HOWARD AIKEN

Presentation by Adam Wright

Howard Hathaway Aiken

• Born March 8, 1990 in Hoboken, New Jersey• Grew up in Indianapolis , Indiana • Received a Bachelor’s degree after attending

the University of Wisconsin.• 1939-Ph.D from Harvard• Thinks of a machine to do tedious

calculations while working on a doctoral thesis in physics.

• Aiken got IBM to fund his project

Aiken’s Big Project

• His idea was to create an electromachanic machine

• Aiken was to be head of the IBM team• IBM parts were to be used• The project took seven years• Grace Murray Cooper was assigned to work

with Aiken on the project

Project Results

• The official name would be the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator

• Most would call it the Mark 1• Designed to create tables• Proved machines of the type could be of

practical use

Mark 1 Statistics

8 feet high 51 feet long 2 feet wide Five tons 760,000 parts

2,200 counter wheels3,300 relay components530 miles of wire

The Mark 1 was used to aid in development of the atomic bomb

Mark 1 in History

The Mark 2

The Navy asked Aiken to develop what would become the Mark 2 ,for the Naval Proving Ground

The Mark 2 would employ an electrical memory, finished in 1947

Concept of “constants”-fixed values referenced by the program while the machine was still running

The Mark 3Ran on a stored programIncorporated address registers

and indirect addressingGreater storage capacityUnreliable, components were

subject to heat changes when turned on and off

The Mark 4

Basically the same as the Mark 3 Magnetic core memory-storing 200

registers Made the computer faster

Aiken’s quotes

“ Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.”

Aiken’s other accomplishments

He started the first computer science academic program

Aiken’s Death

Howard Aiken died on March 14, 1973

http://www.thocp.net/biographies/aiken_howard.html

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.09/HowardAikenMaki.html

http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/aiken.html

http://thinkexist.com/quotes/howard_aiken/

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761589179/howard_aiken.html

http://www.athsalumni.org/howardaiken.htm

Sources