Aiken CPC translator(ID:6020/ait001)Proposed relay code for the Harvard Mark IIIA machine propsed by Aiken at Harvard to make code for the Harvard Mark III computer (ie an Automatic Programmer computer) Also CPC code. Backus was recruited to the project, and drew on these lessons in SPEEDCODING Related languages
References: in The Annals of the Computation Laboratory of Harvard University, Vol. 25, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1952 view details in ECIP55 Fachtagung 'Elektronische Rechenmaschinen Und Informationsverarbeitung' [Electronic Digital Computers And Information Processing] Darmstadt, Germany, October 25-27, 1955. Braunschweig, F. Vieweg, 1956. view details The IBM Card-Programmed Calculator, developed between 1947 and 1949, was not very fast by modern standards, but was an extremely versatile device. Operation codes were determined by the wiring of control boards. Ingenuity could be expended on designing boards to optimize performance on particular problems that taxed the capacity of the computer, or it could be expended on the design of general purpose boards for use in large classes of problems. A set of general purpose boards represented a language for the CPC, and a number of languages were tried and used.3 Most Scientific installations finally settled on a wiring that made the CPC appear to be a floating point machine with three-address logic, and with a standard vocabulary of built-in routines like Square Root, Sine, Exponential, etc. Experience with the CPC systems had many influences on the programming systems that were designed for the stored-program computers that followed. in [AFIPS JCC 25] Proceedings of the 1964 Spring Joint Computer Conference SJCC 1964 view details in Belzer, J. ; A. G. Holzman, A. Kent, (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York. 1979 view details Aiken needed numbers for his theory of space-charge conduction in vacuum tubes, but the problems were beyond the capability of desktop calculators of the day. Frustrated by his dilemma, in 1937 he wrote a proposal for a giant calculating machine, one that could represent negative and positive numbers, do standard arithmetic, and carry out more than one operation in a sequence. "The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself," he wrote, although he would later joke that the computer was "only a lazy man's idea." A year earlier, in 1936, Aiken had proposed his idea to the Physics Department, which did not see the same need for a computing machine and was reluctant to give up space for one in its building. He was told by the chairman, Frederick Saunders, that a lab technician, Carmelo Lanza, had told him about a similar contraption already stored up in the Science Center attic. Intrigued, Aiken had Lanza lead him to the machine, which turned out to be a set of brass wheels from English mathematician and philosopher Charles Babbage's unfinished "analytical engine" from nearly 100 years earlier. Aiken immediately recognized that he and Babbage had the same mechanism in mind. Fortunately for Aiken, where lack of money and poor materials had left Babbage's dream incomplete, he would have much more success. Later, those brass wheels, along with a set of books that had been given to him by the grandson of Babbage, would occupy a prominent spot in Aiken's office. In an interview with I. Bernard Cohen '37, PhD '47, Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science Emeritus, Aiken pointed to Babbage's books and said, "There's my education in computers, right there; this is the whole thing, everything I took out of a book." External link: Online copy in Belzer, J. ; A. G. Holzman, A. Kent, (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York. 1979 view details in Belzer, J. ; A. G. Holzman, A. Kent, (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York. 1979 view details in Belzer, J. ; A. G. Holzman, A. Kent, (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York. 1979 view details |