Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
identifi ed in the writings of early computer theorists Alan Turing and
John von Neumann. The development of the discipline is evaluated in
terms of advances in programming languages, formal methods, and
generally applicable theoretical research. This purely intellectual approach
to the history of programming, however, conceals the essentially craftlike
nature of early programming practice. The fi rst computer programmers
were not scientists or mathematicians; they were low-status, female
clerical workers and desktop calculator operators. The origins of pro-
gramming as a profession lie in the commercial traditions of machine-
assisted, manual computation, not in the mainstream of theoretical
mathematics.
The history of vocational computer programming begins, in the United
States at least, with the construction of the ENIAC in summer 1945.
Many historians have identifi ed the ENIAC as the fi rst true electronic
computer. The question of “which was the fi rst computer” is surprisingly
diffi cult to answer. As Michael Williams suggests in a recent volume
edited by Raul Rojas and Ulf Hashagen called
The First Computers
(note
the crucial use of the plural), any particular claim to the priority of
invention must necessarily be heavily qualifi ed: if you add enough adjec-
tives you can always claim your own favorite.
11
And indeed, the ENIAC
has a strong claim to this title: not only was it digital, electronic, and
programmable (and therefore looked a lot like a modern computer) but
the ENIAC designers—John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert—went on to
form the fi rst commercial computer company in the United States. The
ENIAC and its commercial successor, the UNIVersal Automatic Computer
(UNIVAC), were widely publicized as the fi rst of the “giant brains” that
presaged the coming computer age. But even the ENIAC had its precur-
sors and competitors. For example, in the 1930s, a physicist at Iowa
State University, John Atanasoff, had worked on an electronic computing
device and had even described it to Mauchly. Others were working on
similar devices. During the Second World War in particular, a number
of government and military agencies, both in the United States and
abroad, had developed electronic computing devices, many of which also
have a plausible claim to being if not
the
fi rst computer, then at least
a
fi rst computer.
There are two major innovations in computing that the ENIAC
embodied. The fi rst was that it was electronic. Earlier computing devices,
including tabulating machines, were either mechanical or electrome-
chanical, meaning that they contained numerous moving parts. These
moving parts were complicated to manufacture, diffi cult to maintain,
