Chapter 1

Question 1

Who formed the “Electronic Control Company” and when?

Answer 1

Eckert and Mauchly formed the partnership company in 1946. Later its name was changed to Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation on being incorporated.

Question 2

When was ENIAC turned on?

Answer 2

Feb 15 1946

Question 3

When was the “Association for Computing Machinery” founded?

Answer 3

1947

Question 4

What was changed in ENIAC in 1948?

Answer 4

It was reconfigured to run modern code entered by turning switches on read-only memory panels in 1948. It was run like that for the rest of its carrier

Question 5

When, by whom and for what was the first symbolic assembler written?

Answer 5

1949, Nathaniel Rochester wrote the first symbolic assembler as part of an IBM project to experiment with the EDVAC.

Question 6

Which year marked the beginning of commercial sales of large scaled computers in the US and why?

Answer 6

1951, when Remington Rand delivered the first Univac to the US Census Bearue.

Question 7

When was the AM Turing award first presented?

Answer 7

1966

Question 8

How and when was IEEE created?

Answer 8

Institute for Radio Engineers and American Institute of Electrical Engineers merged to create Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers.

Question 9

Who owned and sponsored the ENIAC project?

Answer 9

The US Army’s Ordnance Department

Question 10

Who was Adele Goldstine?

Answer 10

She wrote the ENIAC’s programming manual and was one of the operators.

Question 11

Who was John von Neumann?

Answer 11

John von Neumann - collaborator on ENIAC and also contributor to EDVAC production ideas. Von Neumann’s First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC described logical structures rather than the specifics of hardware

Question 12

What was ENIAC?

Answer 12

First programmable general purpose computer. Released in 1946, and was developed to calculate artillery tables: the projectile categories of shells. It also pioneered such computer applications as Monte Carlo simulation, numerical weather prediction, and the modelling of supersonic air flow.

• Not the first programmable computer but the the first to automate the job of deciding what to do next after a sequence of operations finished.
• Data went in and out on punch cards

Question 13

What was EDVAC?

Answer 13

• EDVAC is an electronic discrete variable automatic computer. Was based on new kind of memory ⇒ the delay line (proposed by Eckert).
• Delivered to Ballistic Research Laboratory in 1949