This year, 1996, marks not only the 50th anniversary of the unveiling of the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, but also the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Subcommittee on Large-Scale Computing Devices of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). Five years later, the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) formed its Professional Group on Electronic Computers. The AIEE and the IRE merged in 1963 to become the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The respective committee and group of the predecessor organizations combined to form what we now know as the IEEE Computer Society, which traces its roots--and thus its anniversary--to the formation of these organizations.

So, just as all of us individually celebrate the anniversaries of major events in our lives--birthdays, graduations, and so on--the Computer Society too celebrates one of its several anniversaries in 1996. As a small part of that celebration, Computer will publish a page each month entitled "looking.back," in which we recognize the significant events of computer history that occurred in that month and pay our respects to some computing pioneers, focusing especially on those who received the Computer Society Pioneer Award. This award has been presented annually since 1980 to as many as four living recipients whose vision resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the electronic computer industry.

Other events during 1996 will also mark this significant milestone in the society's history. A selected set of Computer Society-sponsored conferences, starting with Compcon in February, will include a special session on the history of computing and the society. In November, the yearlong celebration will culminate with a special event in conjunction with Supercomputing 96, with joint participation by ACM, which observes its 50th anniversary next year. In the meantime, we will relate the history of computing and the Computer Society month by month in "looking.back." We believe this historical review will contain something to surprise and delight each of you.

     J.A.N. Lee
     Computer Society History Committee

January in computing history

Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine of Charles Babbage was never completed in his lifetime, but his son Henry Provost Babbage built the "mill" portion of the machine from his father's drawings. On January 21, 1888, he computed multiples of pi to prove the adequacy of the design. Perhaps this represents the first successful test of a portion of a "modern" computer. Recently, a portion of his earlier machine, the Difference Engine, was sold at auction by Christies of London to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia.

A piece of the reconstructed Difference Engine, built at the Science Museum, London, 1991. (Reproduced with permission.)

Bell Labs Complex Computer. On his own, George Stibitz began in 1937 to construct a binary adder out of parts borrowed from the scrap heap at Bell Telephone Laboratories. This work led to a series of Bell Labs relay computers built during World War II. By January 1940, he had completed the Bell Labs Complex Computer, capable of performing complex arithmetic calculations necessary for circuit design. The following September he demonstrated the machine at the fall meeting of the American Mathematical Society at Dartmouth College, also demonstrating, coincidentally, the first remote access to a computer through the use of telephone lines.

George Stibitz built a one-digit binary adder and went on to design relay binary circuits for calculations with complex numbers. [Photograph of Stibitz at the dedication of the Dennison display including the K-machine.]

EDVAC. Even before the ENIAC was unveiled in 1946, developers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, together with their colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Electrical Engineering, were already thinking about their next machine. Rather than abandon a machine they knew was not state-of-the-art, on January 1, 1945, Eckert and Mauchly signed a contract to build the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), the machine that would be the subject of a "Draft Report" authored by John von Neumann and that would, incorrectly, attribute to him the concept of the stored program and the peculiar architecture. The EDVAC itself would not be completed until 1952, long after Eckert and Mauchly had left the university.

Early IBM machines. Thomas J. Watson Sr. assisted Howard Aiken in building the Harvard Mark I calculator in 1944, a machine known within IBM as the Automatic Sequence-Controlled Calculator (ASCC). However, Watson was rebuffed at the dedication, with Aiken and Harvard appearing to claim all the credit. Though Aiken apologized later, Watson was by no means mollified, and the emergence and success of ENIAC did nothing to brighten his outlook. Although he did not intend to enter the computer business on the same scale as Eckert and Mauchly, who started their own company, he ordered the construction of the updated IBM version of the ASCC, a machine to be known as the SSEC (Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator). The SSEC was dedicated on January 24, 1948. Watson was dissatisfied with the publicity photographs of the SSEC; the machine room at the Madison Avenue headquarters contained two large columns that obscured the machine--so he had the columns removed in the photos!

IBM's Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator was installed in the company's Madison Avenue, New York, headquarters in January 1948.

Apple Macintosh. Almost 30 years later, a company that would soon become a strong competitor to IBM, Apple Computer, was incorporated by Stephen Jobs and Stephen Wozniak on January 3, 1977. Seven years later, on January 24, 1984, the company unveiled the Macintosh personal computer in a publicity campaign that compared IBM to Big Brother and touted Apple as the savior of the masses.

Algol. The year 1960 was perhaps a turning point in the history of computing, with many innovations appearing. In January the International Federation for Information Processing was founded on the dreams of Isaac Auerbach, who sought a truly international industry and the sharing of ideas. International cooperation was also evident in the initial development of Algol (ALGOrithmic Language) in 1958, but it was the work of the combined ACM and GAMM (German Mathematical Association) committee, formed in January 1960, that truly established the language in the form that Alan Perlis described as the lingua franca of computer science. That same year and month, Control Data Corp. delivered its 1604 machine, whose success led to the further development of a series of machines that included several worthy of being classified as "supercomputers."

Sketchpad. January 1963 was the month in which Ivan Sutherland introduced the system known as Sketchpad for the TX-0 and thus consolidated the field of computer graphics, whose originators had earlier included General Motors Research Laboratory.

Computing pioneers born in January

William Burroughs, born January 28, 1855, many years before there was a Computer Society or a computing industry, founded the company that bore his name for almost a century and which eventually was absorbed into Unisys Corp. Burroughs' calculating and accounting machines laid a firm foundation that enabled the business world to make the transition to computers.

Nathaniel Rochester was a 1984 recipient of the Computer Society Pioneer Award. Born January 14, 1919, in Buffalo, New York, he was the chief architect of both IBM's first scientific computer and the prototype of its first commercial computer. He also developed the concept of symbolic assembly-language programming.

Heinz Zemanek, born January 1, 1920, in Vienna, Austria, developed the Mailufterl (Spring Breeze) computer (named after the Whirlwind) around the time that Rochester was developing the IBM machines. Later, while director of the IBM Laboratory, Vienna, he directed the development of formal programming language descriptors. He was recognized as a Computer Society Pioneer in 1985.

Erich Bloch, born January 9, 1925, in Sulzburg, Germany, headed IBM's development of the solid logic technology program, which provided IBM with the microelectronics technology for its System/360 computer. He received the 1993 Computer Society Pioneer Award.

Doug Engelbart's work made today's world of personal computing very different from what it might have been. Born January 25, 1925, and recipient of the 1992 Pioneer Award, he not only invented the mouse but also became a strong advocate of the potential for high-performance human augmentation.

Charles Antony Richard (Tony) Hoare, born January 11, 1934, was a major contributor to the understanding of the logic of programs, particularly through his development of the axiomatic approach to program description. He received the 1980 ACM Turing Award and the 1990 Computer Society Pioneer Award.

Donald Ervin Knuth, programmer supreme, teacher, and writer of the Art of Programming, was born January 10, 1938, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He went on to develop the text language TeX and the concept of literate programming. He received the 1980 Computer Society Pioneer Award.

| Computer magazine page | Publications page | Computer Society home page |

Copyright (c) 1996 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved.

By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.