, certainly an authority on it's workings, puts the ABC's speed much lower that 30 per second; I believe he thinks you must consider the time it takes to solve a problem, including the human handling of intermediate results on punch cards. 30 OPS is the "peak" rate: one second to do 30 simultaneous additions. -- 70.90.6.230 18:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Today's definition of computer programmability did not apply to either ABC or ENIAC. ABC was single purpose, and programming the ENIAC meant a few days of rewiring. Use of stored programs was not part of the ENIAC patent claim, even though it was programmable in the sense of being manually rewirable for general purpose use. However the prior design disclosures in Von Neumann's document apparently contributed to the weakness of Mauchly and Eckert's claim through no fault of their own. Ironically, Eckert's advances in memory design for the EDVAC (which served as a basis for Von Neumann's design) employed Atanasoff's ideas of binary operation and regenerative memory. -- Blainster 22:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
-- 70.90.6.230 18:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
On "hardwire" The term hardwire means "To connect equipment or components permanently in contrast to using switches, plugs, or connectors." By this definition, ENIAC wasn't hardwired. It was wired, to be sure, but the wires weren't soldered in place. Zebbie 16:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
There are a lot of factual mistakes on this page. Just off the top of my head:
1) Mauchly and Eckert did NOT invent subroutines. The word was first used and with its present meaning in a report written by John von Neumann.
Goldstine, H. H. and von Neumann, J., Planning and coding of problems for an electronic computing instrument, Part II, Volume 3, IAS report, 1948. Pages 215--235 in volume 5 of von Neumann's collected works.
The first computer programming textbook, which also discussed subroutines, was written in 1951, to help program the Cambridge University computer that had been running since 1949.
Wilkes, M. V. and Wheeler, D. J. and Gill, S., The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer, with special reference to the EDSAC and the use of a library of subroutines, Tomash Publishers, Charles Babbage Institute reprint series for the History of Computing, Tomash Publishers, Los Angeles, 1982. Originally published by Addison-Wesley Press in 1951
So other people were writing about and using subroutines in 1948 and 1951, while UNIVAC I was not available until 1951. So explain to me how/where it is known that Mauchly and Eckert invented subroutines?
2) Goldstine "in a move that was to become controversial, removed any reference to Eckert or Mauchly and distributed the document" is false. There never were any references in the letters from which Goldstine assembled the report.
3) "Eckert and Mauchly suffered additional setbacks due to Goldstine's actions" is also false. By the time the patent case went to court some 15 years later, Eckert and Mauchly had already lost control of their patents because their company went backrupt.
4) I would like to see a supporting reference to the claim that Mauchly's use of "to program" was the first use. The first use of the word with its *modern" meaning is described in this article:
Grier, D. A., "The ENIAC, the Verb ``to program and the Emergence of Digital Computers," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, (1996), 18(1):51--55.
I could go on. This needs a lot of cleaning up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Grcar ( talk • contribs) 2007-03-07T01:22:22
The transcript of the patent meeting can be found at:
Stern, N., "Minutes of 1947 Patent Conference, Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania," Annals of the History of Computing, 1985, 7(2):100--116.
This transcript shows that Mauchly and Eckert had no concern about rights to "the stored program concept". Such a patent would not have held up because similar ideas had already been had and were implemented by Konrad Zuse in Germany for relay computers. He did eventually file patents and IBM was careful to license them early on. I do not know whether the Zuse patents were ever tested in court.
The transcript also shows that the real reason for the patent meeting was to get rid of von Neumann. All through 1945 the goverment lawyers were advising Mauchly and Eckert to file patent disclosures. They could have done the same with the intellectual property of the First Fraft Report, but that would have menat having to deal with von Neumann. To the WASP lawyers who got government jobs at that time, John von Neumann was a just a jewish guy who talked funny and was dangerous because he seemed to know important people. So the lawyers kept silent until they were certain the time to file patents on the First Draft expired.
Joseph Grcar 17:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Another problem is the lack of any mention of Mauchly's loss of clearance/restraining order against his entering company property of the firm he co-owned. Since this led rather directly to the failure of that firm, why isn't it included here, as it is on the entry for the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation? Drieux ( talk) 00:03, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on
John Mauchly. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If necessary, add {{
cbignore}}
after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{
nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers. — cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 01:48, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on John Mauchly. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 08:39, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
Regarding the "First Draft", the article says "Goldstine, in a move that was to become controversial, removed any reference to Eckert or Mauchly and distributed the document to a number of von Neumann's associates across the country." I see this was challenged in point 2 of Joseph Grcar's 7 March 2007 comments, but was never addressed subsequently. I've added a cn tag for now. There is a big difference between neglecting to add credits in typing up someone else's notes and deliberately deleting them. I haven't found any such assertion elsewhere and am inclined to delete it unless a source is provided soon.-- agr ( talk) 21:08, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Mauchly is pronounced MOCKly: there is no "ch" sound. Jfgrcar 04:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
According to articles in Wikipedia on Flip-flop (electronics) and William Eccles, the flip-flop circuit was invented and patented by Eccles and F.W. Jordan in 1919, not by Mauchly. If there is evidence that Mauchly invented it at Ursinus College, it should be provided here. (But Mauchly was at Ursinus from 1933 to 1941)
Mauchly never claimed he invented the flip-flop. He was well aware of the Eccles-Jordan circuit. He always claimed that it was the use of the flip-flop as a high-speed counter to count cosmic rays at Swarthmore that first inspired him to compute electronically. -- Zebbie 20:00, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
In his October 30, 1968 deposition in the Honeywell Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corp. case, Mauchly testified that he arrived at the concept of an electronic, general purpose computer while at Ursinus, and had discussed it with others, but could not recall the names of anyone to whom he had revealed this. He was able to produce no evidence of an interest in digital circuits prior to June of 1941, when he visited Atanasoff and examined the Atanasoff–Berry Computer.
These quotes from the findings of Judge Larson (Oct. 19, 1973) in the ENIAC patent case constitute settled law:
This information can be found in Clark Mollenhoff's biography of Atanasoff. Mollenhoff was both a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and a lawyer.
This is not to argue that Mauchly made no advances on the work of Atanasoff, only that his claims of originality and priority in attempting to patent ENIAC were false. -- Blainster 21:28, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
There is, however, a difference between something settled as far as a court is concerned and something settled as far as history is concerned. (Especially as the question now has no legal meaning, all patents having expired). The answer really depends on "what do you mean by invent?" and "what do you mean by computer?" There is no single inventor, but ENIAC is a much more important machine historically than ABC and was bigger contribution.-- 67.53.1.193 05:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
The calculations of the ABC were done with vacuum tube logic circuits, and thus were order of magnitude faster than electro-mechanical computers such as the much later Harvard Mark I. It did have a rotating drum memory system, which limited it to 30 operations per second. The one second per operation that anonymous 141.158.42.148 refers to, was the printout speed per page, not the calculation speed. -- Blainster 00:14, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it's valid to try to guess how fast one component of the machine would be if it were somehow used in another design. Arthur Burks, certainly an authority on it's workings, puts the ABC's speed much lower that 30 per second; I believe he thinks you must consider the time it takes to solve a problem, including the human handling of intermediate results on punch cards. 30 OPS is the "peak" rate: one second to do 30 simultaneous additions. -- 70.90.6.230 18:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Today's definition of computer programmability did not apply to either ABC or ENIAC. ABC was single purpose, and programming the ENIAC meant a few days of rewiring. Use of stored programs was not part of the ENIAC patent claim, even though it was programmable in the sense of being manually rewirable for general purpose use. However the prior design disclosures in Von Neumann's document apparently contributed to the weakness of Mauchly and Eckert's claim through no fault of their own. Ironically, Eckert's advances in memory design for the EDVAC (which served as a basis for Von Neumann's design) employed Atanasoff's ideas of binary operation and regenerative memory. -- Blainster 22:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
-- 70.90.6.230 18:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
On "hardwire" The term hardwire means "To connect equipment or components permanently in contrast to using switches, plugs, or connectors." By this definition, ENIAC wasn't hardwired. It was wired, to be sure, but the wires weren't soldered in place. Zebbie 16:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
There are a lot of factual mistakes on this page. Just off the top of my head:
1) Mauchly and Eckert did NOT invent subroutines. The word was first used and with its present meaning in a report written by John von Neumann.
Goldstine, H. H. and von Neumann, J., Planning and coding of problems for an electronic computing instrument, Part II, Volume 3, IAS report, 1948. Pages 215--235 in volume 5 of von Neumann's collected works.
The first computer programming textbook, which also discussed subroutines, was written in 1951, to help program the Cambridge University computer that had been running since 1949.
Wilkes, M. V. and Wheeler, D. J. and Gill, S., The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer, with special reference to the EDSAC and the use of a library of subroutines, Tomash Publishers, Charles Babbage Institute reprint series for the History of Computing, Tomash Publishers, Los Angeles, 1982. Originally published by Addison-Wesley Press in 1951
So other people were writing about and using subroutines in 1948 and 1951, while UNIVAC I was not available until 1951. So explain to me how/where it is known that Mauchly and Eckert invented subroutines?
2) Goldstine "in a move that was to become controversial, removed any reference to Eckert or Mauchly and distributed the document" is false. There never were any references in the letters from which Goldstine assembled the report.
3) "Eckert and Mauchly suffered additional setbacks due to Goldstine's actions" is also false. By the time the patent case went to court some 15 years later, Eckert and Mauchly had already lost control of their patents because their company went backrupt.
4) I would like to see a supporting reference to the claim that Mauchly's use of "to program" was the first use. The first use of the word with its *modern" meaning is described in this article:
Grier, D. A., "The ENIAC, the Verb ``to program and the Emergence of Digital Computers," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, (1996), 18(1):51--55.
I could go on. This needs a lot of cleaning up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Grcar ( talk • contribs) 2007-03-07T01:22:22
The transcript of the patent meeting can be found at:
Stern, N., "Minutes of 1947 Patent Conference, Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania," Annals of the History of Computing, 1985, 7(2):100--116.
This transcript shows that Mauchly and Eckert had no concern about rights to "the stored program concept". Such a patent would not have held up because similar ideas had already been had and were implemented by Konrad Zuse in Germany for relay computers. He did eventually file patents and IBM was careful to license them early on. I do not know whether the Zuse patents were ever tested in court.
The transcript also shows that the real reason for the patent meeting was to get rid of von Neumann. All through 1945 the goverment lawyers were advising Mauchly and Eckert to file patent disclosures. They could have done the same with the intellectual property of the First Fraft Report, but that would have menat having to deal with von Neumann. To the WASP lawyers who got government jobs at that time, John von Neumann was a just a jewish guy who talked funny and was dangerous because he seemed to know important people. So the lawyers kept silent until they were certain the time to file patents on the First Draft expired.
Joseph Grcar 17:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Another problem is the lack of any mention of Mauchly's loss of clearance/restraining order against his entering company property of the firm he co-owned. Since this led rather directly to the failure of that firm, why isn't it included here, as it is on the entry for the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation? Drieux ( talk) 00:03, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on
John Mauchly. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If necessary, add {{
cbignore}}
after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{
nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers. — cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 01:48, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on John Mauchly. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 08:39, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
Regarding the "First Draft", the article says "Goldstine, in a move that was to become controversial, removed any reference to Eckert or Mauchly and distributed the document to a number of von Neumann's associates across the country." I see this was challenged in point 2 of Joseph Grcar's 7 March 2007 comments, but was never addressed subsequently. I've added a cn tag for now. There is a big difference between neglecting to add credits in typing up someone else's notes and deliberately deleting them. I haven't found any such assertion elsewhere and am inclined to delete it unless a source is provided soon.-- agr ( talk) 21:08, 17 August 2023 (UTC)