History of emerging technologies
Most of us commonly discuss the emergence of mainframe computers in the 60’s. It’s hard to believe that it was actually 60 years ago (Feb 1946) that the ENIAC computer was introduced, and that its development was tied to military needs of using differential equations to determine trajectories for artillery.
The roots of ENIAC and its contemporaries can be traced to World War II. Artillery units employed tables to help them predict the trajectory of the shells they were firing, but calculating the variables–the angle of the gun, the condition of the terrain and other factors–was a mind-numbing task.
Figuring a single trajectory (out of several hundred) with a hand calculator took around 40 hours, and even electromechanical devices like the Differential Analyzer designed by Vannevar Bush might take 30 minutes.
The first test of the ENIAC (Nov 1945) examined computations for the H-bomb. Launched a few months later, it created little fanfare.
The machine was of course a behemoth (80′ x 8′) and technically (vacuum tubes) and logically (decimal not binary) much different than the mainframes of the late 50’s and 60’s, but the story here provides some remarkable history of the brainstorming and academic research process of designing and introducing this technology to the American world.
Enjoy the article posted by CNet.news , for the history if nothing else.